This is the stirring, crowded, epic story - laden with courageous deeds and dreams fulfilled and betrayed - of the hundreds of Indian nations that have inhabited our continent for more than 15,000 years and their centuries-long struggle with the Europeans who arrived in ever-increasing hordes after 1492.

Here is American history from the Native American point of view - a long saga of friendship, treachery, war, and ultimately the loss of homeland that began when Columbus disembarked at Hispaniola among the Arawaks, and came to a climax when the last groups of Sioux moved onto a reservation following the battle of Wounded Knee in 1890.

500 Nations is a story of leaders, customs, political systems, and ways of life - of men and women whom we meet through their own words, and others whose achievements have been resurrected from memory, memoir, and ancient documents.