"America ends in Tuktoyaktuk not merely because the road ends there, but because Tuktoyaktuk represents the final stages of a process of social and cultural contact that has taken five centuries to unfold." (Chapter 1, 2)

"The scramble of peoples and cultures in North American has created a cultural mixture that probably will not be repeated in world history until we encounter life on another planet." (Chapter 1, 5)

"The continent did not speak to the newcomers because the civilizations of North American did not always speak in loud stone. They spoke in earth and wood, in fiber and textile, in bead and shell." (Chapter 2, 17)

"Today our civilization has turned to plastics made from petrochemicals, and to metals, but the people who settled American created a civilization based on wood." (Chapter 5, 57)

"The Indians and colonists together synthesized a frontier culture from their markedly different traditions, and the core of this frontier culture...