An Infinity of Nations
An Infinity of Nations: How the Native New World Shaped Early North America
MICHAEL WITGEN
Series: Early American Studies
Copyright Date: 2012
Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press
Pages: 456
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt3fj1jp
Search for reviews of this book
Book Info
An Infinity of Nations
Book Description:

An Infinity of Nations explores the formation and development of a Native New World in North America. Until the middle of the nineteenth century, indigenous peoples controlled the vast majority of the continent while European colonies of the Atlantic World were largely confined to the eastern seaboard. To be sure, Native North America experienced far-reaching and radical change following contact with the peoples, things, and ideas that flowed inland following the creation of European colonies on North American soil. Most of the continent's indigenous peoples, however, were not conquered, assimilated, or even socially incorporated into the settlements and political regimes of this Atlantic New World. Instead, Native peoples forged a New World of their own. This history, the evolution of a distinctly Native New World, is a foundational story that remains largely untold in histories of early America. Through imaginative use of both Native language and European documents, historian Michael Witgen recreates the world of the indigenous peoples who ruled the western interior of North America. The Anishinaabe and Dakota peoples of the Great Lakes and Northern Great Plains dominated the politics and political economy of these interconnected regions, which were pivotal to the fur trade and the emergent world economy. Moving between cycles of alliance and competition, and between peace and violence, the Anishinaabeg and Dakota carved out a place for Native peoples in modern North America, ensuring not only that they would survive as independent and distinct Native peoples but also that they would be a part of the new community of nations who made the New World.

eISBN: 978-0-8122-0517-6
Subjects: History
You do not have access to this book on JSTOR. Try logging in through your institution for access.
Log in to your personal account or through your institution.
Table of Contents
Export Selected Citations Export to NoodleTools Export to RefWorks Export to EasyBib Export a RIS file (For EndNote, ProCite, Reference Manager, Zotero, Mendeley...) Export a Text file (For BibTex)
Select / Unselect all
  1. Front Matter
    Front Matter (pp. i-iv)
  2. Table of Contents
    Table of Contents (pp. v-vi)
  3. PROLOGUE: The Long Invisibility of the Native New World
    PROLOGUE: The Long Invisibility of the Native New World (pp. 1-22)

    Eshkibagikoonzhe felt anger, betrayal, and a deep sense of disappointment. He sat behind a table in his home at Gaazagaskwaajimekaag (Leech Lake), an immense lake with nearly two hundred miles of shoreline. Five medals, several war clubs, tomahawks, spears, all splashed with red paint, lay on the table before him. Eshkibagikoonzhe painted his face black for this council session. The Bwaanag (Dakota) had recently killed his son and he mourned his loss. All of the people, the Anishinaabeg (Ojibweg), felt the pain of this death, the loss of a future leader. Eshkibagikoonzhe summoned the man he held responsible for his...

  4. PART I. DISCOVERY
    • [PART I. Introduction]
      [PART I. Introduction] (pp. 23-28)

      This book begins with a simple premise, that it is possible to write a history of Native North America in the seventeenth century. Of course, any history of Native peoples during this time period must also be a history of the encounter between the indigenous peoples of this continent and the European empires that brought settler colonialism to the Western Hemisphere. And so one might expect that this Native history of North America is also a book about the discovery of the New World.

      The idea that Europe “discovered” the Americas is obviously flawed as a historical concept. The two...

    • CHAPTER 1 Place and Belonging in Native North America
      CHAPTER 1 Place and Belonging in Native North America (pp. 29-68)

      In the spring of 1660 the Anishinaabeg converged on a central location below Gichigamiing (Lake Superior), the largest freshwater lake in North America. They came to a village at another smaller lake, Odaawaa Zaaga’igan (Ottawa Lake, which the French designated as Lac Courte Oreilles). This lake connected two important watersheds, one flowing north into Gichigamiing, the other southwest into the headwaters of Gichi-ziibi (Mississippi), a massive river system that flowed from the heartland of North America into a large ocean gulf that framed the southeastern shoreline of the continent. This village was situated at a crossroad of sorts. It linked...

    • CHAPTER 2 The Rituals of Possession and the Problems of Nation
      CHAPTER 2 The Rituals of Possession and the Problems of Nation (pp. 69-108)

      On June 14, 1671, Simon Francois Daumont le Sieur de St. Lusson claimed the interior of North America for the king of France. He voyaged west from Quebec to the Anishinaabe village that the French originally called Sainte Marie du Sault, under orders from the intendant of New France, and “summoned the surrounding peoples” to witness the possession of their country by the king of France. According to the Jesuit Claude Dablon, who provided a written account of this event, “fourteen nations” responded to St. Lusson’s call. The French emissary then convened a public council, bringing together all of the...

  5. PART II. THE NEW WORLD
    • [PART II. Introduction]
      [PART II. Introduction] (pp. 109-115)

      The new world was born when the Atlantic World empires arrived in the Western Hemisphere. The discovery of North America in the early modern era did not, however, result in the conquest and dispossession of all of Native America. In fact, in North America, conquest, rapid depopulation, and total dispossession occurred only in pockets of territory along the east coast of the Atlantic. This historical fact contradicts the mythology of discovery, particularly for America where the stories of Squanto and Pocahontas (the Native cofounders of the Plymouth and Virginia colonies) serve as origin stories for the genesis of an Atlantic...

