elizabeth fenn encounters at the heart of the world

Rather, their homeland “at the heart of the world” insulated them from many of the changes that Europeans wrought throughout the continent.

Fenn embraces this model by arguing that, at least until the early nineteenth century, European colonialism did not dramatically reshape Mandan society. At odds with the more dominant approach of Atlantic history, which privileges the Atlantic coast and its English-speaking colonies that later became the United States, those who espouse a continental framework look instead at the continent as a whole, giving equal attention to Native Americans and other European empires.

A region that earlier generations of scholars regarded as peripheral, Fenn positions as central. Fenn’s subject, the Mandan Indians, lived at precisely the geographical center of the North American continent in what is today North Dakota. Fenn’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Encounters at the Heart of the World reflects a growing trend among some early American historians to write from a continental perspective. The damage wrought by imported diseases like smallpox and the havoc caused by the arrival of horses and steamboats were tragic for the Mandans, yet, as Fenn makes clear, their sense of themselves as a people with distinctive traditions endured.Ī riveting account of Mandan history, landscapes, and people, Fenn's narrative is enriched and enlivened not only by science and research, but by her own encounters at the heart of the world.Elizabeth A. Recent archaeological discoveries show how these Native American people thrived, and then how they collapsed. By 1500, more than 12,000 Mandans were established on the northern Plains, and their commercial prowess, agricultural skills, and reputation for hospitality became famous. Her boldly original interpretation of these diverse research findings offers us a new perspective on early American history, a new interpretation of the American past.

Fenn retrieves their history by piecing together important new discoveries in archaeology, anthropology, geology, climatology, epidemiology, and nutritional science. We know of them mostly because Lewis and Clark spent the winter of 1804-1805 with them, but why don't we know more? Who were they really? In this extraordinary book, Elizabeth A. Winner of the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for History.Įncounters at the Heart of the World concerns the Mandan Indians, iconic Plains people whose teeming, busy towns on the upper Missouri River were, for centuries, at the center of the North American universe.

Elizabeth fenn encounters at the heart of the world