The Worlds the Shawnees Made: Migration and Violence in Early America by Stephen Warren (review)

Abstract

The Worlds Shawnees Made: Migration and Violence in Early America. By Stephen Warren. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014. Pp. 308. Cloth, $39.95.)Reviewed by Daniel PapsdorfIn 1755 British Superintendent of Affairs in South, Edmund Atkin, described Shawnees as the Greatest Travellers in America (1). Stephen Warren's book, The Worlds Shawnees Made, follows migrations of these travelers, and in doing so seeks to turn familiar, but increasingly complex, narratives of forced relocation and dispossession on their heads by demonstrating how Shawnees managed to turn into strength. Fittingly, Warren's work also ranges widely across disciplines and across much of North American continent.Warren's introduction dives briskly into several important debates, utilizing ethnography and archeology to formulate an assertive argument against scholars who equate migration with loss (8). Acknowledging that some pan-Indian practices exist within modem Shawnee society, Warren contends that unique survived Jacksonian removal and continue to present. In this rendition of Shawnee history, Tecumseh stands out not as an exemplar of a Shawnee ability to forge pan-Indian alliances, but as an exception within a longer continuity that saw revitalization movements fail because Indian in upper country preferred life in (18).The first chapter continues examination of village, and calls into question propriety and utility of unifying concept of nation. Warren drives home idea that it makes more sense to view Eastern Woodland Indians as parochial cosmopolitans whose transient villages offer best window into their identities (21). Despite criticizing field at large for using nation-state as a default analytic, Warren is hardly first to approach Native history through lens of village. Though book takes issue with Richard White's portrayal of Iroquois dominance in Ohio Valley, opening pages of The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815 (New York, 1991) provide a similar warning against viewing polities as cohesive nations. Fortunately, Warren's meticulous work following groups that eventually consolidated into Shawnee nation succeeds in capturing messy contingency of village-based politics in action.A more interesting contribution is Warren's use of archeology in order to understand long-term continuities and transformations. The opening chapters make clear that Warren has dug deep to recover all information he can concerning Fort Ancient of Shawnee. Revealing links between Fort Ancient and Shawnees, book challenges analyses in which disjuncture with their ancestors made Native new peoples (30). Though success of this argument partially hinges on factors outside Warren's control, including accuracy of archeological findings and upon how one defines transformation, author's longue duree approach should stoke debate. Recent archeological discoveries also make for a persuasive argument that Middle Ohio Valley was largely depopulated prior to slave raids of Iroquois, rather than because of these attacks. …