Enduring Nations: Native Americans in the Midwest (review)

This collection of essays is long overdue. Native history in the American Midwest has been sorely neglected relative to the attention given to tribes beyond the Mississippi and in the Southeast—areas where far more violent and contentious interactions between whites and Indians were the norm. Particularly from the post-removal years to the present day, Great Lakes tribes maintained remarkably peaceful relationships with their non-Indian neighbors. But the absence of violence in the region should not imply unimportance. Rather, as the essays in this volume reveal, we can learn much from the innovative strategies of survival Native peoples in the region utilized as they endured waves of missionaries, settlers, and extractive industries in their homelands.

Economic innovation is a predominant theme throughout this collection. Alan Shackleford’s opening essay uses archaeological evidence to highlight the migrations of Illinois Indians prior to the arrival of Europeans. He argues convincingly that the pre-Columbian world was a dynamic one, with variations in the availability of food resources and conflicts with neighboring tribes necessitating migrations from the Ohio country to the eastern Great Plains. In other words, the Native world was not a static one, and colonial historians should consider these patterns of migration relative to the disruptions caused by the arrival of Europeans. As Shackleford suggests, incorporating new groups into one’s socioeconomic world was not an unfamiliar challenge to America’s Native communities—they had been doing so with great success for millennia, and these experiences shaped their response to European encroachment.

The remainder of the volume covers the post-contact period, with considerable focus on the Early Republic period and contests over removal. A defining characteristic of these essays is that Great Lakes tribes had myriad resources with which they could effectively resist federal policies directed at moving or otherwise transforming their way of life. Lucy Eldersveld Murphy explores the economic impact of lead mining among the Winnebago (Ho-Chunk), Sauk, and Fox tribes in northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin, noting that development of this natural resource not only predated the arrival of European traders, but also insulated them from the vagaries of the fur trade that dominated the early mercantile economy of the region. Although the take-over of these mines by avaricious whites is perhaps a predictable and familiar tale, Murphy chooses to instead focus on the decades of success these communities managed, and how women were vitally important as laborers in the mines, a fact that surprised and fascinated early American interlopers.

Several of the essays focus on contests over removal to the west. This is the primary strength of the collection, as the tragedies of southeastern removals have long dominated the historiography of this ugly period in American history to the neglect of experiences outside that area. What such a focus ignores is the remarkable success many communities in the Midwest had in avoiding removal, while also minimizing the equally tragic tales of those who did not. Thomas Colbert seeks to resurrect the role of Sauk leader Keokuk in his people’s struggle to retain their lands in opposition to Black Hawk’s armed resistance. Much maligned as a selfish pawn who sold out his people, Keokuk’s legacy is given a makeover here, and offers a much-needed reminder that figures such as Keokuk are too often ignored in favor of leaders who led violent resistance movements.

The remaining entries on removal illustrate the varying degrees of success Great Lakes tribes had in resisting the threat. Stephen Warren offers a compelling case for the Shawnee who adopted an approach in the vein of the South’s Five Civilized Tribes. In Ohio many communities worked hard to become good neighbors, focusing their energy on doing everything asked of them by missionaries and resident agents of the federal government. Bradley Birzer makes the case that the wealthy Miami mixed-blood trader Jean Baptiste Richardville “labored diligently to protect the interests of the Miami Tribe,” rather than being the profiteer...