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Book Review
| Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America. By DANIEL K. RICHTER. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001. 317 + xii pp. $26.00.
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Facing East fills a noticeable gap in the current historiography by offering a synthesized account of Native American history from a decidedly Native American perspective. Facing East is a literal attempt to face east and imagine how Indians experienced the forces of colonialization as European microbes, trade goods, peoples, and ideologies advanced westward. Although many of the events and historical processes described may be familiar, the eastward orientation coupled with a deft and imaginative writing style make for an engaging and refreshing read. |
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Of course it is not wholly possible to reconstruct a Native American perspective, especially given the scarcity of Indian-generated documents. Richter nonetheless has found creative ways of overcoming this difficulty. The first chapter, titled "Imaging a Distant World," relies heavily on "guesstimation," drawing on actual known facts about initial encounters but filling in the blanks with imagined possible scenarios. The subtle writing style and sophisticated level of conceptual thinking produces a convincing set of stories, while the chapter as a whole offers an important counterweight to the innumerable studies that detail European "imaginings" of the New World. Chapter 2, which examines how European trade goods and disease reshaped the material existence of Native Americans, is another example of Richter's gift for subtlety. He strikes a comfortable balance between outlining the "abstract material forces" recontouring the Indians' world and the subtle but significant ways they responded to such forces. Indians are not passive victims in Richter's study, nor does he fall back on older romanticized depictions of Indian agency and heroism. |
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