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NATIVE NATIONS: A Millennium in North America
Random House Hardcover: April 9, 2025
Random House Trade Paperback: on sale May 27, 2025
Rights sold: UK/BC: Profile Books; Korean: Cum Libro
*WINNER of the 2025 Bancroft Prize!*
*WINNER of the 2024 Cundill History Prize!*
*WINNER of the 2025 Mark Lynton History Prize!*
A sweeping history of the power of Indigenous North America from ancient cities to fights for sovereignty that continue today, from an award-winning historian
In this magisterial history, Kathleen DuVal tells the story of Native nations, from the rise of ancient cities more than a thousand years ago to the present, reframing North American history with Indigenous power and sovereignty at its center. Before and during European colonization, Indigenous North Americans built diverse civilizations and lived in history, adapting to a changing world in ways that reverberated globally. As DuVal explains, no civilization came to a halt when a few wandering explorers arrived, even when the strangers came well-armed.
A millennium ago, North American cities rivaled urban centers around the world in size, but following a period of climate change and instability DuVal shows how numerous smaller nations emerged from previously centralized civilizations, moving away from rather than toward urbanization. From this urban past, patterns of egalitarian government structures, diplomacy, and complex economies spread across North America. So, when Europeans arrived in the sixteenth century, they encountered societies they did not understand, having developed differently from their own, and whose power they often underestimated. For centuries after these first encounters, Indigenous people maintained an upper hand and used Europeans in pursuit of their own interests. In Native Nations , we see how Mohawks closely controlled trade with the Dutch--and influenced global markets--and how Quapaws manipulated French colonists. Power dynamics shifted after the American Revolution, but Indigenous people continued to control the majority of the continent. Shawnee brothers Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa forged new alliances and encouraged a controversial new definition of Native identity to attempt to wall off U.S. ambitions. The Cherokees created new institutions to assert their sovereignty on the global stage, and the Kiowas used their preponderance of power in the west to regulate the passage of white settlers across their territory.
In this important addition to the growing tradition of North American history centered on Indigenous nations, Kathleen DuVal uses these stories to show how the definitions of power and means of exerting it shifted over time, but the sovereignty and influence of Native peoples remained a constant and will continue far into the future.
awards and praise for Native Nations:
An Amazon Best Book of the Month!
A Millions Most Anticipated Book!
“A magisterial overview of a thousand years of Native American history … DuVal foregrounds Native perspectives, Native purposes, and the enduring strength of Native nations.”
—New York Review of Books
“An essential American history … Examining both past and present from an indigenous rather than a European perspective, [Kathleen] DuVal fuses a millennium of Native American history into a thought-provoking, persuasive whole.”
—Wall Street Journal
“Sweeping and important …[a] nuanced and satisfying overview of America’s Native past … it is hard to imagine a more learned and humane guide to the last thousand years of this story than DuVal.”
—American Scholar
“Both majestic in scope and intimate in tone… Kathleen DuVal’s prodigious Native Nations expands our understanding as she plaits myriad strands into a gorgeous, readable narrative… No single volume can adequately depict the gamut of Indigenous cultures, but DuVal's comes close, shading in erasures and lending color and nuance to textbook jargon. Native Nations belongs on the same shelf as Blackhawk's magisterial work and Charles Mann's 1491.”
—Hamilton Cain, Minneapolis Star-Tribune
“This is, to put it simply, a magnificent book.”
—Missouri Historical Review
“In this impressive history, DuVal, author of Independence Lost and The Native Ground, offers a long-term view of how Indigenous peoples in North America flourished both before and long after the arrival of Europeans, leveraging their power and negotiating their place alongside or within settler culture amid increasing existential threats … A highlight of this work is the author’s revision of conventional understandings of the scale of pre-contact Indigenous communities. DuVal points out the sophistication and vitality of urban centers, which resembled their European counterparts in size and population density a millennium ago, before gradually dissolving in response to climatic and political shifts. Also cogent are the author’s summaries of the collective values and traditions that emerged out of this shift to smaller-scale societies. Throughout, DuVal is clear and cogent, and her foregrounding of Indigenous achievements and careful delineation of ongoing struggles for personal and collective autonomy offer a useful and illuminating corrective to past histories.
