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Muddy ground : native peoples, Chicago's portage, and the transformation of a continent
- Author / Creator
- Available as
- Online
- Summary
-
"John W. 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, Fr...
"John W. 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. Each group sought to harness Chicago's portages as a space of waterborne movement in a bid for wider regional control. Nelson compellingly demonstrates that even deep within the interior, power relations fluctuated based on the control of waterways and local environmental knowledge. The book challenges readers to take waterborne mobility and strategic geography seriously while showing how Native peoples, along with incoming Europeans, leveraged Chicago's waterways and portage paths to consolidate their control over the region. Pushing beyond political and cultural explanations for Indigenous-European relations and eventual US conquest in the borderlands of North America, Nelson shows how the environments in which collaboration and contest took place directly influenced such interactions"--
Details
- Creator
- John William Nelson
- Format
- Books
- Language
- English
- Publication
-
- Chapel Hill, North Carolina : The University of North Carolina Press, [2023]
- ©2023
- Physical Details
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- 1 online resource (275 pages) : illustrations
- ISBNs
- 9798890864307, 146967520X, 1469675226, 9781469675190, 9781469675206, 1469675196, 9781469675220
- OCLC
- on1397563302
- Includes bibliographical references and index.
- Cover -- Half Title -- Series Page -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Dedication -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Introduction. Murky Waters and Muddy Ground: Continental Conquests and the View from Chicago -- A Guide to the Peoples of Chicago's Portages -- Chapter One. Openings: From Ecotone to Borderland -- Chapter Two. Barriers: Imperial Ambitions and Failures at Chicago's Portages -- Chapter Three. Crossroads: Indigenous Resurgence at the Portages -- Chapter Four. Thoroughfare: American Order and the Threat of a Fluid Frontier -- Chapter Five. Floodgates: Rendering Indigenous Space into an American Place -- Epilogue. Closings: Rethinking the History of Chicago and the Continent -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- Index
Subjects
- Indians of North America -- Great Lakes Region (North America) -- History.
- Indians of North America -- Illinois -- History.
- Portages -- Illinois -- Chicago -- History.
- Portages -- Great Lakes Region (North America) -- History.
- Indian trails -- Illinois -- History.
- Indian trails -- Great Lakes Region (North America) -- History.
- United States -- Race relations -- History.