Pekka Hämäläinen Archives

The Comanche Empire

In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, a Native American empire rose to dominate the fiercely contested lands of the American Southwest, the southern Great Plains, and northern Mexico. This powerful empire, built by the Comanche Indians, eclipsed its various European rivals in military prowess, political prestige, economic power, commercial reach, and cultural influence. Yet, until now, the Comanche empire has gone unrecognized in American history. […Learn More]

Lakota America: A New History of Indigenous Power

The first comprehensive history of the Lakota Indians and their profound role in shaping America’s history

This first complete account of the Lakota Indians traces their rich and often surprising history from the early sixteenth to the early twenty-first century. Pekka H m l inen explores the Lakotas’ roots as marginal hunter-gatherers and reveals how they reinvented themselves twice: first as a river people who dominated the Missouri Valley, America’s great commercial artery, and then–in what was America’s first sweeping westward expansion–as a horse people who ruled supreme on the vast high plains. […Learn More]