The Invasion of America: Indians, Colonialism, and the Cant of Conquest by Francis Jennings. New York. 1976. Norton. paperback. 369 pages. Cover design by Jay J. Smith. keywords: History America Colonialism Conquest. 0393008304.
FROM THE PUBLISHER -
Traditionally, historians have thought of American society as a transplantation of European culture to a new continent—a ‘virgin land.’ In this important and disturbing new book, Francis Jennings examines the real history of the relations hips between Europeans and Indians in what is ordinarily called the colonial period of United States history. From the Indian viewpoint, it was the period of the invasion of America. In Mr. Jennings’ view, the American land during the period of discovery and settlement was more like a widow than a virgin. ‘Europeans did not find a wilderness here,’ he writes; ‘rather, however involuntarily, they made one. The so-called settlement of America was a resettlement, a reoccupation of a land made waste by the diseases and demoralization introduced by the newcomers.’ Basing his interpretation on an enormous amount of hitherto unused ethnographical and anthropological literature, Mr. Jennings summarizes what is now known about the Atlantic Coast Indians encountered by the Europeans. He then concentrates on a single region, New England, as an illustrative case study. The result is a radically revisionist interpretation of Puritan history (both as the Puritans wrote and lived it) in relation to the aboriginal population.
Francis Jennings is Director of the Center for the History of the American Indian at the Newberry Library, Chicago, Illinois. ‘The Invasion of America fills a void in historical studies on American Indians. Mr. Jennings demonstrates that the story Of the tribes east of the Alleghenies has been as filled with myths and is equally as dramatic and tragic as that of the better-known horse Indians of the Western Plains. He has done so in a richly documented narrative that will surprise many readers with its revelations of the colonial period of America’s past.’ - Dee Brown, author, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.