On Savage Shores: How Indigenous Americans Discovered Europe

Pennock (history, Univ. of Sheffield; Bonds of Blood) shatters the Eurocentric understanding of the Age of Discovery with this insightful analysis of the experiences of Indigenous Americans who traveled across the Atlantic to Europe after 1492. In this eye-opening history, Pennock explains how tens of thousands of Aztecs, Mayans, Totonac, Inuit, and others from North America, Mesoamerica, Central America, and South America influenced the development of Europe. She provides a time line of key dates when Indigenous people influenced European expansion with their cultures, history, religions, science, and more. Her refreshing approach serves as a reminder that countless Indigenous peoples have been explorers, nobles, pioneers, artists, diplomats, and pathfinders for their people. Today’s movement to find the remains of Indigenous peoples buried in unmarked graves in European lands for return to their native lands provides hope for humanity. Pennock explains how European xenophobia motivated her to reveal the genuine attitudes of Indigenous people about the Europeans, although her meticulous research was frustrated by accounts written by Europeans who filtered Indigenous voices.