Some interesting stuff here. I think Weatherford is reaching at some points and it is pretty obvious where his sentiments lie. History flipped upside down, this book is a counterweight to the western centric histories I grew up with. ( )

Indian Givers turned out to be an educational and at the same time very sobering read. Because while Jack Weatherford makes a very strong point as to why the subtitle of this book "How Native Americans Transformed The World" is totally appropriate. The sad fact is that for the most part, these contributions have gone totally unrecognized. The edition I read is a re issue of the book that originally came out in 1989. Hopefully this edition will go further in getting out the message of just how vital a role Native Americans played in transforming the world. ( )

What a joy to read! I found unfamiliar stories on every page. Indian Givers, published in 1988, was written by scholar Jack Weatherford. While some of the information may be outdated and superseded by new research and discoveries, the premise of this book, that Native American people gave us an untold wealth of valuable ideas, products, food, and technologies, is still sound.

Weatherford begins the book with an Indian man living in the Bolivian Andes who spends almost every miserable day eking out a living in the nearly-spent tin mines there. From this granular image, the focus sweeps back to reveal how the European discovery of the metals available in the Americas changed the geopolitical structures of the entire globe.

The book explores far beyond the impact of material goods. It discusses how capitalism, corporations, the Industrial Revolution, population growth worldwide, democracy, architecture, and transportation were all directly the result of the contributions of the first Americans.

You would think the world sings their praises every day for all the gifts they’ve brought us, but no. We all know by now how these people, living successful, productive lives before the Europeans landed on their shores, were beaten, enslaved, and killed in massive numbers and apparently without a thought. So instead of receiving thanks, they had their lands confiscated, were confined to reservations, and were forced to adopt the European-American culture. And they’ve been marginalized elsewhere.

While this book is well worth a read for its stunning history, I found it most useful because it further increased my respect for these people who cultivated two continents before us. The book was so well-written that I flew through it, eager to turn each page to see what came next. I was planning to write Jack Weatherford a fan letter, but I see he has moved to Mongolia after writing a book about Genghis Khan. I hope he’s still writing. ( )

How the gold and silver of Indians of North and South America transformed the world economy, and how their foods and medicine saved Europe from starvation, as well as their influence on fashion and religion is told in thought-provoking and accessible prose.

What would “Italian” cuisine be without the tomato? or Tex-Mex without the pepper? Where would modern transportation and machinery be without rubber for tires and hoses? These Weatherford reminds us, were agricultural and industrial technologies taken from the American Indians.

Europe had no model of a pure democracy or representative government, aside from the oligarchies of Greece or the parliaments of Europe constituted by a severely limited electorate of the elite. The notion that each individual was free without being subject of a lord or the slave of an owner was at first incomprehensible to the Europeans when they encountered Americans whose “chiefs” were temporary charismatic leaders without authority or power to enforce their will. The political idealism that inspired the Age of Reason was inspired by the natives of the new world. The political institutions of the Iroquois Confederacy influenced political philosophers as diverse as Benjamin Franklin and Karl Marx and political institutions as different as the United States Constitution and the twentieth-century revolutions in Mexico of Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa.

Where Do All Indians Live in Tipis? gives one or two page answers, Weatherford goes into chapter length detail about how undervalued the contributions that the natives of the Americas are to civilization. He details how the gold and silver of Indians of North and South America transformed the world economy, and how their foods and medicine saved Europe from starvation, as well as their influence on fashion and religion is told in thought-provoking and accessible prose. ( )

what we got from the Indians