When Christopher Columbus first encountered the original inhabitants of the New World, he remarked they were “So tractable, so peaceable . . . that I swear . . . there is not in the world a better nation.” Yet wave after wave of European arrivals sought to wipe those nations from the earth.

By what right did one race seize the land belonging to another and subjugate its people? Distinguished jurist and Native rights advocate Thomas Berger surveys the history of the Americas since their “discovery” by Europeans and examines how the colonizing powers wrestled with the moral issues. Accounts of the slaughter and disenfranchisement of indigenous peoples throughout North, Central, and South America reveal a searing pattern of almost unimaginable duplicity and inhumanity. Five centuries later, Native Americans still embrace ancient values and cultural ways. Berger recounts this tenacious struggle to defy the odds and re-emerge as distinct cultures.