Lakota America: A New History of Indigenous Power Paperback – 24 November 2020
by Pekka Hamalainen (Author)
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The first comprehensive history of the Lakota Indians and their profound role in shaping America’s history
Named One of the New York Times Critics’ Top Books of 2019 • Named One of the 10 Best History Books of 2019 by Smithsonian Magazine • Winner of the MPIBA Reading the West Book Award for narrative nonfiction
“All nations deserve to have their stories told with this degree of attentiveness.”—Parul Sehgal, New York Times
"A briliant, bold, gripping history."—Simon Sebag Montefiore, London Evening Standard, Best Books of 2019
Red Cloud, Crazy Horse, and Sitting Bull are iconic figures in the American imagination, but in this groundbreaking book they emerge as something different: the architects of Lakota America, an expansive and enduring Indigenous regime that commanded human fates in the North American interior for generations. In this first complete account of the Lakota Indians Pekka Hämäläinen traces their rich and often surprising history from the early sixteenth to the early twenty?first century. He explores the Lakotas’ roots as marginal hunter?gatherers and reveals how they reinvented themselves twice: first as a river people who dominated the Missouri Valley, America’s great commercial artery, and then—in what was America’s first sweeping westward expansion—as a horse people who ruled supreme on the vast high plains.
Deeply researched and engagingly written, this history places the Lakotas at the center of American history, and the results are revelatory.
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"Impressive. . . . Lakota America takes us from the 16th century to the present, with painstaking, carefully marshaled detail, but its real feat is in threading how the Lakota philosophy and vision of the world guided their reinventions and their dealings with colonial powers. . . . Hämäläinen has the novelist's relish for the strange, pungent detail . . . [in this ] accomplished, and subtle, study."--Parul Sehgal, New York Times
"A comprehensive history of the tribe"--The Economist
Named One of the New York Times Critics' Top Books of 2019
"A briliant, bold, gripping history."--Simon Sebag Montefiore, London Evening Standard, Best Books of 2019
"Turned many of the stories I thought I knew about our nation inside out."--Cornelia Channing, Paris Review, Favorite Books of 2019
"I recommend Pekka Hämäläinen's Lakota America, which is my favorite non-fiction book of this year."--Tyler Cowen, Bloomberg Opinion
Named One of the 10 Best History Books of 2019 by Smithsonian Magazine
"Astonishing in its scope. . . . It is rare to find such a work, a deft narrative so comprehensive that also includes lots of original research."--Jon M. Sweeney, America
Hämäläinen "recounts his story with unusual verve. . . . Many histories of the United States still depict Lakotas as 'props' or ignore them altogether. Hämäläinen's work gestures toward a new map of power in North America's past, where indigenous polities and politics were as important as non-indigenous ones--until suddenly they were not."--Christine Mathias, Dissent
"Hämäläinen surpasses most of the legions of authors who have delved into the people popularly known as the Sioux, and his work will appeal to serious readers, who will find this a must addition to their libraries."--John Langellier, True West
"[A] magisterial book. Relying on newly available 'winter counts'--pictographs drawn in spirals on buffalo hides, cloth, muslin, and paper to recount a year's activities--Hämäläinen successfully makes the Lakota people unfamiliar to readers, disabusing us of the imagery inherited from popular culture depictions and painting a more nuanced picture. In short, he shows that the Lakota people have long been brilliant warriors, diplomats, and survivors."--Tony Jones, Christian Century
"Lakota America will undoubtedly become the standard work on early Lakota history and, more broadly, provide crucial context for understanding key events in the history of the American West. . . . It will stimulate rich conversation in upper-level and graduate seminars, and will long stand as essential reading for historians of Indigenous North America and the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century West."--John M. Coward, American Indian Quarterly
"An important addition to the fields of North American imperial, Indigenous, and even environmental histories. . . . A fine piece of historical writing, of use to virtually any scholar of the American past."--Stephen Hausmann, The Annals of Iowa
"Comprehensive--its writing vivid, with rare clarity and power. . . This is a wonderful, engaging, and sometimes tragic book."--Choice
"[A] profound history of the Lakota people. . . . Hämäläinen's book emphasizes that to understand American history it is vital to understand Lakota--and, by extension, Native American--history. . . . Lakota America joins, and in many respects leads, a growing body of work centered on single-tribe histories through which we can see, for the first time, the wild making of America."--David Treuer, New York Review of Books
"Magnificent. . . . Lakota America should be regarded as an introduction to all future studies of the plains 'Indian Wars.' It should be read by every student of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, everyone who wishes to make sense of the 2016 Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) crisis. . . . It should be read by everyone interested in the history of colonialism and post-colonialism, everyone who seeks to understand the Custer debacle at the Little Bighorn or the Massacre at Wounded Knee. It should be required reading in the high schools of the Dakotas and Montana. Above all, it should be read by people who want to know more about the extraordinary and resilient Lakota Nation that continues to flex its culture and power at the heart of the North American continent."--Clay S. Jenkinson, Governing
"[A] monumental achievement that will bend and shape the historiographical landscape."--David Grua, American Historical Review
"Lakota America succeeds in its ambitious project and is full of well-written, sometimes even beautiful, prose and contains clear, useful maps and images throughout that make the book accessible to both general readers and specialists alike."--Lauren Brand, Canadian Journal of History
"[T]his book is an achievement. It is deeply researched and beautifully written."--Jennifer Graber, American Religion
Shortlisted for the Mark Lynton History Prize, sponsored by the Columbia School of Journalism and the Nieman Foundation.
