The Native Ground Indians and Colonists in the Heart of the Continent

Europeans were often more dependent on Indians than Indians were on them.Now the states of Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Colorado, this native ground was originally populated by indigenous peoples, became part of the French and Spanish empires, and in 1803 was bought by the United States in the Louisiana Purchase. Drawing on archaeology and oral history, as well as documents in English, French, and Spanish, DuVal chronicles the successive migrations of Indians and Europeans to the area from precolonial times through the 1820s. These myriad native groups Mississippians, Quapaws, Osages, Chickasaws, Caddos, and Cherokees and the waves of Europeans all competed with one another for control of the region.Only in the nineteenth century did outsiders initiate a future in which one people would claim exclusive ownership of the mid-continent.