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Daniel K. Richter
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Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America Paperback – April 30, 2003

by Daniel K. Richter (Author)
4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 176 ratings
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In the beginning, North America was Indian country. But only in the beginning. After the opening act of the great national drama, Native Americans yielded to the westward rush of European settlers. Or so the story usually goes. Yet, for three centuries after Columbus, Native people controlled most of eastern North America and profoundly shaped its destiny. In Facing East from Indian Country, Daniel K. Richter keeps Native people center-stage throughout the story of the origins of the United States.

Viewed from Indian country, the sixteenth century was an era in which Native people discovered Europeans and struggled to make sense of a new world. Well into the seventeenth century, the most profound challenges to Indian life came less from the arrival of a relative handful of European colonists than from the biological, economic, and environmental forces the newcomers unleashed. Drawing upon their own traditions, Indian communities reinvented themselves and carved out a place in a world dominated by transatlantic European empires. In 1776, however, when some of Britain’s colonists rebelled against that imperial world, they overturned the system that had made Euro-American and Native coexistence possible. Eastern North America only ceased to be an Indian country because the revolutionaries denied the continent’s first peoples a place in the nation they were creating.

In rediscovering early America as Indian country, Richter employs the historian’s craft to challenge cherished assumptions about times and places we thought we knew well, revealing Native American experiences at the core of the nation’s birth and identity.

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  1. Print length
    336 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Harvard University Press
  4. Publication date
    April 30, 2003
  5. Dimensions
    6.12 x 1 x 9.25 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0674011171
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0674011175
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Thanks to the work of Richter and others like him who have set out to break with the traditional Eurocentric narrative, ‘the people without history’ have been given back their voice.”―J. H. Elliott, New York Review of Books

“In his acclaimed volume Facing East from Indian Country, Daniel Richter turns the tables on ‘conventional’ histories of early European–Indian relations by looking east from the Mississippi River rather than west from the Atlantic Ocean… Richter approaches, from the Indian perspective, the history of early contact with Europeans through the founding of the U. S., with emphasis on tribes’ immeasurable contribution to the history of the continent. He culls Native voices from surviving documents and records, pulling Indians from the periphery of white America’s memory and making them the focal point of the post-contact story.”―Tom Wanamaker, Indian Country Today

“Richter insists that we must look over the shoulders of American Indians to see the Europeans who settled the New World to have a complete understanding of our origins. His depiction of how these original Americans adapted to the newcomers and how they were inevitably betrayed by generations devoted to ‘freedom’ and ‘opportunity’ are especially telling.”―Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News

“[Richter] has written a provocative new interpretation of early America from pre-contact to the early 19th century… [H]e places early America in the context of Native American society and history and not solely in the rush of colonial expansion… Historians of the American West and scholars of Western Native American studies will find much value in Richter’s retelling of early American History.”―Joseph Key, Journal of the West

“Most American histories treat North America’s indigenous peoples as ancillary to the more important story of the establishment of a European nation in the New World. What would happen if one shifted focus and transformed the usual bit-players into stars? Richter…makes that shift and produces what may, for its impeccable use of primary sources, smoothly well-wrought prose, and passionate argument, become a classic.”―Patricia Monaghan, Booklist

“Richter demythicizes the standard accounts…to demonstrate how white settlers consciously created false images to justify economic, religious, and military exploitation of Native inhabitants… This [is an] innovative and well-written book.”―M. L. Tate, Choice

“An excellent, ambitious attempt to restore to history long-overlooked Indians who ‘neither uncompromisingly resisted…nor wholeheartedly assimilated’ in the face of white encroachment… A hallmark in recent Native American historiography that merits wide attention.”―Kirkus Reviews

“Richter here offers a masterly work that eschews the long-standing perception that Native Americans were nothing more than marginalized bystanders as Europeans colonized North America. Focusing on the period between the 15th and 18th centuries, the author instead shows that Native American communities adapted to the many stresses introduced by the arrival of the Europeans and were active participants in creating a new way of life on the continent… [He] provides a valuable perspective that is often overlooked in books about the same period. Highly recommended for all public and academic libraries.”―John Burch, Library Journal

“At the center of this bold and thoroughly astonishing history of Native Americans are narratives of three Indians generally known to Euro-Americans: Pocahontas, Blessed Catherine Tekakwitha, and the Algonquin warrior Metacom, also known as King Philip. Telling each of these stories―a romance, the life of a saint, the destruction of a ‘noble savage’―from the European and then the Native American perspective, Richter elucidates an alternative history of America from Columbus to just after the Revolution… Gracefully written and argued, Richter’s compelling research and provocative claims make this an important addition to the literature for general readers of both Native American and U.S. studies.”―Publishers Weekly

“Richter offers a brilliant retelling of the old stories of European colonies and empires through Native eyes. Facing East from Indian Country may be as close as any scholar has come to synthesizing an ‘Indian perspective’ on early American history. This is a book not to be missed.”―Philip J. Deloria, author of Playing Indian

“From its title to its very last page, Facing East from Indian Country spins us around. But rather than dizzying, this turnabout is clarifying, freeing us from the blinders of a European perspective on the early American experience. Vast in scope yet intimate in its attention to particular people, places, and moments, Richter’s book is a moving, thought-provoking work of scholarship.”―James H. Merrell, author of Into the American Woods: Negotiators on the Pennsylvania Frontier

