The Western Delaware Indian Nation, 1730–1795: Warriors and Diplomats by Richard S. Grimes (review)

In this compelling and deeply researched account of Delaware migration in the eighteenth century, Richard Grimes examines the formation and decline of nationhood among the western Delaware. Broadly speaking, it reconstructs how the Delaware's search for a new homeland after 1730 stimulated a process of unification among the three phratries, or kinship groups (Turtle, Turkey, and Wolf) of the Delaware.

Departing from the established trajectory of the Delaware as a conquered people—victims of Iroquois aggression and European territorial expansion—the book provides a new approach to how the Delaware confronted the changing geopolitical landscape of eighteenth-century America. Grimes argues that ethnic unification allowed the Delaware to pursue new opportunities and meet the challenges of the trans-Allegheny West. Although unification was stimulated by migration, the western Delaware actively engaged in a process of sociopolitical reconstruction to create a distinct national identity and assert their diplomatic and military power. They changed from a matrilocal to a patrilocal society, embraced a masculine-centered culture, and created a national council to give themselves diplomatic traction with European colonial governments. However, the new political order of the Delaware was short-lived. Grimes argues that measures intended to establish greater cohesion among the Delaware had the opposite effect, ultimately pulling the western Delaware apart during the American Revolution. The Great Council did not possess "the maturity or experience as a body to withstand conflict and internal factionalism" created by this war (225). After the revolution, continued land loss and forced migration—circumstances that previously created unification—served to further destabilize the nation. Political schisms and the lack of a homeland to stabilize the nation caused the western Delaware nation to disintegrate in the nineteenth century.

Drawing on an impressive range of multidisciplinary evidence, including oral traditions of the Delaware, observations of Moravian missionaries and colonial officials and contemporary anthropological studies, The Western Delaware Nation departs from existing scholarship by highlighting the Delaware's proactive response to European invasion. Carrying the story into the nineteenth century, Grimes concludes that the fate of the western Delaware was ultimately "typical of the Native American experience … a story of futile adaptations in the face of overwhelming odds" (281). While Grimes is correct in his conclusions that the western Delaware nation never achieved lasting political cohesion, the book misses an opportunity to complicate the narrative of inevitable declension by extending its earlier observations regarding Delaware adaptability to the wider chronology. Focusing on how different groups of geographically displaced Delaware reordered and reconstituted their worlds in the nineteenth century would perhaps have been a more suitable conclusion to a book which predominately promotes the idea of indigenous agency.

Notwithstanding, this well-written and painstakingly researched study is a welcome addition to the literature of a period in which scholars often overlook certain indigenous groups at the expense of narrating Iroquois dominance. Offering a detailed account of Delaware migration and thoroughly considering the processes involved in the construction of western Delaware nationhood, this book makes a significant contribution to the field of early American history.