Histories of Native America and the Port of Los Angeles Win Bancroft Prize

A sweeping history of Native Americans and a study of the creation of the port of Los Angeles in the 19th century have won this year’s Bancroft Prize, one of the most distinguished honors for scholars of American history.

Kathleen DuVal’s “Native Nations: A Millennium in North America,” published by Random House, was described by the prize jurors as “a seamless panorama of 1,000 years of American history,” which draws on both written records and Native oral histories to tie together the stories of the more than 500 Indigenous nations who inhabit what is now the United States. “By crafting a historical narrative that introduces readers to a new national story,” the jurors write, “DuVal helps explain the Indigenous cultural and political renaissance of our own age.”

DuVal, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is part of a new wave of scholars of Native America, who challenge the idea that the defeat of Indigenous people was inevitable, and who emphasize their resilience and continued cultural vitality. Hamilton Cain, reviewing the 752-page volume in The Minneapolis Star Tribune, called it “intimate yet comprehensive,” adding, “No single volume can adequately depict the gamut of Indigenous cultures, but DuVal‘s comes close.”

The second winner, James Tejani’s “A Machine to Move Ocean and Earth: The Making of the Port of Los Angeles and America,” published by W.W. Norton, reconstructs the complex interactions between 19th-century engineers, merchants, military, Native tribes and others that turned the tiny San Pedro estuary into what is today the busiest seaport in the Western Hemisphere.

“By returning the attention of historians to infrastructure, material objects, and logistics,” the Bancroft jurors wrote, “Tejani opens our eyes to a new way of thinking about the trans-Mississippi West.”

Tejani, an associate professor at California State University, grew up near San Pedro Bay, and occasionally weaves personal observations into the history. Julia Flynn Siler, reviewing the book in The Wall Street Journal, described it as packed with “detailed, careful scholarship” that turns the story into “a lens through which to view American expansionism.”

The prize, which awards $10,000 to each winner, was created in 1948 by the trustees of Columbia University, with a bequest from the historian Frederic Bancroft. Entries — 249 this year — are evaluated for “scope, significance, depth of research and richness of interpretation,” according to the prize announcement.