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Author Alan Taylor has a very interesting line on the first page of the Introduction that, in my opinion, gives early insight into what this book will discuss. After shortly describing white Europeans’ motivation for immigrating to what is the present day United States, Taylor opens his fourth paragraph with a captivating person opinion- “But the traditional story of American uplift excludes too many people” (Taylor, Introduction) To me, this line immediately informs the reader that the purpose of this book is to give a more complete description of American History, one that fills in the holes and gives credit to those often forgotten in less “detailed” accounts of American History. The first chapter in the book immediately shows that Taylor does indeed intend to fill in those blanks. In it he gives brief overviews of the history of a number of Native American tribes who called the lands home way before Christopher Columbus or any other Europeans set foot in the “new world”.
Personally, I thoroughly enjoyed the first chapter as it informed me about much I had never even heard regarding early life in the Americas. I had known that Christopher Columbus did not in fact “discover” these lands but I was unaware of the deep history that so many different native tribes had on the land. Taylor also gives a description of the natives that does not mesh with the way they are often portrayed today. Modern day filmmakers have painted an image of these early natives in moves (which is admittedly the extent of my previous study on this topic) as a supremely spiritual and peaceful people who were unjustifiably taken advantage of by the Europeans. While Taylor does not defend the Europeans, he makes sure to inform the reader that the Natives were not completely innocent, peaceful tribes who wished only to be left alone. They were just as violent and war-prone as the people they fought, they simply did not have the technology and weaponry to seriously compete. I appreciated Taylor giving this perspective here. It assures me that he did his best to stay completely objective. I can only assume that the rest of the book is written in the same manor.