A revelatory account of the power and influence of Indigenous peoples in North America.”
—Kirkus (starred review!)
“[A] prodigiously researched and enlightening study [that] recenters the past 1,000 years of Native North American history around the political power exercised by Indigenous governments … DuVal provides a profoundly empowered history of Native America. This keen reframing will appeal to fans of David Graeber and David Wengrow’s The Dawn of Everything.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review!)
“Extraordinary … Kathleen DuVal counters the narrative of rapid and inevitable Native decline with persuasive examples drawn from all over North America that go well beyond the few episodes of Native history taught at school to demonstrate Indigenous agency, vitality, humanity, and resourcefulness … Native Nations offers no less than a new interpretation of Native history and explains why over 500 Native nations continue to exist within the boundaries of the present-day United States.”
—Lynton Prize Judges
“DuVal has produced a magisterial overview of a thousand years of Native American history "informed and inspired" by Native scholars, artists, and activists at every turn. Starting many discussion topics with descriptions of her visits to contemporary Native American museums, cultural centers, and historic sites, and sharing with the reader countless insider conversations she has enjoyed with Indigenous experts, DuVal offers herself to the reader as a kind of friendly tour guide. Throughout, she foregrounds Native power, Native purposes, and the enduring strength of Native nations, which maintained control of most of North America until late in the nineteenth century. Conducting us skillfully on this journey through a perilous history fraught with colonial violence, DuVal brings the reader finally to a hopeful and resurgent Native present.”
—Nicole Eustace, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Covered With Night
“Showing rich awareness of the deep and living significance of Indigenous histories and voices, DuVal's remarkable book is an indispensable guide to the epic history of Native North America.”
—Caroline Dodds Pennock, author of On Savage Shores
“Historians often emphasize decline or, at best, survival when writing about Indigenous history. Without minimizing the destructive effects of Euro-American colonialism, Kathleen DuVal has given us a vital new history leading to today’s more than five hundred Native nations in the United States.”
—Andrés Reséndez, author of The Other Slavery
“Native Nations is a feat of both scholarship and storytelling. Moving deftly through a thousand years of American history, DuVal introduces us to ancient Indigenous cities, eighteenth-century square grounds, and modern tribal capitals, showing how, against all odds, Native peoples defended their sovereignty and sustained their cultural traditions.”
—Claudio Saunt, author of Unworthy Republic
“Native Nations is a sweeping history of Indigenous peoples in North America. While much of the history written about Native American people has focused on white experiences with Indigenous people, the movement of a frontier, or the birth of America, Kathleen DuVal focuses on the growth and change of Indigenous polities and cultures. It shows us the agency of Indigenous peoples and how they shaped not just the histories of their nations, but the history of us all.”
—Anton Treuer, author of The Cultural Toolbox
“Like the blazing comet of 1006—with which this history begins—Native Nations is a marvel. DuVal has written a magisterial yet accessible account of no less than a thousand years of Native American creativity, resilience, and survival in the face of sometimes catastrophic transformation and violence. DuVal recounts this remarkable and fascinating story of power and endurance with sympathy, eloquence, and attention to all kinds of different people. A stunning achievement.”
—Sarah Pearsall, author of Polygamy: An Early American History
“Native Nations is a powerful story of Indigenous peoples’ continued survival, resistance, and strength. Kathleen DuVal skillfully guides her audience through important moments in the histories of Native North America. Even the most expert reader is likely to learn something new from DuVal’s deep research and carefully crafted narrative.”
—Warren Milteer, Jr., author of Beyond Slavery’s Shadow
"An exemplary model of how Native American history should be written. Kathleen DuVal’s contribution to Native North American history demonstrates her deep love of history and unquestionable commitment to working with citizens of modern Native nations. She asks readers to reconsider the old narratives that frequently obscured the tenacity of Native nation-building and re-building to show the extraordinary persistence and survival of Native nations."
