"Our Father, the President"

Colin Calloway's new book, THE INDIAN WORLD OF GEORGE WASHINGTON: THE FIRST PRESIDENT AND FIRST AMERICANS, AND THE BIRTH OF THE NATION (Oxford,2018), is reviewed by Susan Dunn for The New York Review of Books.

"The greatest Estates we have in this Colony," George Washington reminded an impoverished Virginia neighbor in 1767, "were made…by taking up and purchasing at very low rates the rich back Lands which were thought nothing of in those days, but are now the most valuable Lands we possess." From the earliest days, the British colonization of North America was a pell-mell land rush. Settlers, squatters, and speculators pushed unstoppably and aggressively west, all seeking land, whether by acquiring it cheaply or by grant or simply by grabbing it. But whose land was it? As far as the colonists were concerned, it was theirs, and as far as Native Americans were concerned, it was theirs and had been for centuries.

Full review here.