When non-Native people learn that one of the subjects that Dr. Kathleen DuVal writes and teaches about is Native American history, very often their response is something along the lines of, “It’s so sad what happened to Native Americans.”
And while DuVal is the first to agree that there is a lot of tragedy in Native American history, she was bothered that so many people know nothing more about Native American history than the tragedy. “I wanted to teach readers a longer, richer history,” says DuVal, a professor of history at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
In celebration of National Native American Heritage Month, the Library of Virginia is offering a virtual book talk on Nov. 5 with DuVal on her latest book, “Native Nations: A Millennium in North America,” a book that won not only the Pulitzer Prize, but also the Bancroft Prize, the Cundill History Prize and the Mark Lynton History Prize. “It’s been amazing to win a prize that’s a household name,” DuVal says. “The recognition that’s come with it has been exciting and rewarding for me, for my work, and for my community here in Chapel Hill.”
Native economies complex
DuVal recounts how long before the colonization of North America, Indigenous Americans built diverse civilizations and adapted to a changing world in ways that reverberated globally. So, when Europeans showed up in the 16th century, they encountered societies they did not understand, mainly because they had developed differently from their own, and whose power they frequently underestimated.
During what climatologists call the “Medieval Warm Period,” Native people built urban civilizations across North America. But then around the 1200s, weather became less predictable, and the climate began to cool into the “Little Ice Age.” That shift meant that the large-scale farming that had supported cities became less possible. So most Native American civilizations spread out and developed smaller-scale and more diversified economies.
As they spread out into smaller towns, the Native Americans developed more consensus-based democracies that balanced power rather than the more hierarchical political systems they’d had in the era of cities. “Native economies were very complex,” DuVal says. “They still farmed, as they had in earlier eras, but in the 1200s and 1300s, they began hunting and gathering more, as well as trading more with their allies. That way, if their crops failed, they had other ways of feeding their people.”
In the centuries afterward, Indigenous people maintained an upper hand and used Europeans in pursuit of their own interests. Mohawks closely controlled trade, Quapaws manipulated colonists, and Kiowas regulated the passage of settlers across their territory.
Plenty about Native Americans was perplexing to the Europeans when they arrived.
“I think that women’s political power was the most surprising to Europeans, who came from a patriarchal society,” says DuVal. “And Indigenous Americans were surprised when European exploration parties came with only men. They wondered, ‘Where are your women?’”
Power dynamics began to shift after the Revolution because it had created a country whose population was doubling every generation and whose voters wanted to own their own farms and for their sons to own their own farms. “They believed that their republic could survive only if they were independent of landlords or bosses” she says. “All of that created a powerful force moving west onto Native land.”
DuVal says it’s important to remember that when Europeans first arrived, there was no unifying category of “Native Americans.” It took many centuries for the peoples of North America’s various Indigenous peoples to begin to think of themselves as one kind of people. In 2025, there are more than 600 federal and state recognized tribes within the U.S. alone. Native Americans today are U.S. citizens and Native Americans, but also citizens of their own specific Native nations.
In pulling together written documents, oral histories, and archaeology to tell the long history of the Native past and present, DuVal found herself uncovering fascinating tidbits about Native life. While she already knew that 16th-century Mohawks traded with the Dutch for guns and other metal goods, there were tastier issues causing friction between the two groups.
“I discovered petitions from Dutch settlers complaining that Mohawks bought all the cakes and white bread that Dutch bakers made,” says DuVal. “The Mohawks had buying power from their fur trade, and Dutch settlers were angry that they could only afford heavy wheat bread. It’s a reminder, both of Native economic power and of everyday things, like enjoying cake.”
A virtual book talk by Kathleen DuVal on “Native Nations: A Millennium in North America” will take place on Nov. 5 at noon, Library of Virginia, 800 East Broad Street. Free but registration required. Register
