The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650 - 1815

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1991

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Introduction

Chapters 1-2

Chapters 3-5

Chapters 6-8

Chapters 9-10

Chapter 11-Epilogue

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Chapters 9-10Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 9 Summary: “The Contest of Villagers”

The American revolution resulted in the return of an expansionist power to the pays d’en haut and an increase in violence. The Americans sought revenge for the raids committed by British-backed Algonquians. Algonquians also tried to keep Kentucky out of American control. As a result, the Americans sent invasions into the region to deal with the situation, such as that led by George Rogers Clark in 1778. As a Kentucky land speculator, Clark sought to protect the new settlements threatened by Indigenous raids. However, once in Kaskaskia, he began following the French methods of interaction with the Algonquians because of their prior success in the region. His success in the pays d'en haut largely came from his presentation of the commonalities of life shared by the Algonquians, French, and Americans in the backcountry. His propensity toward using fear and violence aligned him with the Algonquian idea of a war leader but also meant that his position was unstable. Opposing Clark in the colonial struggle for dominance was the Lieutenant Governor of Quebec, Henry Hamilton. While Hamilton engaged with the Algonquians and their rituals, his reliance on British protocol caused issues with their alliance. He struggled to balance military discipline with respect for customs. In the final confrontation between the two at Vincennes, the outcome was determined by the decision of many of the French militia and Algonquian warriors in Hamilton's army to desert. In recounting the event, Clark and Hamilton manipulated symbolism for their respective narratives. However, the complex reality of the pays d'en haut contradicted the simplified stories they created. As White argues, the interactions between Algonquians, Iroquois, French, British, and Americans on a personal level were more influential in shaping the region than at an imperial level. For the Algonquians, their leaders following the Revolution were less focused on diplomatic concerns and more on local ones, which isolated their villages. While the British and Americans sought to build new alliances with these men, their lack of understanding of the Algonquian culture led to misunderstandings. For example, the Americans failed to grasp the significance of presents and saw them as bribes rather than symbols of good faith.

The American frontier had its own agenda. The settlers, who took an indiscriminately hostile view of Indigenous Americans and desired their land, frequently attacked those who might have otherwise helped them. Despite the prevalence of hatred, the acts of violence, captivity, and forced adoption present traces of the middle ground’s shared understanding, even as it faced erasure. Because of the issue of American influence in the region due to their conflict with the Algonquians, the British attempted to take control. The French, meanwhile, fought back with the help of the Spanish. They attacked British posts not to help the Spanish or Americans, but in an attempt to recapture the fur trade. Shifting rivalries prevented the empires from gaining control in the pays d’en haut. The tribes were, however, scattered and disorganized. Once the British repaired their alliances with the Algonquians using their trade and gifts, they attempted to turn them against the Americans. These attempts never saw full fruition. Their understanding of the Algonquian system of chieftainship and reciprocity was shaky, and the gifting strained their resources. Ultimately, the attempts to weaponize the Algonquians failed because they “were warriors, not soldiers” (440) and would not continue the sustained fighting the British needed for victory. The British called for peace and ceded the pays d’en haut to the Americans. Despite peace between Britain and the rebels, conflicts between settlers and Indigenous Americans resumed, perpetuating the cycle of violence in the pays d'en haut.

Chapter 10 Summary: “Confederacies”

Chapter 10 focuses on the confederacies on both the American and Algonquian sides between 1785 and 1795. At this point, the village-level conflicts butted against broader political issues on both sides. The confederacies both had problems controlling their young men, who, on both sides, were tangled in cycles of hatred and historical violence. However, White notes the similarities end there. The American confederacy was centralized and had financial and military support, none of which applied to the Algonquian one. However, it was weaker than the Americans liked. This became evident as it struggled with financial issues and an inability to enforce its will against the settlers. Settlers argued against government policies and ignored claims to land from the federal government and the Algonquians. As a result, dealing with them became just as much of an issue to the American government as handling the Algonquians.

To explain the political interplay of the time, White focuses on a French village, Vincennes, and emphasizes its social and ethnic complexity. Once a post-Revolutionary middle ground, Vincennes faced challenges in incorporating Americans due to factors like the liquor trade, power struggles, and the decline of traditional authority figures. While the French and Algonquians had formed a middle ground relationship there, the presence of the Americans complicated the issue due to both the influence of liquor and the actions of inexperienced American leaders. The Americans and Algonquians clashed. While the French initially abstained from the fighting, they stepped in to prevent outright war after the murder of an Algonquian man at the hands of Americans. Clark was brought in to deal with the Algonquians, who were still threatening war. However, his expedition crumbled, and he finally lost military and political control. In the strife that followed, the middle ground became fragmented. This violence at Vincennes fueled the creation of the western confederation. It sought to create a new relationship with both the Americans and the British in the aftermath of the Revolution. The confederation’s key focus was shared land ownership among its members; those who ceded land to the Americans betrayed the group. However, the confederation was plagued with internal struggles. Despite attempts to unify the tribes in 1786, factional divisions persisted, and the confederation remained a loose alliance. Its weaknesses became evident leading up to the Treaty of Fort Harmar. Attempts to negotiate with the Americans failed as the internal struggles intensified. In the aftermath, the confederation shifted and aligned with the allied British. White shifts from Vincennes to Kekionga, which he calls “the seat of the confederacy” (481). This was a strategically located outpost in the Ohio Valley characterized by its multi-ethnic population. The middle ground thrived in the interactions between these different people. While the social world here had clear boundaries, with actions that blurred them considered disgraceful, the community engaged in a shared life. Because of this interconnectedness in Kekionga’s social sphere and the confederation’s close ties to the British, General Harmar’s confrontation was not just against the physical place but the middle ground as a concept.

