Warpaths: Invasions of North America

Martin L. Nicolai is an adjunct assistant professor of history at
Queen’s University.

Between the years 1513 and 1765, the Spanish, English, French, and Dutch
conquered the eastern seaboard of North America, gradually destroying
most of the region’s original inhabitants. In recent decades,
historians have frequently explained the outcome of this horrifying
struggle by portraying Natives as naive, helpless victims, unable to
cope with the Europeans who were armed with superior technology and
Machiavellian cunning. In Warpaths, however, Steele argues persuasively
that this was not a one-sided contest; instead, Amerindian nations
responded intelligently and competently to the European invasions,
matching almost every European move with effective countermeasures.

From Florida to the St. Lawrence, Europeans faced nations and
confederacies that employed sophisticated diplomatic skills, alliances,
economic coercion, and increasingly, imported technology to meet each
new European threat. As European power grew, notes Steele, so did the
Natives’ capacity to resist; as they became better armed and developed
new tactics, their political organizations grew more unified, and they
found ways to exploit European rivalries. Even after the tactical and
strategic situation changed on the continent during the Seven Years’
War, with the arrival of thousands of regular troops and Britain’s
elimination of its French and Spanish rivals, the Natives were able to
maintain a balance of power.

Steele goes further than most historians in examining historical events
from a multicultural perspective, carefully marshaling and assessing an
impressive amount of evidence to compensate for the Natives’ lack of
written records. Instead of allowing “the Indians” to suddenly
appear out of a void and then mysteriously fade back into the
wilderness, he describes a complex relationship between chiefs, Native
factions, different nations within confederacies, and independent Native
powers, following Native policies as they evolved in response to
European actions and revised Native goals. A master historian, Steele
weaves together social, cultural, political, and military history to
provide an absorbing three-dimensional portrait of the personalities and
peoples who fought for power and survival in a violent age. Readers
interested in a broad but informative explanation of European-Native
military relations during the colonial period, devoid of ideological
posturing, will find this survey highly rewarding.