The Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native America

Written by James Wilson

Narrated by Nelson Runger

This carefully researched exploration of Native American culture investigates the complex, often misunderstood histories of hundreds of indigenous peoples. Author James Wilson has drawn from ethnographic and archaeological studies, historical texts, and the rich written and oral traditions of Native Americans to complete this important work.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Oct 14, 2011
• ISBN: 9781461812937

James Wilson

James Wilson was born in Northern Ireland in 1953. In 1972, he followed family tradition and entered the printing industry. Having moved to London in 1979, he went on to run his own business through the 1980s. Since 1993 he has worked for the Metropolitan Police Service.

Reviews for The Earth Shall Weep

[LoraShouse · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

An excellent book about the history of Native Americans. The author attempted to tell their story as much as possible as they would have wanted it told despite not being a Native American himself. Unfortunately, there is little recorded of the history of the native peoples from the time before white men came to this continent. He used ancient Indian legends, conversations with a wide variety of Native Americans, and historical sources, many of them written by the white invaders. It is surprising what some of the white chroniclers tell on themselves and their treatment of the Indians. Surprisingly, some Native Americans actually prefer the term Indian to Native American; apparently, the true preference of many is to be called by the name of their specific tribe, but this is difficult when talking about all of them together.

There was some coverage of the first Indians to be encountered by the English in the Virginia and New England areas, including a little bit about the law that was the basis for the confederation of the Iroquois tribes. There was also some discussion of the tribes in the Southeast and what their life was like before the white man, with mention being made of the mound-building and Missippian cultures, about which, however, little seems to be known beyond the remnants of the structures they left. There is also some discussion of the natives of the Southwest and their early encounters with the Spanish and what became of them after that.

The greatest part of Native American history seems to be a series of battles once the white man appeared, although some of the battles were against illness – European diseases evidently killed many more Native Americans than the European Americans did, often before the Europeans actually encountered the Native Americans.

Of course, it is not news that the European Americans horribly abused and tortured the Native Americans, doing everything in their power to take every last bit of their land from them. As of the time of the writing of this book, that effort was still going on, albeit without quite as much success, or quite as much support, as in former times.

The part of the book that held the most surprises was the last part about the history of Native Americans since approximately 1900. The oppression has continued at least into the 1980’s. The battles with guns and tomahawks are for the most part over. Instead, Indians are having to fight for their rights in the courts of the land. Most of the overt land-grabbing is over too, except when it suddenly becomes inconvenient for the white people not to appropriate, for example, the water that an Indian tribe needs to live on their reservation.

Surprisingly, some of the worst damage has been done by people who were sincerely trying to help. For example, there is the problem of the Indian schools – established by people who genuinely thought that the best thing for them was to be educated in the white man’s ways and be assimilated into white society. (Resistance is futile!) They primarily succeeded in breaking up families and cutting many Indians off from their culture and spreading depression and poverty throughout much of what remains of the various Indian reservations.

In the very last years of the twentieth century, there are some hopeful signs. Since the 1960s or so, there has been a movement to unite Indians of all tribes, but its success has been limited. The big movement to develop gambling casinos on some reservations has brought a certain amount of prosperity to some Indians, but many do not see this as an unmixed blessing. A great many issues of poor health, poverty, and other problems are still abundant.