Muddy Ground

Native Peoples, Chicago's Portage, and the Transformation of a Continent
Erscheinungsjahr 2023
ISBN: 978-1-4696-7520-6
Verlag: The University of North Carolina Press

Buch, Englisch, 288 Seiten, Paperback, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 494 g

Reihe: The David J. Weber Series in the New Borderlands History

In early North America, carrying watercraft—usually canoes—and supplies across paths connecting one body of water to another was essential in the establishment of both Indigenous and European mobility in the continent's interior. The Chicago portage, a network of overland canoe routes that connected the Great Lakes and Mississippi watersheds, grew into a crossroads of interaction as Indigenous and European people vied for its control during early contact and colonization. John William Nelson charts the many peoples that traversed and sought power along Chicago's portage paths from the seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries, including Indigenous Illinois traders, French explorers, Jesuit missionaries, Meskwaki warriors, British officers, Anishinaabe headmen, and American settlers. Nelson compellingly demonstrates that even deep within the interior, power relations fluctuated based on the control of waterways and local environmental knowledge.

Pushing beyond political and cultural explanations for Indigenous-European relations in the borderlands of North America, Nelson places environmental and geographic realities at the center of the history of Indigenous Chicago, offering a new explanation for how the United States gained control of the North American interior through a two-pronged subjugation of both the landscapes and peoples of the continent.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Nelson, John William

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Amerikanische Geschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Volkskunde Minderheiten, Interkulturelle & Multikulturelle Fragen
• Technische Wissenschaften Umwelttechnik | Umwelttechnologie Umwelttechnik
• Geowissenschaften Umweltwissenschaften Umwelttechnik
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Soziologie von Migranten und Minderheiten

Über Autor(innen)

John William Nelson is assistant professor of history at Texas Tech University.