Generalizations about Indians and Empires

Where Europeans settled in large numbers, built farms and towns, established mining operations, etc., they soon established control.

In the interior of the Americas, away from areas of dense European settlement, Indians remained more independent, into the 20th century in some places

L.G. Moses & Margaret Connell Szasz, “’My Father, have pity on me!’ Indian Revitalization Movements of the Late-Nineteenth Century,” in Religion in the West, ed. F.M. Szasz (Manhattan, KA: Sunflower Univ. Press, 1984)

In the Spirit of Crazy Horse (PBS documentary; YouTube)

Karl Jacoby, Shadows at Dawn http://brown.edu/Research/Aravaipa/peoples.html

Pekka Hämäläinen, “The Rise and Fall of Plains Indian Horse Cultures,” Journal of American History 90 (Dec. 2003), 833-62

Middle Ground Relations

French colonization efforts, 1500s-1600s

Wars with the Iroquois, 1609-1701

Inability to use force to control Indian peoples

Defining the Middle Ground

Places where neither side could determine the relationship (militarily, economically, politically)

For pragmatic reasons, negotiated a third culture, a common world neither wholly Indian nor European Each side was forced to adapt, but also had some room to adapt

on its own terms

Indians and Europeans were not exotic or alien to each other

Sometimes was violent

The middle ground declined when European-Americans became dominant economically and militarily

The “Pays d’en Haut” or Upper Country

Examples of the Middle Ground

Fur trade “Coureur de bois” &

“Voyageurs”

Military relations

Inter-marriage “country” marriages; “á la

façon du pays”

Métis

Missions

Onontio

Ties Between Metropolitan Centers and Frontiers

Impact on Indians

Rising standards of living (e.g., new opportunities for Indian women)

Connection to military alliances

Technological dependence, over time

Environmental degradation Decline of fur-bearing game

and food game in the 1700s, east of the Mississippi

Disease

Decline of the Middle Ground

British conquest of New France (1760) Proclamation Line (1763)

Economic decline for Indians in eastern North America, 1750-1820

Social problems in Indian communities “shatter zones”

American Revolution Joseph Brant, Molly Brant, & General

William Johnson

Impact of the Revolution & Independence

The War of 1812

Policies in the U.S. and BNA (Canada): reservations & removal

Conclusions

Successful adaptation, resistance for centuries by many Indians

The material basis of Indian decline was environmental (disease, loss of resources), economic (decline of fur trade, greater manufacturing power of European-Americans), and political-military

In North America, they became wards, victims, only after loss of power (no longer could determine the course of their own adaptation)