Muddy ground : native peoples, Chicago's portage, and the transformation of a continent / John William Nelson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Nelson, John William, author.

Series:

David J. Weber series in the new borderlands history.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Indians of North America--Great Lakes Region (North America)--History.

Indians of North America.

Indians of North America--Illinois--History.

Portages--Illinois--Chicago--History.

Portages.

Portages--Great Lakes Region (North America)--History.

Indian trails--Illinois--History.

Indian trails.

Indian trails--Great Lakes Region (North America)--History.

Indigenous people--Illinois--History.

Indigenous people--Great Lakes Region (North America)--History.

United States--Race relations--History.

United States.

Local Subjects:

Indigenous people--Illinois--History.

Indigenous people--Great Lakes Region (North America)--History.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (275 pages) : illustrations.

Place of Publication:

The University of North Carolina Press 2023

Chapel Hill, North Carolina : The University of North Carolina Press, [2023]

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, 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"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

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.

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9798890864307

9781469675206

146967520X

9781469675220

1469675226

OCLC:

1397563302