| Title | : | Masters of the Middle Waters: Indian Nations and Colonial Ambitions Along the Mississippi |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0674987675 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780674987678 |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 360 |
| Publication | : | Published March 11, 2019 |
America's waterways were once the superhighways of travel and communication. Cutting a central line across the landscape, with tributaries connecting the South to the Great Plains and the Great Lakes, the Mississippi River meant wealth, knowledge, and power for those who could master it. In this ambitious and elegantly written account of the conquest of the West, Jacob Lee offers a new understanding of early America based on the long history of warfare and resistance in the Mississippi River valley.
Lee traces the Native kinship ties that determined which nations rose and fell in the period before the Illinois became dominant. With a complex network of allies stretching from Lake Superior to Arkansas, the Illinois were at the height of their power in 1673 when the first French explorers--fur trader Louis Jolliet and Jesuit priest Jacques Marquette--made their way down the Mississippi. Over the next century, a succession of European empires claimed parts of the midcontinent, but they all faced the challenge of navigating Native alliances and social structures that had existed for centuries. When American settlers claimed the region in the early nineteenth century, they overturned 150 years of interaction between Indians and Europeans.
Masters of the Middle Waters shows that the Mississippi and its tributaries were never simply a backdrop to unfolding events. We cannot understand the trajectory of early America without taking into account the vast heartland and its waterways, which advanced and thwarted the aspirations of Native nations, European imperialists, and American settlers alike.
Masters of the Middle Waters: Indian Nations and Colonial Ambitions Along the Mississippi Reviews
-
The first chapter of this book is freaking amazing, it is something I've wanted for a looooong time: a truly deep history of (a part of) North America. Basically going from Cahokia in the 900s to the arrival of Inoka (Illinois) people in the 1500-1600s. After that, I was less into it. Overall I think it was all right, though there are a few really weird blatantly wrong statements (the author claims race was only invented in the early 1800s, which, okay kind of but that doesn't mean it wasn't a thing before then. also he repeatedly seems to imply that the Fox Wars were due to intertribal conflicts, rather than being a genocidal campaign by the French). It's a little jumpy because of the large timescale, with each chapter reading more like a vignette of a period than having an overall coherent "storyline." But! so history goes, I guess.
-
A rather dense historical monograph that nonetheless revels in the intricacies and complexities of Illinois Country from the 17th to 19th centuries.