Land Too Good For Indians: Northern Indian Removal by John P. Bowes (review)

Book Reviews 101 receivership of the Lincoln Motor Company (eventually acquired by Ford); the bankruptcy of McLouth Steel (representative of the economic trials of the auto industry and all those dependent upon it); and the bankruptcy of Dow Corning (the largest bankruptcy case filed in the Eastern District at the time). The final chapter of the book is devoted to the bankruptcy case of the City of Detroit, which dwarfed all other bankruptcy filings in the history of the Eastern District of Michigan. Ball deftly walks the reader through the circumstances that led up to the bankruptcy filing, the arguments about eligibility, the “grand bargain,” and the resolution of the disputes with the financial creditors and pensioners. It is a feel-good conclusion for a story of failures and successes, the adversity and justice, in the Eastern District bankruptcy courts. The book is a good read for those interested in the history of the courts, the history of Michigan, or the history of bankruptcy. Laura B. Bartell Wayne State University Law School John P. Bowes, Land Too Good For Indians: Northern Indian Removal. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2016. Pp. 306. Bibliography. Illustrations. Index. Notes. Cloth: $29.95. The history of northern Indian removal, the dispossession and destruction of the Indigenous communities of the lower Great Lakes in the nineteenth century, cannot be seen through, nor should be framed by, removal era legislation like the Indian Removal Act or typified by the Cherokee Trail of Tears or the Black Hawk War. Historian John P. Bowes, in his recently published and excellently researched Land Too Good For Indians: Northern Indian Removal, argues that “In the northern states and territories in particular, removal did not occur on the grand scale,” and, as such, it proved to be “fragmented and filtered through a diverse set of political, economic, and regional interests” (p. 6). Bowes’ elegant exploration of the removal experiences of the Wyandots, Potawatomis, Shawnees, and Delawares breaks down traditional chronologies, localities, and assumptions, revealing a narrative of the American Republic, both past and present, where Indian removal was an ongoing process not the result of a particular time or place. “The narrative,” Bowes writes, “is meant to foster a realization of the manner in which Indian removal was 102 The Michigan Historical Review a societal creation—the work of numerous people who were not always working toward the same goal” (p 11). Nevertheless, the contradictory rhetoric, impulses, desires, means, and policy still “facilitated the dispossession and relocation of thousands of men, women, and children over the course of decades” (p. 11). Across seven chapters—that range from the violence of the early republic, the rhetoric of removal and federal policy, the Delawares’ response to Euro-American expansion, a localized study of the Sandusky River region of Ohio, an exploration of the 1833 Treaty of Chicago, and finally, an analysis of the Odawa and Ojibwe experience in Michigan— Land Too Good For Indians offers a compelling and engaging portrait of a far-flung region and a diverse array of experiences. Deeply researched and eloquently argued, Bowes, despite his protestation that his book cannot be all things to everybody, succeeds in doing much to re-imagine the lower Great Lakes. And, in doing so, he reveals a vibrant history of Indian removal that transcends both historiographical assumptions and periodization and shows how Indian removal was not an isolated event but an ongoing process that connects past and present. By the end of the book, Bowes reminds his readers that “The relationship between American Indian nations and the United States has never consisted of a one-sided conversation” (p. 234). And he reminds us that despite the continuance of settler colonialism, the Indigenous leaders and members of “sovereign nations are in a better position to make people listen to what they are saying” (p. 234). Justin Carroll Indiana University East Gregory Evans Dowd. Groundless: Rumors, Legends, and Hoaxes on the Early American Frontier. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015. Pp. 391. Illustrations. Index. Notes. Cloth: $34.95. That rumors filled conversations, letters, and newspapers in early America should surprise no one familiar with the period. Uncertainty defined much of the information that circulated among Native...