Indian Givers

How the Indians of the Americas Transformed the World

By: Jack Weatherford

Narrated by: Victor Bevine

Length: 10 hrs and 10 mins

Publisher's summary

After 500 years, the world's huge debt to the wisdom of the Indians of the Americas has finally been explored in all its vivid drama by anthropologist Jack Weatherford. He traces the crucial contributions made by the Indians to our federal system of government, our democratic institutions, modern medicine, agriculture, architecture, and ecology, and in this astonishing, ground-breaking book takes a giant step toward recovering a true American history.

Listen to An Interview with Author Jack Weatherford.

©1989 Jack Weatherford (P)2010 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

"By showing how the world was changed through these contributions, the author gives a greater appreciation of the Indians of America to readers. A fine synthesis book for global studies programs as well as American history." ( School Library Journal)

Powerful!

This is definitely a great book and the writer goes with a great angle too. We always hear about the rape and death of the Indians so, it’s a nice change up to hear about their legacy and about all of the products, foods/spices and names that they have given us. It’s definitely a positive spin from their perspective. The ending and the closing lines are also outstanding!

A very interesting book!

Was Indian Givers worth the listening time?

In the end, yes it was because I learned a lot from it.

Any additional comments?

This is another book where the title caught my attention, as I am part Native American. I was a bit disappointed that the focus was primarily on the indigenous tribes of South America. Overall, it was a very interesting book.

Fascinating

This is an outstanding book. I knew many aspects of how the Indigenous peoples of the Americas influenced the world but this author does such a great job of tying it all together. I loved his earlier work on Genghis Khan as well and didn’t realize this was the same author until I was almost finished. He has a knack for amplifying lesser studied but extremely important areas of history.

A new look at history

Jack Weatherford always has some interesting insights to event of history and anthropology. In this book each chapter demonstrates the influence the natives of the Americas had on the rest of the world. From gold and silver to government, architecture, to food plant and medicinal plants. It is an amazing list of fact he gives particularly in the influence of the forming of the United States government. Victor Bevins did a good job narrating the story. If you want a fresh and different view of the Native Americans read this book.

Indian Givers

This book is a real eye opener, well worth listening to. I am not a history buff, so there are things in this book that I have never heard of before. Every thinking person needs to listen to this book. It makes you feel like you did not get the full story of our history in school. If every thing in this book is true, the history books need to be rewritten. I would encourage every one to listen to this book to fully understand our history.

Excellent!

What usually passes for history is the myths offered by the survivor of a conflict of cultures to justify its misdeeds and explain why it survived and another culture did not. Jack Weatherford does a fine job of looking behind the myths generated by the conflict between European invaders and the Native American peoples that began in 1492. He does this by focusing on those elements of Native American culture, resources and technology that have shaped contemporary life to a profound degree. In taking this approach he avoids turning the book into a litany of woe, while still allowing the reader/listener a good deal of insight into the richness and complexity of the Native American cultures encountered by the Europeans.

By any objective measure, at the time of contact various Native American communities were far advanced in comparison to the European invaders with regard to mathematics, medicine, pharmacology and agriculture. Many of their political systems incorporated the principles of democracy, personal responsibility and civic virtue which are highly valued political ideals to a much greater extent than the monarchical and despotic systems of Europe at that time. Native American architecture produced efficient designs for living, appropriate to the various ecological settings in which the people were building, as well as some of the largest and most enduring monumental buildings in the world. Among the Native American people, the Incas produced the best paved road system in the world high in the Andes Mountains. Indeed, the only comparable roads are those built within the past few decades.

So, given the obvious strengths of Native American culture and its clear superiority in so many ways, how did the Europeans decimate the Native American population and culture within a few generations? It seems to boil down to a few factors. First, the Europeans brought diseases to which their immune systems had built up a resistance over centuries but to which Native Americans had no such immunity. Much of the decimation of the Native American population was the result of pandemics unwittingly brought to the Americas by the Europeans.. Second, Europe and Asia had animal species, such as horses and oxen, which were domesticated and used for transportation, as well as effective weapons (horses in battle). These developments lead to the use of the wheel for transportation and as a simple machine element for European engineers. For all their magnificent accomplishments, the Native American people relied primarily upon human labor rather than animals of machines. Third, metallurgy was available to both Europeans and Native Americans but was used for a much wider variety of purposes by the Europeans than the Native Americans. European weapons technology incorporated the use of metals early in history, so that by the time the Europeans invaded the Americas their swords and guns gave them a significant advantage over most Native American communities who had limited their metal work to decorative purposes.

The book is interesting and an easy listen, except perhaps the section on agriculture where I learned more about Native American potatoes than I ever needed or wanted to know. It is a book that makes you think. While I don’t think it intended to the book also stirred up a bit of anger at the ethnocentric exceptionalism that leads any group of people to think that they alone are God’s unique gift to history and that fact gives them the right and mandate to run roughshod over other people and cultures.

The narrator does a good job in performing the book.

Amazing

This is such an important book. And so well written with respect and extensive research

Amazing

Very interesting and informative. I love this book. it really makes you think, and also pull at your heart strings. Me being Native American I would like to thank this author for writing this book. honestly most of the facts that you stated in this book I did not know. That is truly sad.

Look at the World from a Different Perspective

This book gave some interesting facts about how things originating in the Americas found it's way to the rest of the world. It was a refreshing look at the interactions of cultures and societies told from a non-European perspective. Some of the things credited to Indian crops seemed a little bit of a stretch. Yes they had a large impact on Europe but connecting it to technological advances comes up a little short and discounts many other factors needed for this kind of development. Otherwise, most of the topics were spot on and backed up with some interesting finds.

Important American history

Fascinating. Takes a bit to get into though. The capture about democracy is the best. It is interesting how some things have changed since it was written.