Surviving Genocide: Native Nations and the United States from the American Revolution to Bleeding Kansas

The relationship between Native Americas and settlers from Europe has been a long and conflicted process. From forced removals to attacks to drive native Americas off of their land in an effort to claim it for itself. Even though this book would have you think otherwise it was often a time of cultural exchange between the European settlers and the different native groups; sadly this book just paints a picture of constant war and death. Professor Jeffrey Ostler uses several anachronisms and focuses almost entirely on war that one is left thinking that is all that happened was constant conflict and that nothing else defined the native experience. Ostler does look at the myth of smallpox being spread through blankets, and make the argument that by the time certain colonists attempted that the natives already had the sense to isolate those sick and to create distance. But it is the use of the word genocide, a completely modern word, that really troubles me. He uses it in such a way that is being used by more and more historians to make us worry about the future of historical thinking. Making the claim of genocide is difficult and putting it on things in the past is troubling.