Native Nations: A Millennium in North America
Kathleen DuVal traces the political and social history of Indigenous peoples in North America across a full millennium, starting around the year 1000 with the large urban societies of Cahokia, Moundville, and the Huhugam. She follows the long arc through the rise and decline of those cities, the encounters with European arrivals, the rebuilding of Indigenous power in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the survival and continued sovereignty of Native nations into the present. The book draws on archaeological evidence, treaty records, oral history, and Indigenous-authored scholarship to recenter the continent's story on its first nations rather than on settler colonies. DuVal pays particular attention to political organization, diplomacy, and adaptation. The book won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for History, the Bancroft Prize, and the 2024 Cundill History Prize.
What you might want to know about Native Nations: A Millennium in North America
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
A thousand-year history of Native nations in North America, from medieval cities to the present.
Yes. Cowen reviewed it on Marginal Revolution in April 2024 and included it on his Best Non-Fiction of 2024 list; it later won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for History.
It opens around the year 1000 with the large North American cities of Cahokia, Moundville, and the Huhugam, well before European contact.
Native Nations: A Millennium in North America was written by Kathleen DuVal, published in 2024 by Random House.
Native Nations: A Millennium in North America is 752 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Native Nations: A Millennium in North America takes most readers 11 to 16 hours to finish.
Native Nations: A Millennium in North America is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.