Winner of the Western Heritage Book Award for Nonfiction, sponsored by the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum
Winner of the Stubbendieck Great Plains Distinguished Book Prize, sponsored by the Center for Great Plains Studies
Winner of the 2020 Spur Award, sponsored by the Western Writers of America
Finalist in the PROSE Awards North American and U.S. History category, sponsored by the Association of American Publishers
"Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse live in history as great warriors. Hämäläinen's brilliant exploration of the history and culture of the people that produced these two men is destined to become a classic."--Annette Gordon-Reed, Harvard University
"Deeply researched, epic in scale, interpretatively adventurous, and ambitious, Lakota America will influence historians for years."--Richard White, Stanford University
"Like the Lakotas he studies, Pekka Hämäläinen is a shapeshifter. He is nuanced, nimble, and wise, with an uncanny capacity for reinvention as new understandings come to light. The result is stunning. To read Lakota America is to rethink American history itself."--Elizabeth Fenn, University of Colorado Boulder
"Lakota America is beautifully researched, persuasively argued, and justifiably audacious in its reach and implications. It is both a landmark in American Indian history and a provocative rethinking of North American history generally."--Elliott West, University of Arkansas
About the Author
Pekka Hämäläinen is the Rhodes Professor of American History and Fellow of St. Catherine's College at Oxford University. He has served as the principal investigator of a five-year project on nomadic empires in world history, funded by the European Research Council. His previous book, The Comanche Empire, won the Bancroft Prize in 2009.
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Lakota America: A New History of Indigenous Power
byPekka Hamalainen
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232 global ratings | 37 global reviews
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From Australia
Darren McAndrew
5.0 out of 5 stars Great service and delivery by amazon
Reviewed in Australia on 11 December 2020
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Great info and well written
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B. Ditcham
5.0 out of 5 stars The flexible people
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 7 March 2021
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The conventional image of Native Americans- even when articulated by highly sympathetic recent movies like "Dances with Wolves"- is of nomadic, horse-using buffalo hunters. In other words, the Lakota Sioux in their mid-19th century pomp are treated as normative (as Hamalainen pointed out in his previous study of the Comanches, the said film was based on a novel set among the latter people but relocated northwards to fit audience expectations) . One of Hamalainen's great services in this fascinating book is to point out that even the Lakota had only been full-on mounted nomads for little more than half a century before their dramatic triumph on the Little Big Horn. He traces their history from their origins (or at least their earliest appearance in written records in seventeenth century French accounts) as hunter-gatherers to the south west of the Great Lakes, though successive geographical shifts and reinventions of their way of life up to their moment of glory, bringing the story down to the present day.
