Description: In this ambitious book that ranges across the Great Basin, Blackhawk places Native peoples at the center of a dynamic story as he chronicles two centuries of Indian and imperial history that shaped the American West. This book is a passionate reminder of the high costs that the making of American history occasioned for many indigenous peoples.
Brief description: Ned Blackhawk (Western Shoshone) is Professor of History and American Studies at Yale University. The Native American and Indigenous Studies Association awarded Violence over the Land its Book of the Decade Award as "one of the ten most influential books in Native American and Indigenous Studies in the first decade of the twenty-first century."
Review Quotes: Eloquently written, wide-ranging, and deeply researched, Violence over the Land highlights the pervasive pain that shaped and reshaped the area known as the Great Basin. Ned Blackhawk demonstrates that the peoples long derided as the most impoverished of 'primitive bands' were made that way by colonial history, not by culture or ecology. This is a major contribution to our understanding of the American experience.--Daniel K. Richter, author of Facing East from Indian Country