In essential ways, both Indians and white Americans see their common past as a story shaped by violence, competing martyrdoms and the collision of irreconcilable opposites. In a nation that is often impatient with history, Indians are still dominated by it in a visceral way. Indeed, it is impossible to even begin to understand modern Indians without taking into account the lingering power of events that the rest of the nation has pushed to the margins of memory.

Two new books revisit this dark history with unvarnished accounts...