Books like We were not the savages by Daniel N. Paul

Roxanne Dunbar‑Ortiz presents a comprehensive account of United States history from the perspective of Indigenous peoples, exposing the long‑running colonial and genocidal policies that have silenced native voices.

Sir Walter Raleigh’s ill‑fated Roanoke colonists and their encounters with Native Americans unfold in Giles Milton’s well‑researched narrative that spans English exploration, the mysterious disappearance of early settlers, and Elizabeth I’s legendary title, "Big Chief."

This book seeks to step outside the simple stories of Indian/white relations--stories of conquest and assimilation and stories of cultural persistence. It is, instead, about a search for accommodation and common meaning. It tells how Europeans and Indians met, regarding each other as alien, as virtually nonhuman, and how between 1650 and 1815 they constructed a common, mutually comprehensible world in the region around the Great Lakes that the French called the "Pays d'en haut". Here the older worlds of the Algonquins and various Europeans overlapped, and their mixture created new systems of meaning and of exchange. Finally, the book tells of the breakdown of accommodation and common meanings and the recreation of the Indians as alien and exotic. The process of accommodation described in this book takes place in a middle ground, a place in between cultures and peoples, and in between empires and non-state villages. On the middle ground people try to persuade others who are different than themselves by appealing to what they perceive to be the values and practices of those others. From the creative misunderstandings that result, there arise shared meanings and new practices.

The book analyzes how Old World diseases, climate, and Canadian political policies contributed to the deaths and subjugation of thousands of Aboriginal peoples during the era of Sir John A. Macdonald’s expansion.

New England Frontier examines the first two decades of Puritan settlers’ generally peaceful and equitable relations with Native Americans, their intent to assimilate tribes, and the abrupt shift after the 1675 war.

ix, 430 pages : 23 cm