We floated down the busy, murky rapids of the Colorado River on rubber rafts, our only engines the strong bare backs and arms of our guides. We slept in tents and ate food cooked over a fire. In the late afternoons we hiked up narrow canyons and spied the mysterious pictographs and petroglyphs left by ancient predecessors. In white and black on the red rocks I saw waving arms, horses, goats, spears, the squiggly spokes of wheels. In my early 20s, I envied the simplicity of a life where all that was expected of me was to follow the well-defined path of my ancestors.

I've since grown up and recognized those fantasies as naive and romantic but I still have an enduring fascination and respect for Native American history and culture. THE EARTH SHALL WEEP by James Wilson is not only an invaluable reference work on these subjects, but also a compelling narrative of the many different nations who lived in this vast territory before the Europeans came and the devastating effects of their contact with "civilization."

Wilson spent 20 years gathering information for this book from Indian and non-Indian sources, and his attempt at a balanced portrayal has paid off. He doesn't condemn the Europeans specifically, nor does he idealize the Indians. Rather, he is scrupulous about relating what is known of the world views of both the settlers and the natives and putting the events he relates in this context.

The descriptions of these cultural differences set you up for the conflicts that follow, and one reads them with the tragic sense of imminent doom more commonly found in a suspense novel than in a historical account. "The trade with Europeans was, from the Native American point of view, a form of ceremonial gift exchange which allowed them to bind the newcomers into their world of mutual obligation. Their 'generosity' was not naivete, as many Europeans thought, but neither was it cynical opportunism."

The trading relationship actually worked to the advantage of both societies on the east coast for several centuries, until the English Pilgrims and others decided they not only wanted to remove the wealth of the country from the Native Americans but they wanted to occupy all of the land as well. In their view, the Indians were not legitimate owners of the land, since they didn't farm in the European ways. Therefore, the white settlers felt justified in pushing those who survived the epidemics of disease further and further west.

The book is divided into three main parts. Part I, "Origins," deals with the fundamental differences between Native American origin myths and the Western (white) man's belief system, and reviews what little is known of pre-contact Native America.

Part II, "Invasions," separately covers the history of each major part of the country since contact. I was surprised at how different the experiences of some Native nations were from others. For instance, Wilson shows how in the sparsely populated Southwest, the Pueblo and Navaho nations have been able to maintain much more of their culture than in other areas like the east coast, where disease and intense competition for land completely eradicated or displaced many tribes.

Part III, "Internal Frontiers," covers the widely differing policies our government has adopted in the last 150 years to deal with "the Indian problem," from assimilation, whose aim was to absorb Native Americans into the predominant white culture, to termination of many of the tribes special subsidies and programs under the Indian Reorganization Act. In this final section, Wilson also recounts the rise of Native American activism that began in the '60s, and some of that movement's successes and failures.

This very complete and fair work deserves a place on the bookshelf of anyone interested in Native America. My copy is festooned with little blue sticky notes, marking passages that I will ponder for years to come.