| Title | : | Indigenous Prosperity and American Conquest: Indian Women of the Ohio River Valley, 1690-1792 (Published by the Omohundro Institute of Early American History ... and the University of North Carolina Press) |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 1469640597 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781469640594 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Kindle Edition |
| Number of Pages | : | 360 |
| Publication | : | First published May 11, 2018 |
| Awards | : | Ray Allen Billington Prize (2019) |
By the late eighteenth century, Montreal silversmiths were sending their best work to Wabash Indian villages, Ohio Indian women were setting the fashions for Indigenous clothing, and European visitors were marveling at the sturdy homes and generous hospitality of trading entrepots such as Miamitown. Confederacy, agrarian abundance, and nascent urbanity were, however, both too much and not enough. Kentucky settlers and American leaders—like George Washington and Henry Knox—coveted Indian lands and targeted the Indian women who worked them. Americans took women and children hostage to coerce male warriors to come to the treaty table to cede their homelands. Appalachian squatters, aspiring land barons, and ambitious generals invaded this settled agrarian world, burned crops, looted towns, and erased evidence of Ohio Indian achievement. This book restores the Ohio River valley as Native space.
Indigenous Prosperity and American Conquest: Indian Women of the Ohio River Valley, 1690-1792 (Published by the Omohundro Institute of Early American History ... and the University of North Carolina Press) Reviews
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Although it is not formally organized in this way, this book consists of three parts. The first of these is a description of the way of life which the Native American tribes developed in the Ohio River Valley based on its very fertile land and its bountiful wildlife. The second is a discussion of how the interface between the highly evolved and successful agriculture led by the women and the active ongoing fur trade with the French and British led by the men but supported by the women resulted in a peaceful prosperity which lasted up to and through the American Revolutionary War. The third is a depiction of the ways in which the Americans under the auspices of President Washington in the 1790’s fitfully but eventually succeeded in fostering white settlement largely through violence and cooption of NA lands. This disrupted their lives and eventually displaced them.
Sleeper-Smith makes cogent, well reasoned, and well documented arguments based on her review of hundreds of primary sources like government documents, letters and reports and French and British travel diaries as well as journal articles and books published on the subject matter. The book is highly readable because, unlike many academic scholars, her prose is largely in direct, declarative sentences. A timely use of quotations from various people living, traveling, and/or fighting in the area provide texture and richness to the narrative. So do a number of photos and paintings of the NA people’s clothing, etc which, because of their growing prosperity, evolved into highly elaborate and creative garments by the mid to late 18th century.
As I am less interested in military than in social/cultural history I found the conquest section of the book to be less engaging than the other two. This last part was also redundant in places whereas the first two sections were not. Ie, these latter chapters of the book lacked the tight editing of the prior ones.
But overall this was a solid piece of scholarship that someone with an interest in NA society and culture would find worthwhile. -
"Indiana, like its adjoining neighbors, consumed 20 million acres of forestland before 1870 with only axes, grubbing hoes, horses, and oxen. Men carried the fallen trees on handspikes or rolled them into heaps in ravines, where they were set ablaze. In the first decades of the nineteenth century, thousands of fires burned night and day for months on end, turning the skies swallow. Before the conflagration, these forests had provided an unsurpassed hunting area that had drawn Iroquois south and eastern villagers like the Delaware and Abenaki west to the Ohio River valley. The original 20 million acres of primeval forest that once covered Indiana was nearly enough to encircle the globe one and a quarter time in a mile-wide band. Today, scarcely enough old-growth forest remains to cover the Indianapolis Motor Speedway at the same one-mile width."
Rather than portraying Native Americans of the Ohio River Valley as a “minor obstacle to western expansion,” Sleeper-Smith crafts an image of indigenous prosperity, authority, and resistance. She argues that Native women played an especially crucial role in fostering this prosperity through independently establishing highly successful agrarian practices and facilitating fur trade activity.
Environmental history is too cool.
A must-read for Midwest history people -
A brilliant achievement from a scholar who has devoted her life to narrating and explaining the significance of Indigenous women to the history of the Great Lakes and Ohio River Valley. I’m going to have to revise the way I teach SO MANY THINGS now that I’ve read this convincing book.
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A really brilliant exploration of Indigenous Prosperity in the Ohio River Valley that tackles a lot of longstanding myths by showing the agrarian lifestyle women created (with corn, foraged foods, orchards and more), the ornate and decorated dress styles that emerged in this region, and how the fur trade fostered trade for European cloths. What results is a world of great Indigenous agency as she shines the light on women's work and the power they held in this changing world.
