One Vast Winter Count

Starred review from September 1, 2003
Author of First Peoples and a distinguished Dartmouth historian, Calloway concentrates on the Indian experience from the Appalachians to the Pacific, in a time frame from prehistory to the 18th century. The scope is staggering, but Calloway masters it, demonstrating a remarkable command of a broad spectrum of historical, ethnographic and archeological sources including printed material and oral traditions. Conventional American history moves from east to west. Calloway's narrative tends instead to follow a south-north pattern, with cultural innovations like corn and horses diffusing from Mesoamerica along the river-centered trade routes. Conventional histories of Indian-European relations place them at the center of the Native American experience in what became the United States. Calloway demonstrates that until the mid-18th century, the European impact was secondary and indirect on most of the cultures involved. Conventional myths assert the relative peacefulness of Native American interaction. Calloway shows that conflict was also a norm. Conventional wisdom presents Indian cultures as static, living in a timeless harmony with their environment. Calloway establishes that they were in fact constantly changing, adapting to climatic changes, animal migrations, ecological and technological innovations and, not least, the movements, peaceful and hostile, of other cultures. Indian response to European penetration was correspondingly flexible, ranging from partial accommodation to resistance, then rebellion, as European governments sought to move from asserting influence to exercising control. And Native Americans sustained that agency until the "Killing Years," the period from 1770 to the century's turn, when the impact of the American Revolution extended from the Appalachian Mountains to the Pacific Coast, and a smallpox pandemic unpredictably turned the Native American West into a graveyard. It was that last episode, mocking theories of historical determinism, that set the stage for the Lewis and Clark expedition to encounter shocked survivors and suddenly empty lands that seemed to invite European occupation. One Vast Winter Count is both a major work in its own right and a magnificent first volume in Nebraska's new History of the American West series. History Book Club, Military Book Club and Reader's Subscription Book Club selections.

August 1, 2003
Calloway (history, Dartmouth) draws on tribal histories, anthropology, and archaeology, as well as traditional historical sources, to present this useful and insightful overview of vibrant nations actively charting their futures in the time of great change and tremendous challenge before Lewis and Clark's Corps of Discovery set forth in 1803. In addition to corn agriculture and its impact upon prehistoric populations, the author discusses the later historic shift from bow and arrow to firearms, the incorporation of horses into Plains Indian life, and the increased acquisition of European trade goods and culture. Colonial European powers and their interaction with Native populations, including the Spanish colonies in the Pueblos and California and the French and British rivalry, are explored in depth, though throughout the Native nations remain the primary focus. Calloway's balanced treatment of a topic so easily given to polemics is welcome indeed. Highly recommended for academic and public libraries.-Nathan E. Bender, Buffalo Bill Historical Ctr., Cody, WY

Copyright 2003 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 2003
Many bands of Native Americans recorded their histories on the hides of buffalo or other game animals; they were called "winter counts." That is the source of the title of this enthralling and brilliant survey of the history and culture of various Native American groups from trans-Appalachia to the Pacific. Calloway is chair of the Native American Studies program at Dartmouth College; he was selected to write the opening volume in a projected six-volume history of the American West. This is revisionist history; like other "new western" historians, Calloway focuses on place rather than process. That is, he views the West as a series of regions in which various peoples entered, stayed, left, but always changed the land and were changed by it. He masterfully integrates the disciplines of archaeology, anthropology, environmental science, and history to provide a wonderful panorama illustrating both the diversity and the vibrancy of these rich cultures. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2003, American Library Association.)