Anne Farrar Hyde

"A revealing history of the West that pivots on Native peoples and the mixed families they made with European settlers. There is mixed blood at the heart of America. And at the heart of Native life for centuries there were complex households using marriage to link communities and protect people within circles of kin. These family circles took in European newcomers who followed the fur trade into Indian Country from the Great Lakes to the Columbia...

From the publisher. To most people living in the West, the Louisiana Purchase made little difference: the United States was just another imperial overlord to be assessed and manipulated. This was not, as Empires, Nations, and Families makes clear, virgin wilderness discovered by virtuous Anglo entrepreneurs. Rather, the United States was a newcomer in a place already complicated by vying empires. This book documents the broad family associations that...