This account draws on many disciplines to trace the intricate history of Native Americans from their Stone Age beginnings through their most exalted civilizations and subsequent defeat and degradation while teasing out the complicated influences they have had on the world we live in today. William Brandon tells the stories of Moctezuma and Tezozomoc, Sacajawea and Sequoia, Andrew Jackson and George Armstrong Custer, placing particular emphasis on the grisly tale of Indian-white relations in what eventually became the United States. In so doing he inspires the question of who is savage and who is civilized. Tribes chronicled include the art-obsessed Mayans and Olmecs; the conquering Aztecs; the architecturally-inclined Toltecs; and others such as the Ojibwa, Powhatan, Cree, Illinois, Wampanoag, Apache, Cherokee, Natchez, and Sioux. This is the definitive history of the development and culture of the native peoples of North America, from their incipience through the late 19th century.