In the following battles between the United States and the confederation, the latter proved successful in the defeat of General Harmar in 1790 and St. Clair in 1791. This contradicted the expectations of the Americans, both Congress and the settlers, before the conflicts. However, these victories came at the cost of an increasing dependence on the British. The confederation required their assistance for food to support the involved warriors and logistical aid to keep them together throughout longer campaigns. British agents acted as mediators while also pursuing their interests. White describes the diplomatic interactions between the Americans and the Algonquians as a struggle over images rather than specific negotiated terms. The construction of the "other" played a crucial role, with both sides interpreting actions and deciding responses based on this. Efforts at peace in 1792 resulted in a treaty at Vincennes with some Wabash villagers, but the Senate rejected it. The subsequent Sandusky council faced challenges due to disagreements over boundaries, revealing deep divisions within the confederation. White ends the chapter with the failed battle at Fort Recovery battle. This weakened the confederation, and the British were unable to provide the anticipated assistance in the aftermath. The Algonquians, facing internal issues and disillusionment with the British, began to consider peace with the Americans.

Chapters 9-10 Analysis

This section begins to trace the accelerating loss of the middle ground, covering the aftermath of the American Revolution and the deteriorating interactions between the Indigenous Americans of the pays d'en haut and the United States; it follows the trajectory indicated by White in his Introduction. While the Revolution did return an imperial power to influence in the region, White again warns against viewing the conflict from a purely top-down view: “The Revolution and the Indian wars that followed were imperial contests for dominance in the region, but they were also village struggles for power” (400). On a macro-scale, the arrival of the United States marked a departure from the previous middle ground approach. The Americans’ policies toward the Indigenous Americans differed notably from what was seen before. The British, while often exploitative, had attempted to engage in some level of negotiation and collaboration. In contrast, the Americans tended to adopt a more aggressive and uncompromising stance, especially when dealing with resistance toward westward expansion. This change shows how crucial the theme of Cultural Change and Adaptation is in the analysis of the middle ground.

Again White focuses on the settlers as a destructive force on the middle ground as exacerbated tensions further perpetuated cycles of violence. White contends that, as this continued, a notable shift occurred in the white American perception of Indigenous Americans. The rise of "othering," a process of portraying a group as fundamentally different and threatening, gained prominence. This was driven by an increasing tendency view all Indigenous American people as the same and the nuance of different tribes and their varied relationships with the European powers was often ignored. Instead, this homogenization facilitated the construction of a common enemy, and was used to justify indiscriminate acts of violence. White hints that the American approach shifted from one of colonial control to open genocide: “Murder gradually and inexorably became the dominant American Indian policy” (417). As “Indian hating” prevailed, what remained of the middle ground was (deliberately) diminished. This was because the middle ground thrived in the blurring of boundaries between the Algonquians and Europeans, while those who hated them wanted the borders to remain intact (or for the removal of Algonquians altogether). As White shows, the “Indian haters,” thought that “becoming civilized invariably meant becoming white, which Indians could never do” (422). Because crossing cultural boundaries was a threat, captives were a threat. White contrasts their treatment by Algonquians, who attempted to assimilate captives, with the backcountry fighters, who usually killed theirs. The settlers also took this view for those of their own by believing “A captured Indian hater should have died or escaped. To remain raised the uncomfortable possibility that the Algonquians were right” (424). For these people, segregation between white and Indigenous American was an absolute.

Continuing with the theme of The Complexities of Colonialism, white shows that even racist “Indian hating” had some unintended effect in favor of a version of the middle ground. White positions George Rogers Clark as the face of “Indian hating” policies among white Americans: Clark was openly and racistly intolerant towards Indigenous Americans, yet paradoxically employed “soft” French techniques for negotiating with them. This apparent contradiction stems from Clark's pragmatic acknowledgment that the French system yielded results, despite a lack of understanding of why. Regarding his logic for this choice, White says, “He tried to construe the French mode as making Indians fear him, but French methods inevitably made him act at times as if he were an Indian lover” (402-03). The dichotomy in Clark's actions highlights the strategic decisions made by individuals in the colonial context, even when their personal beliefs clashed with their chosen negotiation methods.