The Lakota emerge as supreme opportunists with a quite amazing ability to shift their shape to fit the changing environment around them- and to dominate their neighbours. Right up the eve of their fateful clash with the US in the 1870's they were an expanding power, thriving on trade routes across North America (in some respects they were better armed than the cash-strapped US soldiers who had to fight them). For a long time there was no particular reason for the two expanding American imperial powers- the Lakota and the USA- to come into conflict (indeed for much of the first half of the 19th century they were effectively allied, with US vaccinations sometimes enabling the Lakota to avoid the smallpox that devastated their neighbours). Even when the clash came, the Lakota were well placed to win it, facing post-Civil War US administrations unwilling to invest huge sums of money in Indian Wars and pressured by a vocal pro-Indian lobby in the eastern states which the Lakota proved well able to play to.
Hamalainen tells the story brilliantly. If there was a option to dock him half a star, I'd be tempted to do so. At times he has a slightly rose tinted view of his subjects, who were capable of being every bit as ruthless and exploitative in their dealings with their neighbours (including white ones) as any European or Euro-American colonialist. It's also clear that Lakota society in its mounted buffalo hunting prime was undergoing rapid social and economic stratification which cut against the assumed egalitarian ethos of the nation (and which came out in increasingly heavy work burdens on less favoured women). Karl Marx would have been fascinated to observe what looks remarkably like an example of class formation in action. Hamalainen also slides round the question of how far the rather enviable material position the Lakota held by around 1860, based on large scale trade in buffalo robes to feed markets in the USA and Canada, was actually sustainable in the long run once the hunters were mounted and had access to repeating rifles- it's clear that buffalo herds were in steep decline in at least some parts of the grasslands by that date and that some of the tortuous diplomacy of US/Lakota relations was driven by the latter's desire to push into areas which hadn't been hunted out. A minor gripe is also that, while we are given a glossary of terms in Lakota Sioux expressed in what is obviously the alphabet created for that language in its written form, there's no guide on how one sets about pronouncing the unfamiliar characters.
There are however quibbles rather than serious reservations; this is a fascinating book which sets a slice of American history in an unfamiliar and revealing frame.
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tom
5.0 out of 5 stars Important and Briliant
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 17 January 2020
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This is one of the best books on American History I have read in years. The writer is clearly an expert. I urge you to read this book and his book on the Comanche Empire.
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Evelyn Good Striker
5.0 out of 5 stars HIstorical Truths
Reviewed in Canada on 16 February 2021
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It is with a sigh of relief to read this inclusive text researched and written by an Indigenous author. Thank you for this book.
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Henk van de Rijt
5.0 out of 5 stars Geschreven vanuit het perspectief van de Lakota’s
Reviewed in Germany on 4 February 2020
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Goede geschiedschrijving met ook oog voor het economische aspect. Maar ook geen blinde verheerlijking. Een eerlijk verhaal.
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Eleonore
5.0 out of 5 stars Leslie's Hateful Review
Reviewed in the United States on 30 October 2019
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The review from Leslie S should not be allowed. Besides being hostile and offensive the person did not even read the book. I am halfway through the book and it is very well written and highly informative. I just purchased another copy for my Cherokee mother. Amazon, I am surprised and disappointed that you would post such things. I urge you to pull it.
71 people found this helpful
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Brian LaRocca
5.0 out of 5 stars Much More Than Just A History Book
Reviewed in the United States on 17 December 2019
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Tacitly just a history book about the Lakota tribe, this book delves deep into daily tribal life, economics and trade, diplomacy and war strategy. Pekka Hamalainen states at the beginning why the Lakota are such an interesting people to study:
They emerge as superbly flexible people who went through a series of geneses from pedestrian foragers to sedentary farmers to equestrian hunters to nomadic pastoralists, each a precarious attempt to carve out a safe place in a world where European newcomers had become a permanent presence. They come to life as fiercely proud people who easily embraced outsiders, turning their domain into a vibrant ethnic jumble. Perhaps most strikingly, they emerge as supreme warriors who routinely eschewed violence, relying on diplomacy, persuasion, and sheer charm to secure what they needed—only to revert to naked force if necessary. When the overconfident Custer rode into the Bighorn Valley on that June day, they had already faced a thousand imperial challenges. They knew exactly what to do with him.
And:
That is where, supposedly, all the pivotal imperial rivalries over North America took place, France vying for supremacy with England on the eastern seaboard; Spaniards, Comanches, Mexicans, and Americans jostling for position in the Southwest; and Russians pushing down the Pacific Coast in search of pelts and challenging Spain’s claims to California. The interior world was a sideshow, too marginal to stir potent imperial passions, too vast and vicious for proper colonies. It was Thomas Jefferson’s imagined Louisiana whose settlement would take a thousand generations.
