Thank you Mr. Weatherford and my friend Rema for a proper education of world history as it relates to indigenous peoples and North America.I wish more Native culture influenced Canada.

This title should read, Without the Indians of the Americas, we would still be in the Dark Ages.

Fascinating book. I learned a lot. Most interested in the way Indians influenced settlers with agriculture such as clearing areas to plant. The author did a great job of interweaving Contributions of the peoples of the Americas with the impact worldwide.

I did reach a point where I wondered if there was any bias since the author is the descendant of an American Indian. I researched the story (a short paragraph of two sentences - almost a throw away section) of Ishi, the last of the Yahi tribe. Weatherford states Ishi, "...went on display at the museum of the University of California .... ...and lived out his last five years at the museum."

It is true that he lived at the museum, but he worked with anthropologists as a research assistant. The author makes it sound like he was in a display case for people to stare at - a circus sideshow! The inflammatory way Ishi was presented makes me wonder about some of the other facts the author presented.

Still, a very interesting read. Just remember that there might be an agenda not easily seen.

I found this an immensely important study to read; as creative non-fiction, I found it well written and engaging. In each chapter, Weatherford presents detailed ways in which Native Americans have contributed to the well-being of our planet only to have been shunned and persecuted by--well, read any history on this topic.

Weatherford wrote about how the American (North and South) natives had already established trails for our "discovers" to travel, how they had used plants to develop what we now call pharmaceutical cures, how they had provided blueprints for revolutions long before the American, French or Marxist models, how they had influenced they U. S. Constitution and Federal structure, how they influenced diet, food cultivation, and preparation, and how they have influenced even the Industrial Revolution.

I know that Weatherford writes these chapters as an anthropologist, but his effectiveness, I thought, was in his genuine treatment, his respect for how important the Native Americans have been in what we know as our Modern Age.

More, to dismiss this as racist because the title bears the term, Indian, is puerile, simplistic, even reckless. Weatherford identifies how the term came into usage and as such, for better or worse, it has been cemented into usage. Instead, read this study to (re-)learn about how the history books have glossed over and white-washed (pun intended) the value of American Native cultures.

I highly recommend reading it. I will refer to it constantly.

"All things Jack Weatherford"
This fellow does not write bad books. In fact, it seems, he only writes great books. Anytime you want a truly worthwhile revisionist history and you want a great narration thrown in, just pickup a Jack Weatherford book on Audible... yes, sounds like a commercial. But it's all true. Who knew those "savages" contributed so much.

I picked this book up years ago and never got around to reading it until now. I'm glad I finally did. Fascinating look at what the natives of the Americas were able to offer the world that Europeans 'discovered', exploited, and went on to mostly screw up. I have a better understanding of just how much change happened in the rest of the world and how much we really do owe to the American natives as well as how much is really left out of our history books.

It is amazing how much of what think of as "Western Culture" is actually the result of the new and old worlds meeting. It was a little bit of a dry read in places, but his sense of humour and irony make the sheer quantity of information quite palatable.

The title of the book has two inaccuracies amounting to lies, to begin with.

First and foremost, they are NOT Indian. The European migrants knew this, Columbus knew this, and for sake of keeping a falsehood so Columbus would not risk his reputation or lose his head the sailors working with him who all knew this were sworn to say the opposite. Everyone knew Columbus had not reached India, and everyone nevertheless insists on calling the natives of western continent "Indian", perpetrating a lie, not merely an inaccuracy.

This is doubly racist, since it deprives the said natives of their own identity to begin with, and also no one has asked India if there is any connection whatsoever between the people that lived in a land across the world and India (yes, of ancient trade and exchange of skills, but not populations or identity). The falsehood dumps all non European non African non Oriental non Islamic people into one basket, a huge racism of an assumed hierarchy and separating the high and the low and the others nowhere. It is stupid, racist, ignorant, false, and high time it stopped. High time the natives of the western continent were able to assume their own identity. Unless they wished to claim Indian ancestry and to return to India, that is. Unlikely, since if anything they are connected to Siberia and Mongolia and Pacific islands, which makes far more sense.

Which brings one to another racist imposition of a name, that of the continent. Vespucci Amerigo was one of the sailors who supposedly discovered the continent, and to impose his name on the continent, not even asking a native what they called their land, is supreme racism. America is a racist term by definition.

And then, to belatedly allow that the natives "contributed" to US and "transformed the world" - hellow, they did not massacre all newly arriving migrants, in fact they helped the migrants settle like all good neighbours do, and so they in fact are the founding stone of the edifice in every way! That is only in the north, while in the southern and central parts the migrants were plundering marauders who destroyed everything precious in name of faith. "They had astronomy, architecture, arts, crafts; European migrants had guns and gunpowder" is perhaps a rephrasing of the famous assessing of the encounter, but pretty good to give the idea.

Of course they were givers! They had a superior system in terms of environment as well, which is only recognised now that the fear of global warming and fear about a lack of future for humanity has made some - not all - people do a double take! In addition to what others failed to recognise, they also had potato and tomato and chillies and chocolate, and where in the world can people do without every one of these indeed! Germans post wwi survived on potato as do poor in many a societies even now.

For that matter, the huge (and mostly unnecessary - who ever died or fell sick for lack of face paint?) cosmetic industry of west derived its origin and ideology from an oriental culture of China and Japan where faces of Geishas and upper class women were painted masks, which got copied to Europe for fashion, while the system of administrative examinations and system generally was copied by British and integrated into their own structure of governance.

A good amount of vocabulary in English is borrowed from Arabic, Persian and India, while Latin and Greek are younger siblings if not daughters of Sanskrt (and therefore the ease of India in European languages beginning with English), realised and perforce admitted by Europe long before the present era of denial.

And of course Africa, with her stolen raw materials (like other colonised lands) and
kidnapped men and women (unlike other lands) that made US prosper before the civil war dismantled the slavery and dislocated the now free ex-slaves once again, with equality still a faraway goal and animosity of ex-slavers growing to high pitch. Solution? Liberia? Workers work for food and return, much like Germans would like Turks and others to do, is the pleasure of pale colour races?

Gratitude at the very least is way past due. Acknowledgement likewise. Yes, the world gave and Europe received and forgot to say thank you. These belated acknowledgements are better than never, and what next? An equal status? For the givers who received only victimisation in return?

I really enjoyed some chapters like the food & democracy chapters, but overall, it was more biased than I was expecting. It’s not a neutral, textbook style & it’s from 1988.
It was solid & started off strong for me, but yeah…conclusions seemed jumped to too fast sometimes.

I think Jack Weatherford does an amazing job describing bits and pieces of the history and cultures of Native Americans (of both North and South America). This book goes one step further than just exploring Native culture, by interweaving the simultaneous history of Europeans, and looking at how they were influenced by the people of the New World as well.
I loved this book, solid 5-stars!

This chapter book provides the reader with knowledge about what the Indian's achieved and how that benefits us today.

On voit que ce livre date (coucou le quinoa peu connu en Occident) mais il reste fascinant (et enrageant). Un reproche : dans l'avertissement au lecteur, on nous prévient que le terme américain se réfère dans ce livre au continent et non aux États-Unis, pourtant plusieurs fois il est utilisé pour parler des États-Unis. Ce manque de cohérence est très frustrant.
Autre reproche : on aurait très bien pu se passer de la grossophie pour décrire des touristes hein