Beginning with the immigrants from Asia, through inventions of agriculture, cities and kingdoms, American First Nations are integral to the history of the United States. They explored the continent, pioneered its waterways and mountain passes, cleared forests, irrigated deserts, and ranched its great plains. Invading Europeans justifies their conquests by denying the evidence of American Indian civilisations. Using her familiarity with the archaeological remains and remnants, Alice Kehoe builds a fascinating prehistory, highlighting the research puzzles along the way. This book presents an enthralling look at the depth and diversity of American history - before the Europeans and the deadly epidemics they brought with them decimated whole nations.

North America Before the European Invasions tells the histories of North American peoples from first migrations in the Late Glacial Age, sixteen thousand years ago or more, to the European invasions following Columbus’s arrival. Contrary to invaders’ propaganda, North America was no wilderness, and its peoples had developed a variety of sophisticated resource uses, including intensive agriculture and cities in Mexico and the Midwest. Written in an easy-flowing style, the book is a true history although based primarily on archeological material. It reflects current emphasis within archaeology on rejecting the notion of “pre”-history, instead combining archaeology with post-Columbian ethnographies and histories to present the long histories of North America’s native peoples, most of them still here and still part of the continent’s history.

This comprehensive resource follows the pivotal and often overlooked efforts of the Iroquois Confederacy, the Dutch, the French, and the English colonies to control the strategic waterways of the Hudson-Champlain corridor from their discovery to the fall of New France. From Champlain and Hudson's initial voyages some 400 years ago, to the surrender of Montreal in 1760, The European Invasion of North America: Colonial Conflict Along the Hudson - Champlain Corridor, 1609–1760 offers unprecedented coverage of the 150-year struggle between New World rivals along this natural invasion route—a struggle which would ultimately determine the destiny of North America. Unlike other volumes on this period, The European Invasion of North America includes extensive coverage from the French and Dutch as well as British perspectives, examining events in the context of larger colonial confrontations. Drawing on hundreds of firsthand accounts, it recaps political maneuvers and blunders, military successes and failures, and the remarkable people behind them all: cabinet ministers in Paris, Amsterdam, and London; colonial leaders such as Stuyvesant, Frontenac, and Montcalm; shrewd diplomats of the Iroquois Confederacy; and soldiers and families on all sides of the conflict. It also highlights the growing friction between Britain and her American colonies, which would soon lead to a different war.

The Inka empire, Tawantinsuyu, fell to Spanish invaders within a year's time (1532-1533), but Quechua, the language of the Inka, is still the primary or only language of millions of Inka descendants throughout the southern Andes. In this innovative study, Bruce Mannheim synthesizes all that is currently known about the history of Southern Peruvian Quechua since the Spanish invasion, providing new insights into the nature of language change in general, into the social and historical contexts of language change, and into the cultural conditioning of linguistic change. Mannheim first discusses changes in the social setting of language use in the Andes from the time of the first European contact in the sixteenth century until today. He reveals that the modern linguistic homogeneity of Spanish and Quechua is a product of the Spanish conquest, since multilingualism was the rule in the Inka empire. He identifies the social and political forces that have influenced the kinds of changes the language has undergone. And he provides the first synthetic history of Southern Peruvian Quechua, making it possible at last to place any literary document or written text in a chronological and social context. Mannheim also studies changes in the formal structure of Quechua. He finds that changes in the sound system were motivated primarily by phonological factors and also that the changes were constrained by a set of morphological and syntactic conditions. This last conclusion is surprising, since most historical linguists assume that sound change is completely independent of other aspects of language. Thus, The Language of the Inka since the European Invasion makes an empirical contribution to a general theory of linguistic change. Written in an engaging style that is accessible to the nonlinguist, this book will have a special appeal to readers interested in the history and anthropology of native South America.

Destined to become a classic epidemiological study, EXPECTA- TIONS OF LIFE surveys world mortality, describing and ex- plaining the declines of mortality which have become especi- ally evident in this century.

The family magazine of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

Discover how the migration of peoples has shaped the modern world. This beautifully illustrated book details the movement of people and cultures around the world – from the early migrations of Homo erectus out of Africa 50,000 years ago to modern refugee movements and migrations. Through vibrant photographs, illustrations, and maps, Migrations explores famous (and infamous) movements in history, from the Middle Passage and Trail of Tears to the California Gold Rush, the Italian diaspora, and the Windrush generation. While many traditional world histories focus on (mainly European) “exploration” and “discovery,” Migrations explores the story of each continent and focuses on cultures rather than conquest. Migrations highlights the human story and the positives: what has survived, not just what was destroyed. Migrations is a history book with a fresh perspective, focusing on a topic ever more relevant in the modern world: Where did we come from? And what brought us here?

A groundbreaking history of the rise and decline of the vast and imposing Native American empire. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, a Native American empire rose to dominate the fiercely contested lands of the American Southwest, the southern Great Plains, and northern Mexico. This powerful empire, built by the Comanche Indians, eclipsed its various European rivals in military prowess, political prestige, economic power, commercial reach, and cultural influence. Yet, until now, the Comanche empire has gone unrecognized in American history. This compelling and original book uncovers the lost story of the Comanches. It is a story that challenges the idea of indigenous peoples as victims of European expansion and offers a new model for the history of colonial expansion, colonial frontiers, and Native-European relations in North America and elsewhere. Pekka Hämäläinen shows in vivid detail how the Comanches built their unique empire and resisted European colonization, and why they fell to defeat in 1875. With extensive knowledge and deep insight, the author brings into clear relief the Comanches’ remarkable impact on the trajectory of history. 2009 Winner of the Bancroft Prize in American History “Cutting-edge revisionist western history…. Immensely informative, particularly about activities in the eighteenth century.”—Larry McMurtry, The New York Review of Books “Exhilarating…a pleasure to read…. It is a nuanced account of the complex social, cultural, and biological interactions that the acquisition of the horse unleashed in North America, and a brilliant analysis of a Comanche social formation that dominated the Southern Plains.”—Richard White, author of The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815