The Indians’ Old World: Native Americans and the Coming of Europeans

Abstract

CHOLARS in history, anthropology, archaeology, and other disciplines have turned increasingly over the past two decades to the study of native peoples during the colonial period of North American history. The new work in Indian history has altered the way we think about the beginning of American history and about the era of European colonization. Historians now recognize that Europeans arrived, not in a virgin land, but in one that was teeming with several million people. Beyond filling in some of the vast blanks left by previous generations' overlooking of Indians, much of this scholarship makes clear that Indians are integral to the history of colonial North America.1 In short, surveys of recent textbooks and of scholarly titles suggest that Native Americans are well on their way to being mainstreamed by colonial historians. Substantive as this reorientation is, it remains limited.2 Beyond the problems inherent in representing Indian/non-Indian interactions during the colonial era lies the challenge of contextualizing the era itself. Despite open