The Native Ground by Kathleen DuVal focuses on the relationships between Native Americans and Europeans in the Arkansas River Valley. By shifting our perceptions from a European view to a Native American-centered view, history as we know it in the 17th and 18th centuries is histrionically altered. His work shifts geographic focus from European coastal outposts to “the heart of the continent.” The Arkansas Valley was already an established center of Native American trade in North America. The importance of the region to its Indian and European stakeholders presented a unique opportunity for natural progression due to the diversity of communities and existing tribal relationships. Say no to plagiarism. Get Custom Essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get Original EssayDuVal points out that the Arkansas Valley was a meeting place between Indians and Eastern and Western Europeans , establishing a link between the two. Modern history reflects the settlement of colonial North America from either a European or another perspective. However, it shows that the simplistic and dominant version of American history is riddled with historical biases. Recognizing the Arkansas Valley as the center of colonial North America is a more accurate representation of the nation's evolution. No one representing the European empires had control over the Arkansas Valley, and so any vestige of an imperial geographic perspective completely collapsed. His work complements Daniel Richter's Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America (2001), but its more focused geographic scope immerses the reader in a single location, allowing for a level of specificity that makes the importance of the points particularly striking. Indian point of view if we hope to understand power relations during the colonial period. Because the eastern Arkansas Valley enters the Mississippi River Valley, it has seen a great diversity of traders, explorers, and immigrants, both Indian and European. Because of the region's importance to so many diverse polities, DuVal is able to argue more forcefully that the Arkansas Valley was itself the center of North America for its Indian actors. and Europeans in the 17th and 18th centuries. It was indeed the “heart of the continent” and not the periphery of any European empire. She doesn't look east, north, south, or west to look at Europe or its settlers because the people she studies didn't. In identifying the Arkansas Valley as a "native land," DuVal argues that unlike the peoples of the Great Lakes region, Richard According to white studies in The Middle Ground (1991), the Arkansas Indians dominated their region until the 19th century. They were able to maintain their power during the colonial period because they were not a refugee population like the Great Lakes Indians were. On the contrary, the Indians of the Arkansas Valley, although they were mostly 17th century immigrants, retained their sovereign identity and very quickly developed systems of incorporation of newcomers, systems which they applied to Europeans and Indians alike. DuVal points out that the Arkansas Valley Indians placed a high value on connectivity. Sixteenth-century Spanish explorers to the region failed because they seemed disconnected and unwilling to integrate into existing relationships. The situation in the 17th century was very different. The Quapaws, newcomers to Arkansas who left the Ohio Valley in response to Iroquois incursions, encountered opposition from the populations.