The Native Ground by DuVal brings another theory and methodology into the scholarly preview that I had not encountered before! DuVal asserted that Indigenous people in the Arkansas River Valley (ARV) area had control over the inter-cultural relations because they outnumbered Europeans until 1815 and the lack of European understanding of the area. She presses that Indigenous people did not want a middle ground, only weak people ground desired that. Incorporating alien people allowed those who were in power to remain in power since they controlled the interactions with foreigners. Her examples throughout the text show friendship were more on indigenous terms, and Indigenous ways of dividing and defining the region would be more effective than European ways for centuries. Indigenous people and Europeans had complex and advanced notions of "us" and "them" but these categories were never as simple as "Indian" and "European."

DuVal rejects the dependency theory (Europeans drawing colonized places into the global market and making them dependent on it) because it does not fit into the ARV model. It is true that Indigenous people did receive dramatic change from Europeans but they adapted to it, they were not swallowed by it. DuVal wants readers to know that the past is a series of adaptions, not conquests. Conquest is a term for colonial exaggeration over mastery of colonized areas. The NAIS (Native American and Indigenous Studies) approach DuVal uses made my class realize that Indigenous history is multi-directional; not the traditionally euro-centric narrative of east to west. While Indigenous history is not area, The Native Ground was a great read.