Stolen Continents: The New World Through Indian Eyes - Softcover

Wright, Ronald

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0395659752 ISBN 13: 9780395659755

Publisher: Mariner Books, 1993

Synopsis

Presents Native American accounts of the plunder and persecution wrought by white settlers and explorers on the one hundred million people already living in the Americas in 1492

About this title

About the Author:

Ronald Wright is the internationally acclaimed, bestselling author of several non-fiction books, including A Short History of Progress, Stolen Continents (which won the Gordon Montador Award), and Cut Stones and Crossroads. He is also the author of the novels Henderson's Spear and A Scientific Romance, the latter of which won Britain's David Higham Prize for Fiction. He was born in England, educated at Cambridge, and now lives in British Columbia.

From Kirkus Reviews:

Clear and concise history detailing the experiences of Native Americans on both continents from 1492 to 1990, from travel-writer and Mayan specialist Wright (Time Among The Maya, 1989; On Fiji Islands, 1986, etc.). Rather than attempt a comprehensive rendering of the centuries of genocide practiced by those who came in the wake of Columbus, Wright sensibly opts to present a few of the ``highlights.'' The savagery practiced against five major cultures--the Maya, Inca, Aztec, Cherokee, and Iroquois--and their responses appear in three stages, encompassing five hundred years: the initial periods of contact in each case; the hard and bloody struggles of these peoples once the battle was joined; and the modern phase, in which resistance continues along with the resolve to endure. Using contemporary native accounts wherever possible, in the belief that the white version has been heard often enough, Wright recounts Montezuma's failed strategy to welcome Cort‚s as an equal, which led to his palace becoming his prison; the Cherokee Nation's willingness two centuries later to emulate Western civilization, which only brought forced removal to Oklahoma and death along the Trail of Tears; and other base betrayals. Even with their societies largely destroyed, however, retention of an indigenous identity for the Incan descendants in Peru and their Mayan counterparts in Guatemala, and events such as last year's tense standoff between defiant Iroquois and thousands of Canadian troops can be seen, Wright says, as evidence that a determined native resistance continues. Familiar facts but a distinctive viewpoint: an intensely partisan chronicle of centuries of dishonor, written in a fluid, vivid style. (Sixteen-page b&w photo insert--not seen.) -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Mariner Books
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0395659752
• ISBN 13: 9780395659755
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 424