    • CHAPTER 3 The Rebirth of Native Power and Identity
      CHAPTER 3 The Rebirth of Native Power and Identity (pp. 116-167)

      By the last decades of the seventeenth century new peoples and things moved between the colonized east coast of North America and the indigenous western interior. The settler colonies on the coast developed as part of a larger Atlantic World. The European powers at the center of this world system claimed the western interior of the continent as part of their empires. Some of these claims overlapped, but they also ignored the political realities of the New World in other more important ways. The vast interior of North America was occupied and controlled entirely by Native peoples, making any imperial...

    • CHAPTER 4 European Interlopers and the Politics of the Native New World
      CHAPTER 4 European Interlopers and the Politics of the Native New World (pp. 168-212)

      In 1685 the governor of New France, Jacques-René de Brisay Denonville, prepared a memoir on the state of affairs in Canada for the court of Louis XIV. He delivered a dire warning. The English presence at Hudson’s Bay threatened the very existence of the colony. “For if their establishments continue as they have begun in the three places of this Bay,” he warned, “we must expect to see all of the best commerce from beaver in quality and quantity to go into the hands of the English.” Denonville feared more than just the loss of trade. He feared the collapse...

  6. PART III. THE ILLUSION OF EMPIRE
    • [PART III. Introduction]
      [PART III. Introduction] (pp. 213-222)

      Making sense of the relationships between European empires and the Native peoples of the Great Lakes and western interior of North America requires recognition of an important fact. Namely, the Native social formations within these overlapping territories were not, in spite of European claims, the subjects of European empires or their settler colonies. Neither was their territory meaningfully incorporated into any of the empires with colonies on North America soil. The French occupied a thinly garrisoned string of posts in the major village centers of Anishinaabewaki. Their presence farther west was even more ephemeral. And as Du Lhut’s murder trial...

    • CHAPTER 5 An Anishinaabe Warrior’s World
      CHAPTER 5 An Anishinaabe Warrior’s World (pp. 223-266)

      The hybrid murder trial/condolence ritual staged by Du Lhut preserved the French alliance in the heart of the Great Lakes, but it did not extend the alliance into the west. In fact, Oumamens successfully co-opted the trial in order to stifle opposition to the Anishinaabe alliance with the Dakota among the doodemag of Anishinaabewaki. This success provided the peoples from the village La Pointe and the region west of Gichigamiing (Lake Superior) with secure access to the Native New World emerging in the western interior (Figure 5). The Anishinaabe-Dakota alliance also offered some refuge to French traders who carried goods...

    • CHAPTER 6 The Great Peace and Unraveling Alliances
      CHAPTER 6 The Great Peace and Unraveling Alliances (pp. 267-314)

      In the summer of 1701 the peoples of Anishinaabewaki gathered at Michilimackinac. They came together for an event that for many would be the most spectacular moment of their lives. A fleet of approximately two hundred canoes set off for New France. The warriors and ogimaag of Anishinaabewaki paddled through the waters of their homelands, leaving the lake country for the Ottawa River, and descending the Saint Lawrence to Montreal. They traveled in canoes loaded with beaver peltry, wampum, and slaves taken during the last decade of brutal fighting with the Haudenosaunee. The peoples of Anishinaabewaki came to Montreal to...

  7. PART IV. SOVEREIGNTY:: THE MAKING OF NORTH AMERICA’S NEW NATIONS
    • [PART IV. Introduction]
      [PART IV. Introduction] (pp. 315-321)

      In the first half of the nineteenth century America was engaged in a national conversation about the place of Indian peoples in the republic. Did they belong in the United States? Could they leave the wilderness behind and make the transition to civil society? James Fenimore Cooper answered these questions in his novel of 1826 The Last of the Mohicans. His response took literary form in a showdown between the good and bad Indians who inhabited America’s backcountry during the time of the Seven Years’ War. Like Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, Cooper’s fictional Indian landscape was a...

    • CHAPTER 7 The Counterfactual History of Indian Assimilation
      CHAPTER 7 The Counterfactual History of Indian Assimilation (pp. 322-358)

      In the early years of the republic, American political figures saw themselves as the creators of a new New World. This would be the era of republican nations. There was no place in this new and reimagined America for retrograde social formations, whether they be monarchial empires or Indian tribes. Within three decades of the American Revolution the political leadership of the republic openly called for the expulsion of Native peoples, and the extinction of Native title, on lands claimed by the United States east of the Mississippi River. The call for removal signaled the direction of American ambitions—they...

  8. EPILOGUE: Louis Riel, Native Founding Father
    EPILOGUE: Louis Riel, Native Founding Father (pp. 359-370)

    During the summer of 2002, I was in Winnipeg, Manitoba, doing research for this book. Taking a break from the archives I decided to take a riverboat tour of the city. Winnipeg is located at the junction of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers, and the trip takes tourists through the heart of the old city, which includes a French enclave and a restored Hudson’s Bay Company trading post.

    I picked a bad time to take my tour. The Red River had swollen to record levels and all of the waterfront attractions were inundated with water and mud. The river smelled...

  9. GLOSSARY OF NATIVE TERMS
    GLOSSARY OF NATIVE TERMS (pp. 371-374)
  10. NOTES
    NOTES (pp. 375-426)
  11. INDEX
    INDEX (pp. 427-446)
  12. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
    ACKNOWLEDGMENTS (pp. 447-450)
University of Pennsylvania Press logo