Fort St. Joseph Revealed: The Historical Archaeology of a Fur Trading Post by Michael S. Nassaney

Abstract

Book Reviews 183 of Metis identity merely to “place” would allow. Yet, according to Mackinnon, both women sought to subsume their Metisness in the public sphere, a manner of self-preservation that, she writes, continues today among the Metis. Just as the Fur Trade in the Great Lakes relied heavily on French, Metis, and Indian “kinship networks” to succeed, the same is true of the Metis communities described in this monograph. Mackinnon examines the importance played by the resilient trading families that Delorme Smith and Hardisty Lougheed belonged to. It was these families who provided the skills to perform well the duties necessary for a pioneer in isolated settings, but also skills of “leadership, diplomacy, and social convening.” (126) Those skills, Mackinnon asserts, were learned through both the European and Indigenous ancestries of these Metis women. Mackinnon’s study of the lives of two important Metis women from the late and post-Fur Trade era is also a study of the nature of Metis identity. According to Mackinnon, at times their identities relied on “cultural, adaptive, and situational survival strategies” (348) to cope with their unique Indigenous heritage, but in their public lives they were remembered mostly as Euro-North American women rather than as Metis matriarchs. This volume is a lengthy and in-depth study, well-sourced and footnoted with reliable and respected scholarly support. It benefits from numerous historic photographs of the subjects. While it is not directly related to Michigan history, the experiences of the subjects of this work bear a great deal of similarity to Michigan’s own fur-trade, Metis women such as Magdelaine LaFramboise and Agatha de LaVigne. Mackinnon’s approach that Metis culture predated Red River culture will resonate with many Great Lakes descendants of early French fur traders and their Indigenous wives. James LaForest Editor, Voyageur Heritage Press (Voyageurheritage.com) Independent Researcher Michael S. Nassaney, ed. Fort St. Joseph Revealed: The Historical Archaeology of a Fur Trading Post. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2019. Pp. 292. Bibliography. Illustrations. Index. Notes. Cloth: $90.00. When most folks think about ongoing archaeological studies dealing with historical fortifications or towns, Plymouth Plantation, Colonial 184 The Michigan Historical Review Williamsburg/Jamestown, and Fort Michilimackinac usually come to mind. Those sites, studied since the 1950s or before, have hitherto represented the best of major, long-term professional archaeological studies of the historic colonial and frontier eras in America. Now, added to that list of uniquely important historic archaeological sites, is Michael Nassaney’s Fort St. Joseph, a predominately French eighteenth-century fur trading outpost in Southwestern Michigan. There are many aspects that make Nassaney’s study both unique and scientifically important, and three in particular stand out: the manner in which Fort St. Joseph was discovered; the cooperation and unification between an academic entity (Western Michigan University) and the city of Niles; and the awesome interplay among the populations involved that make this scientific project the success it has been and will continue to be. For more than a century, theories existed as to the location of Fort St. Joseph. Fortunately, local collectors shared finds gleaned from years of walking riverbanks, but, alas, due to the construction of a dam on the St. Joseph River, river levels heightened the depth of ground water, leading many persons—lay and professional—to conclude the site no longer existed! That is, until Nassaney, a professor of anthropology at WMU, installed a well point dewatering system to lower the ground water table, and, as they say, the rest is history. Rarely has there ever been a scientific archaeological endeavor—save perhaps Stuart Streuver’s former Koster project in Illinois—that involved and, indeed, depended on the cooperation of academics, their students, and the local citizenry to obtain the kind and type of dynamic success Nassaney and his colleagues have been able to achieve. It is truly a lesson for other academics as well as city officials and laypersons. Building on a successful mix of professionals and laypersons alike, tourism, historical interpretation, and successful academic careers have been launched—and perhaps even more importantly, the Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project has contributed greatly to a better, fuller understanding of European/Native American...