“With keen insight, deep reading, and a sparkling wit, Richter makes new and compelling sense of American history, radically shifting our perspective on the past. Balancing vivid imagination and a respect for the unknown, Richter crafts a powerful and engaging story that is essential to understanding our place in time on this continent.”―Alan Taylor, author of William Cooper’s Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic

About the Author

Daniel K. Richter is Roy F. and Jeannette P. Nichols Professor of American History and the Richard S. Dunn Director of the McNeil Center for Early American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harvard University Press; 33222nd edition (April 30, 2003)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 336 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0674011171
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0674011175
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 13.5 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.12 x 1 x 9.25 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 176 ratings

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Daniel K. Richter

Daniel K. Richter

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Dan Richter teaches early American History at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, where he also directs the McNeil Center for Early American Studies. His first book, The Ordeal of the Longhouse, won the 1993 Frederick Jackson Turner Award, Organization of American Historians and the 1993 Ray Allen Billington Prize, Organization of American Historians, and was selected a 1994 Choice Outstanding Academic Book. His Facing East from Indian Country won the 2001-02 Louis Gottschalk Prize in Eighteenth-Century History and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
176 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Frank Bellizzi
5.0 out of 5 stars Seeing History through the Eyes of Others
Reviewed in the United States on April 10, 2014
Verified Purchase
In this book, Daniel Richter explores some of the history of Native Americans who lived east of the Mississippi, from the time of their "discovery of Europe" not long after 1492 to the early 1800s. Throughout, he attempts to reconstruct something of what this period was like, not for Europeans and their descendants (who were facing west, as it were), but for Indians (who were facing east). In order to get at his subject, Richter routinely attempts to read between the lines of texts produced by Euro-Americans. In addition, he exploits the findings of archaeology and listens to folklore, which sometimes lends support to unconfirmed readings of the other sorts of evidence.

In Chapter 1, Richter unfolds some of the initial stories related to the expeditions of Hernando de Soto and visits of Jacques Cartier. Chapter 2 details the economic, ecological, and biological ramifications of the Indians' contact with Europeans. In Chapter 3, Richter, while facing east, takes up the biographies of Pocahontas, Kateri Tekakwitha, and "King Philip." Chapter 4 explores a methodological question that is basic to his approach: How should historians read and interpret documents in order to get at the thoughts, interests, and motivations of Indians? In Chapter 5, while following a chronological progression, Richter now enters the eighteenth century, imagining the view from the east of an Atlantic Imperial World. Coming into the era of the American Revolution and its aftermath, Chapter 6 focuses on the year 1763, the time of Pontiac's Rebellion and Paxton Boys affair. That date and those events, says Richter, marked the end of a long era when Native- and Euro-American power was much more balanced. The Epilogue takes its title from a historical lecture delivered by "William Apess, a Pequot": Eulogy on King Philip. Here, Richter cites this nineteenth century lecture, which compares favorably King Philip to George Washington, and the Indians' cause to the American Revolution, as an early example of facing east.

There are at least two reasons why some readers may not like this book. First, although the research behind it is impeccable, its method is exploratory, experimental. Nowhere does Richter pretend to give the final word about anything he's discussing. This isn't straight performance of a long, classic piece. It's more like several short pieces of jazz. Second, what seems clear to me is that the chapters of this book were written at different times, with breaks in between. Consequently, the chapters, though closely related, read like a series of stand-alone explorations.

I gave this book five stars because, as I see it, this is the work of a disciplined historian who does not shy away from the creative, imaginative character of his craft. Facing East from Indian Country is the product of hard work and a bit of courage. I can't help admiring that.
16 people found this helpful
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Roger Berlind
5.0 out of 5 stars A new perspective on early history of Eastern North America
Reviewed in the United States on January 5, 2009
Verified Purchase
Daniel Richter offers a very different perspective on the early history of Eastern North America by attempting to reconstruct how the arrival of Europeans in North America and their subsequent colonization might have been viewed by Indians "facing east". This is in contrast to the usual accounts from the European point of view that faces and moves west.

I found "Facing East from Indian Country" a valuable supplement to other books that I have read about early American history. I found Richter's paradigm very insightful. For instance, the notion that Europe was the "New World" to the Indians while North America was their "Old World" really does lead one to think differently about the historical events of the period. I also think Richter does a great service by discussing the impact of the Europeans on the Indians which is usually ignored in standard books on American history. It's actually a very interesting, although also very sad, story that involves much more than epidemics and warfare; but other books ignore it to a large degree since they provide histories of the "United States" viewed as a nation rather than histories of "North America" viewed as a region. These books ignore the story of the Indians because they are essentially viewed as being outsiders within the "United States" (and the previously existing British colonies).

While Richter is critical of European and later U.S. actions against the Indians, he has not written a politically correct book that casts the Indians as innocent victims of evil Europeans. Indeed, he describes how Indians often warred against each other and even enslaved their war captives for sale to South Carolina and West Indies plantations. He also points out that the British tried to prevent white settlers from encroaching on Indian lands west of the Appalachians with the Royal Proclamation of 1763. Unfortunately, U.S. policy after the American Revolution reversed that policy.
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Top reviews from other countries

ROBERT NEIL SMITH
5.0 out of 5 stars A very thought-provoking book that will undoubtedly adjust your perceptions ...
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 12, 2015
Verified Purchase
A very thought-provoking book that will undoubtedly adjust your perceptions of the indigenous American world during the first contact phase of colonial history.
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