New Worlds for All: Indians, Europeans, and the Remaking of Early America

New Worlds for All describes myriad ways in which Indigenous influences shaped the European-American society that emerged from the colonial period. Indigenous Americans exerted their influence most powerfully in the three centuries following Columbus’s arrival in 1492 (3).

Considering what modern readers know about how the larger story unfolded, it requires an imaginative leap to appreciate the precariousness of Europeans’ early settlements and the degree to which they depended on Indigenous assistance for their survival. Indigenous Americans taught Europeans to plant corn, which “played a major role in Americanizing the diets of European settlers” (52). Indigenous Americans also helped Chesapeake-area colonists learn how to cultivate tobacco, a lucrative crop that allowed Virginia to develop into Britain’s most prosperous mainland colony. As a supplement to agriculture, both subsistence and commercial, many Europeans hunted for food. Hunting in Europe had always been more of a “gentleman’s sport” than a way of life; colonists had to acquire Indigenous skills and adopt Indigenous practices (56). When they got sick, as they often did, Europeans relied on Indigenous remedies and healing practices. European travelers, in fact, often praised Indigenous Americans for their medical knowledge. Calloway does not dwell at great length on specific Indigenous contributions to the modern world, but he does note, for instance, that in some parts of the United States “itinerant Indian physicians remained common well into the twentieth century” (42).