Why You Can’t Teach United States History without American Indians emerged from the symposium of the same name at the Newberry Library in May 2013. The authors, though mainly historians, represent an interdisciplinary group committed to getting American history college instructors to “recast their survey history classes” toward the centrality of American Indians to US history (1). The editors intend that the work will “offer college teachers a toolbox of articles to help them transform their approach” (2). To this end, the book’s three parts offer two main types of essays: historiographic critiques and informative pieces that offer topics for consideration in survey courses.
Part 1, “U.S. History to 1877,” consists of two critiques and seven topical presentations. The two critical essays decry the absence of Native polities in maps historically and presently in textbooks—unless, that is, they depict the reservation period, thereby creating a “declension narrative” at odds with...
