A complete, one-volume history of the American Indians, presented from the Native American point of view, draws on historical documents, archeological artifacts, and oral legends to profile early societies, clarify misconceptions, and describe recent revivals. - (Baker & Taylor)

Chronicles the American Indian over 20,000 years, offering specific events and occurrances and introducing new information based on recent archaeological findings. - (Baker & Taylor)

The story of the American Indians has, until now, been told as a 500-year tragedy, a story of violent and fatal encounters with Europeans and their diseases, followed by steady retreat, defeat, and diminishment. Yet the true story begins much earlier, and its final recent chapter adds a major twist. Jake Page, one of the Southwest's most distinguished writers and a longtime student of Indian history and culture, tells a radically new story, thanks to an explosion of recent archaeological findings, the latest scholarship, and an exploration of Indian legends. Covering no less than 20,000 years, In the Hands of the Great Spirit will forever change how we think about the oldest and earliest Americans. Page writes gracefully and sympathetically, without sentimentality. He explores every controversy, from the question of cannibalism among tribes, to the various theories of when and how humans first arrived on the continent, to what life was actually like for Indians before the Europeans came. Page dispels the popular image of a peaceful and idyllic Eden, and shows that Indian societies were fluid, constantly transformed by intertribal fighting, population growth, and shifting climates. Page uses Indian legends and stories as tools to uncover tribal origins, cultural values, and the meaning of certain rituals and sacred lands. He tells the story of contact with Europeans, and the multipower conflicts of the Seven Years War, the Revolutionary War, and the War of 1812, from the Indians' point of view. He explains the complex and shifting role of the U.S. government as expressed through executive decisions and through the role of the courts. Finally, he tells the fascinating story of the late-twentieth-century upsurge in Indian population and resources, which began as a social movement and exploded once casinos came into fashion. Author and editor of over a dozen books on American Indian life and culture, Page is a masterful teller of this incredible story. In the Hands of the Great Spirit will forever change the familiar story of recent centuries, replacing it with a far more sweeping and meaningful story of tribes and peoples who have suffered enormously yet endure and enrich the American experience. - (Simon and Schuster)

Jake Page is a former editor of both Natural History and Smithsonian magazines and author of numerous magazine articles and books on topics related to American Indian history, culture, and art. With his wife, Susanne, he produced the classic Hopi, Navajo, and Field Guide to Southwestern Indian Arts and Crafts and edited Sacred Lands of Indian America. Page lives in New Mexico's Indian Country. - (Simon and Schuster)

Booklist Reviews

Sweeping across the lands that became the U.S., Page's historical survey of the Indian/European interface over the centuries strives to envelop every significant event and personality within a one-volume format. Page is, therefore, constrained from overly effusive recounting, favoring a methodical chronicle of the inexorable displacement of the native tribes from their lands, noting the epidemics, violence, and chicanery by which that was accomplished. A certain economy must ensue from this approach, characterizing this presentation as an introduction for readers new to the historical contours of Indian-settler relations. Page does well to inform his audience of controversies in the archaeology and historiography of the subject while incorporating his personal view of disputed matters, imbuing his narrative with a certain amount of editorializing. Such readers further benefit from two themes that warrant Page's more detailed treatment: the spiritual life of the Indians, and episodes of pan-Indian resistance, from Pontiac to Tecumseh to the 1970s American Indian movement. As a gateway to more specialized biographies and histories, Page's work will see heavy library use. ((Reviewed April 15, 2003)) Copyright 2003 Booklist Reviews

Choice Reviews

This sweeping overview of the history of North American Indians from prehistory to the present by author, novelist, and historian Page is based almost exclusively on secondary sources published over the last two decades. The book reflects the current state of historical scholarship and echoes the basic theme of recent years: Native American perseverance and survival. However, in trying to capture all of American Indian history in a single volume, the author may have bitten off more than he can chew. Inevitably, the story gravitates toward the Iroquois, the Sioux and Cheyenne, and the southwestern tribes with which Page is most familiar. Smaller tribes only receive cursory attention, unless they involve high-profile cases such as the Pueblo Rebellion of 1680 or the flight of the Nez Perce under Chief Joseph. Despite these shortcomings, which are unavoidable in a work of such scope, the volume should receive high marks for its readability and style. Audiences will also appreciate the fact that the author does not shy away from taking positions on controversial issues such as Indian gaming, NAGPRA, and the recent commotion over the "Kennewick Man." ^BSumming Up: Recommended. General and undergraduate collections. Copyright 2003 American Library Association

