Drawing not only on historical sources but also on ethnography, archaeology, Indigenous oral tradition, and his own extensive research in Native American communities, James Wilson sets out to make the Indigenous Peoples' perspective on the past and the present accessible to a broad audience. He charts the collision course between indigenous cultures and European invaders, from the first English settlements on the Atlantic coast to the Wounded Knee massacre of 1890, explaining how Europeans justified a process that reduced the Native American population from an estimated seven to ten million to less than 250,000 in just four centuries. Wilson shows how old ideas about native people have continued to underpin government policy and popular perception in the twentieth century, leaving a painful legacy of ignorance and misunderstanding.

Origins -- This is how it was : Two views of history -- Contact : in the balance -- Invasion -- Northeast : One : 'You will have the worst by our absence' -- Northeast : Two : 'A new found Golgotha' -- New York and the 'Ohio Country' : 'We shall not be like father and son, but like brothers' -- Southeast : 'Get a little further : you are too near me' -- Southwest : Return of the white brother -- The far west : the burning world -- The Great Plains : the heart of everything that is -- Internal frontiers -- Kill the Indian to save the man : assimilation -- New Deal and termination : "let none but the Indian answer" -- The new Indians.