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A Prophet Has Arisen The Archaeology of Nativism among the Nineteenth-Century Algonquin Peoples of Illinois Mark J. Wagner [The Indians say that they have heard that] a Prophet . . . [has] arisen in England who informed the Great Father of all the British and Indians that the Great Spirit was much displeased with the Americans [and that] the Island (America) belongs to the Indians . . . and that when they fought the Americans the Great Spirit would be on their side and they [the Americans] would always be beaten. —Thomas Forsyth 1813 In the introduction to this volume, Mitchell and Scheiber note that colonial discourse or the historical construction by Europeans of culturally biased narratives regarding non-Western peoples served to justify the social domination and material exploitation of colonized peoples. Such discourse was not simply a reflection of the dominant relationship of Europeans to such individuals and groups, but a crucial aspect of the production and reproduction of this type of power relationship. Trouillot (1995:xix) has similarly linked power to the construction of historical narratives, noting that the production of such narratives “involves the unequal contribution of competing groups and individuals who have unequal access to the means for such production.” This unequal relationship makes some “narratives possible (or even dominant) . . . [while] disfavored or unlucky voices” are silenced (Crisp 2005:181). In this chapter, I address the issue of colonial discourse through the use of archaeological data recovered from three late eighteenth- to early nineteenth-century Algonquian-occupied sites in Illinois (see fig. 6.1). At the beginning of this period at ca. 1790, politically independent Native 6 108 Mark J. Wagner American groups controlled most of Illinois. By the mid-1830s, however, all had ceded their independence and lands to the United States and had been removed west of the Mississippi River. During this period, many groups splintered into two factions—nativists and accommodationists —that advocated diametrically opposed strategies for dealing with Americans. Nativist prophets urged Native American peoples to return Figure 6.1. Areas of indigenous and American settlement within Illinois, ca. 1812. A Prophet Has Arisen 109 to what they believed to be the “traditional” way of life that existed at the time they first encountered Europeans. They instructed their followers to stop using Western material culture, alcohol, and food items; to not sell or cede tribal lands; and to join with other native groups and resist by force, if necessary, attempts to change their way of life (Dowd 1992; Edmunds 1983, 1985). Accomodationists, in contrast, attempted to ensure their own survival as well as that of their followers by adopting varying degrees of Western material culture, clothing, subsistence practices, and ideology. Accomodationist leaders rejected nativist pleas for intertribal unity and instead sought to protect their own interests and those of their followers through cooperation with American officials and missionaries (Bollwerk 2006:117–142; Mann 1999:399–427). Such factionalism was not confined to the Great Lakes region but also occurred among southeastern Native American peoples, including the Creek, for which the split between nativists (or traditionalists) and accomodationists who adopted American forms of agriculture, clothing , and technology culminated in the violent “Red Sticks” rebellion of 1813 (see Wesson, this volume). During the initial phase of this vicious internecine conflict, the traditionalist-minded Red Sticks rebels vividly demonstrated the negative symbolic meaning that Western-style clothing , crops, farming equipment, and draft animals held for them through their wholesale destruction of these items (Martin 1991:42). I view the nativist movement in the Eastern Woodlands as a dynamic syncretic tradition in which nativist peoples actively created a social identity through which they expressed opposition to American attempts at subjugation . Following Pauketat (2001b:13), I define this tradition as one in which nativists expressed resistance to American domination through contrary practices such as “persistent culinary practices, community patterns, and artifact forms . . . in spite of their knowledge of and access to [some] EuroAmerican utensils, recipes, and worldviews.” In the case of the nativists, behaviors and material culture items viewed as crucial to Algonquin identity, including indigenous forms of settlement, subsistence, architecture, and dress, were emphasized and reproduced through daily practice. Nativists also utilized selected European and American material culture items and animals viewed as compatible with such an identity, including firearms, hunting and trapping equipment, and the horse. At the same time, they 110 Mark J. Wagner consciously resisted or rejected other types of Western material culture and behaviors—including clothing, the raising of wheat and domesticated food animals, and settlement...

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