The Red Man's Continent

In 1912, Theodore Roosevelt addressed the American Historical Association to call for American history to be written as compelling stories of literary quality. Editor Allen Johnson of Yale University responded by publishing the Chronicles of America series: 50 succinct volumes on regional and thematic American history. These books, intended for secondary schools and college students, are expository works of American history composed by competent historians in the 1920's, well before the special pleading and upending of social norms typical of histories after 1970. This series is focused on the mainstream of American political life and leadership from its initial volumes on Native Americans and European colonists to its final volumes on Woodrow Wilson, Canada, and the Hispanic Republics to our South.

The Red Man's Continent, Volume #1 of the Chronicles of America Series, is an introduction to the geography and anthropology of North America. Ellsworth Huntington (1876-1947) was a professor of Geography at Yale and a scholar of anthropology. He was an authority on the effects of environment and climate changes on human civilizations and emphasized the correspondence of racial development with resources, climates, and regions. This overview of the geology, soil, flora, fauna, and pre-Columbian demography is a succinct scientific introduction to the setting of the history of America.