| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 105.3

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 105.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Mark David Spence. Dispossessing the Wilderness: Indian Removal and the Making of the National Parks. New York: Oxford University Press. 1999. Pp. viii, 190. $35.00.

One of the recurrent themes of environmental history is that "wilderness," which seems so tangible to the public, is in fact a malleable social construct. Authors such as Roderick Nash, William Cronon, and Theodore Catton have forced readers to confront the nuances of what seemed to be such a clear-cut term. In broad terms, the author of this book follows in their footsteps, but Mark David Spence has taken a new tack by revealing the story of the exclusion of Native Americans from the national parks. Although they may not seem that wild now, a century ago national parks represented the first efforts to preserve wilderness in the United States. Spence shows that the American definition of wilderness had shifted from one that encompassed Native peoples to one that excluded all people, except visitors. Preservation of wilderness via the national parks, then, would not be complete until the federal government pushed Native peoples from parks into reservations, and Spence sees these two institutions as closely linked. The heart of his argument is that "uninhabited wilderness had to be created before it could be preserved" (p. 4). . . .

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