Drawing not only on historical sources but also an ethnography, archeology, Indian oral tradition and his own extensive research in contemporary Native American communities, Wilson sets out to recover their experience and to make it accessible to a non-Indian audience. Contrasting the cosmologies of the 'old world' and the 'new world', he goes on to chart the horrifying - but often surprising - course of the collision between indigenous cultures and European invaders, from the first English settlements on the Atlantic coast to the Wounded Knee massacre in 1890. At the same time, he explains how Europeans justified a process that reduced the Native American population from an estimated 7 - 10 million to less than 250 000 in just four centuries.
In the final section of the book, James Wilson shows how these same ideas have continued to underpin government policy towards native people of the twentieth century and to distort popular perceptions of the 'Indian', leaving a legacy of ignorance and misunderstanding that still haunts contempory Native American life today.
