George Orwell was credited with first saying that "history is written by the winners." This statement has certainly held true when trying to gain an understanding of what life was like for Native Americans during the first 200 years of their cultural clash with the newly arrived and always arriving Europeans. As one whose previous knowledge of Indians was limited to biographies of men like Tecumseh, the Prophet, and Sitting Bull (books written using, at best, the regimental histories of the "winners" as the primary source of material), Writing Indians truly opened my eyes to what many Native Americans really experienced during the early years of cohabitation when they were introduced to Christianity.

The author was extremely creative in bringing the individual stories out one-by-one using the scattered writings left by the Native Americans and allowing the reader to combine the many distant voices into one chorus which, when coupled with the more familiar writings of the "winners", spoke for several generations. In my past studies of Native Americans, I seldom could picture the people outside the boundaries of either the battlefield or the front yard of some Territorial Governor (signing a meaningless treaty). This book is wonderful in that it patches together the writings of a surprising number of individuals who were in the process of developing a unique identity grounded in two cultures. It reveals the intelligence of the Natives as they sought to keep what they viewed as the better elements of their culture by appealing to thier visitors in the familair words and ideas contained in Christian thought. Wyss could only succeed in this by drawing on a great deal of reseach.

Anyone who wishes to understand and study the history of these Native Americans on the East Coast and how they actually interacted with the European population, or hopes to broaden their general knowledge of the natie Amercians should read this book.