This book is essential for understanding American history. How about the congruence of these seemingly different cultures?
Neither Lakotas nor Americans compromised their core convictions about themselves and the world. Convinced of the essential rightness of their respective beliefs and principles, they created a yawning mental crevasse where two expansionist powers could fit. They valued, desired, sought, and fought for different things and often talked past one another, which, ironically, made them compatible. It was only when nature itself failed to sustain both that coexistence became impossible.
Lakotas used every possible tool in their efforts to keep what they held most sacred. When dealing with the French, they could be happy to submit to a paternalistic relationship. With the relatively weak Spanish, they could take a more privileged position. And with the British, they could be violent:
They killed one of the traders, cut his heart out, and ate it, and they boiled and ate Memeskia in front of his relatives. The attack was a sensation, and it sent British traders fleeing from the Ohio Country in panic, leaving behind a firmer French-Indian alliance
Amazingly, the Lakota co-opted the Europeans strengths by somehow becoming great shooters and horseman (interestingly the arrival of the "magic dogs" was a million year exodus for the now domesticated horse that was made extinct during the Pleistocene). Their decentralization also allowed them to outlast smallpox long enough for the Americans to strategically offer up a vaccine. Disease comes up many times in this story. British General Cornwallis was forced to surrender at Yorktown due to his African Americans succumbing to malaria and France's New World Empire was abandoned with their troops suffering from yellow fever.
The United States become the local hegemon post the War of 1812 (known by the Dakota's as “Pahinshashawacikiya,” “when the Redhead begged for Our help.”) and the signing of the Treaty of Ghent. The Lakota would go own to dominate their Paha Sapa, lush in vegetation and a desired spot for Bison herds. The US, after Eastern domination of Indian lands, would find a much tougher opponent. The successful Union generals now in power would use coercion, annuities, threats, betrayal, environmental destruction and war leading up to famously unsuccessful military campaigns ("Warriors shouted that the wašíčus should have brought more Indians to do their fighting for them). Ultimately the destruction of bison heard and the massacre at Wounded Knee (“a people’s dream died there”) were the final steps in Lakota submission.
To dispel the notion of unintelligent savage, it is amazing to hear the diversity of quotes about Lakotas. All of them with a grain of truth as they used every tool they had available to them:
-A German traveler was struck by the mental shift. In St. Louis he had heard the Sioux being denounced as “the treacherous enemies of all white,” but a journey upriver revealed a different image: “the more loyal of the aborigines under the care of the American government.”
-Clark denounced them as “the vilest miscreants of the savage race, and must ever remain the pirates of the Missouri.”
-U.S. agents denigrated Lakotas as irredeemable savages “determined to exterminate” their neighboring tribes.
- Lieutenant James Gorrell wrote, “Certainly the greatest nation of Indians ever yet found.” “They can shoot the wildest and largest beasts in the woods, at seventy or one hundred yards distance,”
-Red Cloud fit the bill. The New York Times heralded him as “a perfect Hercules,” “a man of brains, a good ruler, an eloquent speaker, and able general and fair diplomat,” “undoubtedly the most celebrated warrior living on the American Continent,” who commanded ten thousand people and two thousand warriors.
-“A powerful and warlike people, proud, haughty, and defiant; will average six feet in height, strong muscular frames, and very good horsemen.” They were, he warned, “capable of doing much harm.”
Truly a fascinating history told by a great story teller.
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BILL HARING
5.0 out of 5 stars LIKE “COMANCHE EMPIRE” A WORK COMPREHENSIVE, INCISIVE, INSIGHTFUL, AND WRITTEN MARVELOUSLY
Reviewed in the United States on 28 March 2020
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Having read “Comanche Empire” I knew I had to read this book. .My general impression is that the Comanche rule
over vast land masses was triggered by incessant violence, horsemanship, and raiding, to establish wealth and
dominance until the loss of buffalo, widespread disease, and, finally, organized plans of extermination by Texans
wiped the tribe away. Unlike the lack of any central authority over Comanche people, the fascinating history of the
Lakota people reflects a massive number of members constantly building a ferocious image as quick to violence as a
lever to bolster its decades of success in holding off the inevitable end of its hunting culture and as stewards of land.
