What white American society thinks it ''knows'' about American Indians is largely that society's cultural invention, untested by empirical science.

Indians were here far longer than previously thought, these researchers believe, and in much greater numbers. And they were so successful at imposing their will on the landscape that in 1492 Columbus set foot in a hemisphere thoroughly dominated by humankind.

<p> Half the 102 people on the <i>Mayflower </i>made it through to spring, which to me was amazing. How, I wondered, did they survive?</p><p>In his history of Plymouth Colony, Bradford provided the answer: by robbing Indian houses and graves.</p>

The Indians in Peru, Dobyns concluded, had faced plagues from the day the conquistadors showed up—in fact, before then: smallpox arrived around 1525, seven years ahead of the Spanish. Brought to Mexico apparently by a single sick Spaniard, it swept south and eliminated more than half the population of the Incan empire.

Before Columbus, Dobyns calculated, the Western Hemisphere held ninety to 112 million people. Another way of saying this is that in 1491 more people lived in the Americas than in Europe.

I certify to you that, with the help of God, we shall powerfully enter into your country, and shall make war against you in all ways and manners that we can,

Though she’s all but forgotten today, Hannah Duston was probably the first American woman to be memorialized in a public monument, and this statue is one of three built in her honor between 1861 and 1879.