Stolen Continents: 500 Years of Conquest and Resistance in the Americas by Ronald Wright

Running head : Review

A Review of Stolen Continents by Ronald Wright

John Q . Student

Wright State University

A Review of Stolen Continents by Ronald Wright

In Stolen Continents : The Americas Through Indian Eyes , 1992 (Boston Houghton Mifflin , A Peter Davison Book ) Ronald Wright explores the history of five different Native American groups , the Aztec , the Maya the Inca , the Cherokee , and the Iroquois , from the time of the landing of Columbus in 1492 until the time the book was published in 1992 . This book was written to correspond with the [banner_entry_middle]

five hundredth anniversary of the arrival of Columbus in the “New World

Ronald Wright is a trained historian and experienced travel writer who taught history in Britain and became bored with the European emphasis the curriculum required . He began to explore other areas of history and ultimately concentrated his work on the Native North , South , and Central Americans . In addition to Stolen Continents , Wright has written Cut Stones and Crosswords : A Journey in Peru , On Fiji Islands , Quechua Phrasebook (a phrasebook of the language used by the Incas , and Time Among the Mayas

The book is organized into three sections : Part One : Invasion , Part Two Resistance , and Part Three : Rebirth . Within each section Wright includes one chapter for each of the five tribal groups . Maps of the Americas are included for each of the five areas Wright discusses . In addition , he provides extensive endnotes , an ample bibliography and a most useful guide to pronunciation that helps the reader attempt to pronounce names that are likely to be unfamiliar . Due to the limited space for this book review , the writer will focus solely on the chapters dealing with the Aztecs , but the chapters about the other tribal communities are equally interesting and important

Wright ‘s main thesis is that the arrival of Columbus in the Americas is not a discovery as much as an invasion . Wright quotes Dehatkadons , a traditional chief of the Onondaga Iriquois “You cannot discover an inhabited land . Otherwise I could cross the Atlantic and ‘discover America (Wright , 15 . According to Wright , at the time the Europeans became aware of the land they would call the Americas there were approximately 100 million Native Americans living throughout the Americas . To put this in perspective one must recognize that this number represents about 20 percent of the world ‘s population at that time . The British Isles had only 5 million people and Spain had about 8 million inhabitants . This number is equivalent to 1 ,310 ,770 ,385 compared to the world population today . By 1600 less than one tenth of the original population (10 million ) existed . In today ‘s terms 1 ,048 ,616 ,308 would be killed in a little more than one hundred years (Wright , 4 , 11 , 14

In the first section Wright discusses the arrival of Europeans among the Aztecs . He first writes about the Aztecs and their ultimate defeat by Cortys . The city now known as Mexico City was the heart of the Aztec Empire . According to… [banner_entry_footer]