With keen insight and broad vision, Kathleen DuVal has produced an ambitious study of a neglected region in early American history, but the significance of her analysis transcends the Arkansas Valley and will influence scholars working in other areas of American Indian and colonial American history. She traces all of the connections with other regions and draws comparisons where appropriate, ... Read morefrom the Northeast to Mexico, and makes Indian-to-Indian relations central to the story. -Daniel Usner, Vanderbilt University The best history yet of the Arkansas River valley and its peoples. -Journal of American History Learned, engaging, and often provocative. . . . Informed by the most current work on Native American history, DuVal's work joins the best of it as a piece of prose, as an informative new history, as an excursion into historical method, and as an example of a historian's commitment to recover 'the Native Ground.' -William and Mary Quarterly Whether scholars are interested in the Arkansas Valley or not, all specialists in early American and Native American history should read this book because of what it has to say about the 'Native Ground' in general. -American Historical Review Kathleen DuVal's The Native Ground shows how powerfully a change in perspective can alter our perception of history. Her focus on the shifting human relationships in the Arkansas River Valley will require readers to shift their geographic outlook from European outposts on North America's coasts to 'the heart of the continent.' -Common-Place Moving beyond an 'Indians and Europeans' story, Kathleen DuVal looks instead at competing and overlapping stories involving multiple Native groups (Quapaws, Osages, and eventually Cherokees) who operate from different positions with different strategies and experiences, and incorporate an array of outsiders (Spanish, French, British, and eventually Americans). This is the kind of study we need more of. -Colin G. Calloway, Dartmouth College Groundbreaking. . . . A work of immense significance. -Journal of the Early Republic Show Less