Kirkus Reviews

Single-volume compendium covering the histories of some 500 Native American groups from misty prehistory to the present, by nature writer and Indian historian Page (Songs to Birds, 1993, etc.).Native Americans do not easily lend themselves to such sweeping treatment, any more than a few odd millennia of European history can be crammed into a single volume, and the timing of its publication is quixotic, given that chronology of the Native American past is very much under revision. (Good evidence now suggests that humans were in the Americas long before the Bering land bridge existed.) All that said, it should be noted that Page does a credible job. He sidesteps a few of the thornier controversies with the pungent reminder that "it is always useful to remember that science is not designed to produce absolute knowledge, eternally true once found; for the most part it simply pushes back the frontier of that vast realm called ignorance." But he's not afraid of controversy either, arguing, for example, that "the first two administrations of Franklin D. Roosevelt saved the culture of American Indians from sliding into oblivion," although "American Indians tend not to like hearing that argument." Page rounds up the usual suspects--Geronimo, Crazy Horse, Powhatan--but also examines historical figures too often overlooked, among them Popé, the 17th-century Pueblo Indian leader who exercised "a fierce determination to rid his homelands of the embodiment of evil, the Spanish yoke," and Joseph Medicine Crow, a Crow leader who discovered that by killing Germans in WWI he could attain the power gained in earlier times. Also the author of several crime novels set in the Southwest (The Lethal Partner, 1996, etc.), Page executes his daunting task with a storyteller's flair and a historian's regard for demonstrable facts, but this is unlikely to displace such standards as Alvin Josephy's 500 Nations or to satisfy specialists.Not quite special enough to stand out in a very crowded field. Copyright Kirkus 2003 Kirkus/BPI Communications.All rights reserved

Library Journal Reviews

Page, a former editor of Natural History and Smithsonian magazines, has produced a superb monograph that broadly surveys the history of American native peoples in a manner that reconciles the often conflicting views of Native Americans and scientists. This is accomplished by using scholarly research from a number of disciplines, such as archaeology and linguistics, to support historical accounts found in Native American oral traditions. Page presents the data in a lively narrative that is easily accessible by lay readers. If this wasn't value enough for the price, the book's broad scope proves invaluable in contextualizing chronologically and culturally more narrowly focused monographs such as J.M. Adovasio's The First Americans: In Pursuit of Archaeology's Greatest Mystery (written in collaboration with Page). Both that work and Page's latest are highly recommended for public and academic libraries.-John Burch, Campbellsville Univ. Lib., KY Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly Reviews

This superlative popular history of American Indian peoples distills two generations of scholarship into a rare combination of readability and reliability. For former Smithsonian and Natural History editor Page, who is also a prolific mystery novelist and editor, it is a magnum opus. The early chapters establish, with compelling detail that draws on Indian oral history, that the origins of North America's first inhabitants were varied (including relatives of the Japanese Ainu), and that they were numerous, mostly agricultural, organized as civil societies, and living in mystical harmony neither with nature nor with one another. The book's second half details how European diseases, notably smallpox, arrived before most of the guns or large-scale colonies, with appalling consequences for the cohesion and survival of many tribes. What followed was fighting among tribes (such as the fate of the Pawnee at the hands of mounted rivals like the Sioux), deliberate genocide and sometimes well-intentioned but almost always badly executed government policies that left entire peoples in ruin. There are reprieves from tales of destruction: the Pueblo staged a successful revolt against the Spanish in 1680, while the Iroquois and Cherokee created synthetic cultures that tried to adapt to changing circumstances. The book ends with the discovery of Kennewick Man (Ainu kin), the Red Power movement and the profitable and controversial casino ownership by tribes like the Pequot. A smooth, engaged narrative a useful bibliographic essay, make this a book that fills an enormous gap in the popular historical literature, written with a great feel for the many contexts it addresses. (Apr.) Copyright 2003 Cahners Business Information.