Kathleen DuVal's The Native Ground focuses on relationships between Native Americans and Europeans in the Arkansas River Valley. By shifting our perceptions from a European-based view to a Native American-centered view, history as we know it in the 17th and 18th centuries is histrionically altered. His work shifts geographical 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 players was the clear opportunity for natural progression thanks to the diverse existing communities and tribal relationships. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original EssayDuVal points out that the Arkansas Valley was a place where Indians and Eastern and Western Europeans met, providing a link between the two. Modern history reflects the colonial settlement of North America from a European perspective or another. However, it shows that the simplistic and traditional version of American history is full of historical bias. Recognizing the Arkansas Valley as the colonial center of North America is a truer representation of the nation's evolution. No one representing any European empire had any control over the Arkansas Valley, and so any remnants of an imperial geographic perspective completely collapses. 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 place, allowing for a level of specificity that makes especially vivid how important Indian views if we consider I hope to understand power relations in the colonial period. As the eastern Arkansas Valley enters the Mississippi River Valley, it saw a great diversity of traders, explorers, and immigrants, both Indian and European. Given the region's importance to so many different polities, DuVal is able to make a stronger case for the argument that the Arkansas Valley was itself the center of North America for its Indian and European actors in the 17th and 18th century. It was, in fact, "the heart of the continent" and not the outskirts of a European empire. He doesn't look east, north, south or west to look at Europe or its settlers because the people he studies don't. In identifying the Arkansas Valley as a "homeland," DuVal argues that, unlike the peoples of the Great Lakes region, Richard Studies whites in The Middle Ground (1991), Arkansas Indians dominated their region until to the nineteenth 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. Rather, the Arkansas Valley Indians, although many of them had immigrated in the 17th century, maintained their sovereign identities and very quickly developed systems for incorporating newcomers, systems that they applied to Europeans as well as Indians. DuVal points out that Arkansas Valley Indians placed great value on connection. 16th-century Spanish explorers in the area failed because they appeared unconnected and seemed reluctant 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 raids, faced opposition from existing populations. They therefore recognized the opportunity to strengthen their position when French explorers arrived in 1670. The French recognized their need for contacts and.