1491

"Tisquantum was not an Indian. True, he belonged to that category of people whose ancestors had inhabited the Western Hemisphere for thousands of years. And it is true that I refer to him as an Indian because the label is useful shorthand; so would his descendants, and for much the same reason. But "Indian" was not a category that Tisquantum himself would have recognized, any more than the inhabitants of the same area today would call themselves 'Western Hemisphereans.' Still less would Tisquantum have claimed to belong to 'Norumbega,' the label by which most Europeans then referred to New England. ('New England' was coined only in 1616.) As Tisquantum's later history made clear, he regarded himself first and foremost as a citizen of Pawtuxet, a shoreline settlement halfway between what is now Boston and the beginning of Cape Cod." 

This quote illustrates the simplifications latent in the conventional understanding of the history of the region, particularly in the interaction between the natives and Europeans. Though Tisquantum (also known as Squanto) is a regular part of these narratives, Mann's details show how these stories become simplified, and consequently how the overall historical picture of Squanto—and, by extension, Native peoples—becomes distorted.

“Sixteenth-century New England housed 100,000 people or more, a figure that was slowly increasing. Most of those people lived in shoreline communities, where rising numbers were beginning to change agriculture from an option to a necessity. These bigger settlements required more centralized administration; natural resources like good land and spawning streams, though not scarce, now needed to be managed. In consequences, boundaries between groups were becoming more formal. Sachems, given more power and more to defend, pushed against each other harder. Political tensions were constant. Coastal and riverine New England, according to the archaeologist and ethnohistorian Peter Thomas, was an ‘ever-changing collage of personalities, alliances, plots, raids and encounters which involved every Indian [settlement].’” 

The above quote describes the diversity, size, and complexity of native society prior to the arrival of Europeans. Mann describes the change in these societies as they grew in population and complexity. Accompanying this growth is a political situation of similar complexity. This situation strongly refutes the idea of New England as all but uninhabited prior to the arrival of the first European settlers.

“In 1491 the Inca ruled the greatest empire on earth. Bigger than Ming Dynasty China, bigger than Ivan the Great's expanding Russia, bigger than Songhay in the Sahel or powerful Great Zimbabwe in the West Africa tablelands, bigger than the resting Ottoman Empire, bigger than the Triple Alliance (as the Aztec empire is more precisely known), bigger by far than any European state, the Inca dominion extended over a staggering thirty-two degrees of latitude—as if a single power held sway from St. Petersburg to Cairo. The empire encompassed every imaginable type of terrain, from the rainforest of upper Amazonia to the deserts of the Peruvian coast and the twenty thousand foot peaks of the Andes between. ‘If imperial potential is judged in terms of environmental adaptability,’ wrote the Oxford historian Felipe Fernández-Armesto, ‘the Inca were the most impressive empire builders of their day.’” 

The above passage emphasizes the "imperial" character of the Inca Empire. First, Mann compares the overall size of the Inca empire and stresses the variety of terrains and environments over which the Inca Empire ruled. In addition to pure size, this extra consideration has special significance: as the remainder of the chapter will illustrate, the ability of the Inca to effectively and unquestioningly exert power over different regions and peoples is a testament to its power and sophistication, and also provides clues to its eventual demise.