The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History

This chapter marks the introduction of one of Blackhawk’s key concepts, the Native Inland Sea, a term he uses to describe the network of Indigenous communities that revolved around the Mississippi River Basin in the first half of the 18th century. Comparing the populations of major European cities with those of major Mandan villages in the Native Inland Sea, he finds that the Mandan tribe controlled the largest urban society on the North American continent before New York’s astronomic rise in the late 18th century. These villages served as epicenters of seasonal trade for various Indigenous groups throughout the region as well as for European traders who learned to navigate and profit from Native economies.

In 1701, a huge convention of political powers that included the French and roughly 40 Indigenous tribes was held at Montreal. The treaty signed at this meeting, The Great Peace of Montreal, along with an agreement made between the British and Iroquois at Albany in the same year, led to a restructuring of Native American power dynamics in the heart of the continent, with the Iroquois Confederacy at the top of a new hierarchy. Alongside the British colonies and New France, Iroquoia became one of the three primary North American powers in global geopolitics.