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Ontario History

Masters of Empire: Great Lakes Indians and the Making of America by Michael McDonnell Daniel R. Laxer

Volume 109, Number 2, Fall 2017

URI: https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1041293ar DOI: https://doi.org/10.7202/1041293ar

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Publisher(s) The Ontario Historical Society

ISSN 0030-2953 (print) 2371-4654 (digital)

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Cite this review Laxer, D. R. (2017). Review of [Masters of Empire: Great Lakes Indians and the Making of America by Michael McDonnell]. Ontario History, 109(2), 276–277. https://doi.org/10.7202/1041293ar

Copyright © The Ontario Historical Society, 2017 This document is protected by copyright law. Use of the services of Érudit (including reproduction) is subject to its terms and conditions, which can be viewed online. https://apropos.erudit.org/en/users/policy-on-use/

This article is disseminated and preserved by Érudit. Érudit is a non-profit inter-university consortium of the Université de Montréal, Université Laval, and the Université du Québec à Montréal. Its mission is to promote and disseminate research. https://www.erudit.org/en/ 276 ONTARIO HISTORY

Masters of Empire Great Lakes Indians and the Making of America by Michael McDonnell

New York, NY: Hill and Wang, 2015. 416 pages. $39.99 hardcover. ISBN 978-0809029532

quick glance at the title might give the site of natural geographic importance due to Aimpression that this is another book its proximity to resources, nearby farmland, about empire where Europeans are depicted and because it was the choke-point on the as the “masters.” at is not the case. Here major east-west conduit through the Great the “Masters of Empire” are the Indigenous Lakes. When the French were expanding peoples of the Great Lakes. e write-up in- westwards from the St. Lawrence valley, side the front cover describes it as a “radical Michilimackinac was the strategic location reinterpretation of early American history that controlled access to Lake Michigan, from a native point of view.” Yet rather than the Illinois country, and Louisiana. Ontario a dramatic departure, this book represents readers may wonder if it is worth reading a a culmination of decades of research and book that focuses on a location that is now writing on the subject, providing a com- the northern tip of Michigan. e answer prehensive account of the is yes. is area had a Indigenous peoples of the wide-ranging inuence Great Lakes and the Ani- over the history of the shinaabeg in particular. Great Lakes region and e narrative re- the fate of the French volves around one spe- and English empires. cic location of strate- Anishinaabeg peo- gic importance in the ples are foregrounded Great Lakes: the straits throughout the book. of Michilimackinac be- McDonnell critiques tween Lake Huron and the work of previous Lake Michigan. is is historians who “failed the cosmological cen- to appreciate their sig- tre of the Anishinaabeg nicance in the history world and where the of the continent”(5). ree Fires Confederacy No longer sidelined of the Odawa, Ojibwe, or depicted as pawns and Potawatomi is said to in European imperial have diverged. It was the schemes, their activities historical meeting place are traced in detail and of the Odawa, Potawato- their inuence high- mi, Chippewa, Algonquin, Nipissing, and lighted. ey are depicted as savvy negotia- Mississauga peoples, all of whom spoke a tors. ey traded in multiple markets to get dierent dialect of Anishinaabemowin. By the best returns. ey provided important the seventeenth century it was surrounded services such as canoe manufacturing and by Odawa Anishinaabeg villages. It was a repairs. ey provisioned the fur trade with

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supplies of sh and corn. ey cemented War, according to this account, started in themselves as interlocutors by building ex- the forests of North America with an Ani- tensive kinship networks with European shinaabeg raid on Pickawillany in 1752, traders and maintaining a balance of pow- a Miami village, and subsequently spread er by continually renewing alliances, us- to Europe. Addressing the presence, inu- ing their considerable military strength to ence, and motives of the Anishinaabeg at leverage better terms. McDonnell rejects battles throughout the war, there are ex- explanations of Indigenous dependency on cellent discussions of Indigenous partici- European trade goods, instead emphasiz- pation and how events were viewed from ing Anishinaabeg “strength and expansion “Indian Country.” ere are interesting ac- in the midst of empire” (15). Seventeenth- counts of inuential gures such as Charles century French claims of possession in the Michel Mouet de Langlade, an important pays d’en haut are revealed as preposterous; mixed-race leader who negotiated alliances when the French established a post at the with the French and then the British, but straits in 1683, their arrangements reect- who was not, as had been previously as- ed their frailty more than their dominance: sumed, the leader of Indigenous forces at “the French were there because the Anishi- Braddock’s defeat in 1755. Clarifying and naabeg wanted them there” (52). centring his and other Anishinaabeg lead- is book challenges some of the as- ers’ roles in the crucial historical events of sertions of the mainstream historiography. this period is long overdue. In particular it challenges depictions of If criticism is to be made of this mas- power relations made by Richard White in terful work of history, it is that in relent- his inuential 1991 publication e Middle lessly stressing Indigenous agency, the Ground. Rather than the Anishinaabeg be- book at times may overstate the Anishi- ing refugees from Iroquois war parties in a naabeg as the key determiners of European shattered mid-seventeenth-century world, imperial fortunes. Speculation about how they are depicted instead as resilient, func- the American Revolution might have un- tional, and indeed powerful communities. folded dierently had there been a stronger Rather than French diplomacy acting as alliance between the British and the Ani- “imperial glue” to hold the Indigenous peo- shinaabeg, for example, is interesting but ples in the region together, the Anishinaa- it remains a historical hypothetical, useful beg instead utilized their traditional kinship, to contemplate but very dicult to prove clan or doodemag networks, and intertribal or disprove. On the whole McDonnell is alliances to secure their power and agency. very careful with his interpretations and While e Middle Ground depicts a tenu- analyses, and the book is meticulously re- ous balance of power between Indigenous searched and very well written. It is highly peoples and the French, here the power is recommended to anyone with an interest depicted as rmly in Indigenous hands. e in the history of Indigenous peoples, co- Anishinaabeg led, and “most of the time the lonial North America, or the Great Lakes French could only follow” (91). region, whether they be professional histo- Many pivotal historical events that rians or lay readers. shaped the history of the Great Lakes are interpreted through this lens. e inter- Daniel R. Laxer tribal dynamics surrounding the Fox Wars Ministry of Indigenous Relations and Rec- are presented in detail. e Seven Years’ onciliation

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