Unfortunately, the book suffers from some serious shortcomings. In attempting to make up for the lack of credit historically witheld from Native Americans, Weatherford does more than just correct this deficiency: he goes too far. He makes claims that go well beyond what the historical record can substantiate. In contrast to what history shows, he claims, for example, that the Industrial Revolution started in America(!), and that "without American precious metals and methods of processing, the industrial revolution would never have spread to Europe." (!!!!) He furthermore implies that Indians "gave" democracy to the fledgling U.S. ("Washington, D.C., has never recognized the role of the Indians in the writing of the United States Constitution") and promoted peaceful civil disobedience that inspired the likes of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., and even claims that liberation movements in Africa and Asia(!?) owed something to American Indians, since "the repeated failures of the Indian movements during the nineteenth century prepared the way for the successes of other peoples in the twentieth century."
It is a shame that Weatherford's book is so dreadfully misleading and unbalanced, for it also legitimately points out many of the things for which American Indians do indeed deserve credit. It points a spotlight on the many interesting contributions that the various peoples in America have made to our societies over the years and, as previously mentioned, it is easy to read.
In short, it is worth reading, but needs to be scrutinized with caution as it frequently overstates the case for "how the Indians of the Americas transformed the world." For a far more balanced presentation, I recommend Thomas Sowell's book "Conquests and Cultures".
From the book:"From silver and money capitalism to piracy, slavery and the birth of corporations, the food revolution, agricultural technology, the culinary revolution, drugs, architecture and urban planning our debt to the indigenous peoples of America is mind boggling. They mined the gold and silver that made capitalism possible. Working in the mines and mints and in the plantations with the African slaves, they started the industrial revolution that then spread to Europe and on around the world. They supplied the cotton, rubber, dyes, and related chemicals that fed this new system of production. They domesticated and developed the hundreds of varieties of corn, potatoes, cassava, and peanuts that now feed much of the world. They discovered the curative powers of quinine, the anesthetizing ability of coca, and the potency of a thousand other drugs with made possible modern medicine and pharmacology. The drugs together with their improved agriculture made possible the population explosion of the last several centuries. They developed and refined a form of democracy that has been haphazardly and inadequately adopted in many parts of the world. They were the true colonizers of America who cut the trails through the jungles and deserts, made the roads, and built the cities upon which modern America is based."
America owes a debt to slavery that can never be repaid. That's not to say it shouldn't be. At the very least, it should be acknowledged, validated, and honored with the respect that it deserves.
Did you know that Ben Franklin based much of American democracy on the Iroquois political system? Were you aware that much of modern medicine has been a result of studying indigenous cures of the Americas? Did you know that capitalism was born in the ugly bowels of the slave trade, and fueled by American-ored silver and gold mined by Native American and African slaves?
These claims are strongly upheld with facts by Jack Weatherford in "Indian Givers." One thing is for sure, we owe much more to our first Americans than we do to the Ancient Greeks. Read this book if you wish to know our true heritage.