—Brooke M. Bauer, author of Becoming Catawba
“Native Nations provides a much-needed corrective to the popular myth of Indigenous decline and disappearance. Reorienting our perspective, Kathleen DuVal reveals the deep and ongoing history of Native nationhood in North America. Native peoples, as DuVal demonstrates, established sovereign, self-governing polities eons before the European invasion and, despite the genocidal efforts of whites, Native nations endure to the present. DuVal draws on careful research and compelling storytelling to bring this history to light. Native Nations establishes Kathleen DuVal as one of the most gifted historians of our time.”
—Christina Nicole Snyder, author of Great Crossings
“A page-turner… DuVal offers us a new chronology of early America, and her genius is to use tight examples of individual families and communities that focus on community building and adapting to shifting circumstances, rather than war and loss.”
—Anne F. Hyde, author of Born of Lakes and Plains
“At every turn, DuVal expertly narrates the connection between civilizations that are thousands of years old and the Native nations that still exercise their rights on this land today. She portrays the societies that Europeans encountered as deliberate and creative responses to what Native people saw as the destructive work of their forebears, offering much-needed hope for us today as we wrestle to re-imagine and rebuild a new world that is better for all. DuVal has integrated the complex and vast past of Native people, a past that U.S. historians had previously frozen and isolated, into a truly global history with as much as power as The Dawn of Everything; this history can no longer be ignored.
Native Nations effectively and powerfully illustrates how Native decisions and demands directed the pace and outcomes of change on the continent, up through and including today. DuVal’s nuanced and rigorous interpretation show us that the diversity, inclusivity, and collective power that constitute the American Dream truly began with the continent’s First Peoples. Like a time-traveling detective, DuVal narrates war and peace, prosperity and hunger, women as well as men, to affirm Indigenous survivance and the failure of European and U.S. imperialists to complete their grandiose goals of extermination. In DuVal's hands, the bleak picture that many readers have been shown of Native people is not inevitable or nonsensical--it is a product of a history of white Americans' choices to wage a cultural war, when the military war did not succeed.”
—Malinda Maynor Lowery, author of The Lumbee Indians
“Scores of Native nations defend their sovereignty within the United States - to the confusion of many Americans. In this sensible, lucid, and wide-ranging book, Kathleen Duval recounts a sobering yet remarkable history of survival despite sweeping efforts to destroy Native peoples. Resourceful and determined, Native Americans have endured by resisting while adapting - ultimately to the benefit of all who now share this continent.”
—Alan Taylor, author of American Republics: A Continental History, 1783-1850
“Kathleen DuVal has crafted a masterful new narrative of Indigenous North America. Drawing from extensive research, DuVal weaves centuries of Native American history into crisp and engaging stories of Indigenous power, adaptation, and resilience. Throughout her chapters, DuVal keeps women, families, and Native commoners at the center of her stories, and so readers are treated to analysis that moves beyond the examination of lives of great men and showcases the myriad ways Native people from all walks of life shaped the continent. Most impressively, even as she unearths stories from hundreds of years ago, DuVal never loses sight of the critical significance of these pasts for contemporary Native communities and for the U.S writ large. A triumph.”
—Elizabeth Ellis, author of The Great Power of Small Nations
“Demonstrating that Native peoples’ collective efforts to resist colonialism and racism often depended paradoxically on asserting their distinct national identities, Native Nations provides a new way of understanding the long sweep of Native American history. Based on prodigious research, reflecting the latest scholarship, and incorporating diverse perspectives, Kathleen DuVal’s engagingly written new book reveals how Indigenous peoples’ varied strategies of presence, resistance, and endurance fundamentally shaped the governmental and social structures of the United States as we know it today.”
—Daniel K. Richter, author of Before the Revolution: America’s Ancient Pasts
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