Leaders like Red Cloud in particular are featured as shrewd in manipulating government officials, no less U.S.
Presidents, in stalling off numerous deceits, broken promises, and corrupt maneuvers to end the vast power and
military threat that the Lakota nation had amassed over centuries, not just decades..
My constant criticism is really a backhanded compliment..The author has provided such exhaustive detail that one
must imagine he included every inch of his research, to leave nothing out..The saving grace to me is his writing skill,
which presents the material so graphically and cogently that the temptation to skim never really gets going very far.
Over and over, as reading, I asked myself how did he find the time to tell so much? To our good fortune, he somehow did so
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Bruce Freed
5.0 out of 5 stars A great read that fills in an important chapter in American history.
Reviewed in the United States on 28 November 2019
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A great book. I'm intrigued by the fact that a young Finnish professor at Oxford should have fallen in love with the northern native American culture when he was a young student in Helsinki and has come now to write a book that should help set the record straight: The Sioux (in particular the Lakotas) were a large Indian nation, cultured and fierce defenders of their values. They killed Custer and his arrogant invaders in self defense. We should all learn to share in their tragedy and to do what we can to pay amends for the continuing abuse of their land - I mean the Dakota and Keystone pipe lines. It's a great adventure book.
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JB
3.0 out of 5 stars Off the Rails at Times
Reviewed in the United States on 5 July 2020
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Another addition to 'new Indian history' that requires of the reader a spatial and timeline reorientation away from the greasy grass. Even if you are somewhat versed in the topic, you'll need to relearn some of your indigenous nomenclature, thus making for a slow read at times. Why? Just call it the Missouri or at least be consistent.
The agency of the Lakota to reshape themselves and their world into, as the title states, Lakota America is a provocative read and sure to be attacked by the old guard historiography always looking east to west and dreaming of Frontier Regulars. Unfortunately, the blind spots will provide plenty of opportunities for attacks.
For example, and of course, one must pay homage to all things R White with ‘all lands west of the 98th were unsuitable for farming and the cattle industry was already heading toward over expansion by 1875’. Wrong on both counts and last I checked those people alive in 75 couldn’t see the future (page 348).
Then there is a consistent gap in the geography as represented in the maps. L'Eau Qui Court is left off most of them and this omits a key resource area for the Lakota. Map 24 establishes the range, but the Niobrara is incorrectly labeled the White R and White as Bad. R. Then for 30, 36, 38, 40 and 44 the Niobrara is eliminated. The orientation of some of the maps is simply ridiculous. As with the language- Why?
The misunderstanding of the geography bleeds into the text on the Warren Expedition, which was not moving up the Big Sioux to Ft Laramie. Fortunately Warren figured it out! Plus there’s not one index entry for the Sand Hills. In general geography gets indexed irregularly and mostly not at all.
See the photo from Wishart's Fur Trade for a more inclusive river system view.
There are numerous primary sources supporting the primacy of the central to western Niobrara (Ponca name for the mouth of) as strategically important. In fact first treaty negotiations called for the Great Sioux to extend to the Niobrara. Also, read Warren, Sawyer and Bourke. The etymology of the tributaries Keya Paha and Minnechazua supports the importance as well. The "Big Water" is not an intermittent stream in drought like some parts of the White and the steep canyons in the central region provided excellent winter camp sites. When reaching Pine Ridge after visiting Laramie, the bands could chose either White or Niobrara destinations that are divided only by roughly 20 miles. When raiding the Platte, the central region was often the first destination of refuge and the Sand Hills provided a formidable shield while recovering. Warren most likely identifies the site for the future Ft. Niobrara for obvious reasons. Or the author could refer to Sheridan on page 345. He certainly knew his way around the Warren map. Maybe an extended map/field study and less desk time was needed and you would have seen some farms beyond the 98th as well (all hail Richard White)?
If you want to read a narrative that gives a window into how it was actually lived from roughly Parkman's tour to the last chapter, vs a dry academic, check out Thomas Powers.
And with so much synthesis how one misses Bourke's diaries and the Ricker interviews is mind boggling. Both now in print, so there are no excuses for this gaff and please stop footnoting Hyde without providing his sources. For the uninitiated, Hyde as a source is problematic at best.
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