Document generated on 10/02/2021 10:08 a.m. Ontario History Lines Drawn upon the Water: First Nations and the Great Lakes Borders and Borderlands Edited by Karl S. Hele Laurie Leclair Consequences of Rebellious Acts: The 1837 & 1838 Rebellions Volume 101, Number 2, Fall 2009 URI: https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1065622ar DOI: https://doi.org/10.7202/1065622ar See table of contents Publisher(s) The Ontario Historical Society ISSN 0030-2953 (print) 2371-4654 (digital) Explore this journal Cite this review Leclair, L. (2009). Review of [Lines Drawn upon the Water: First Nations and the Great Lakes Borders and Borderlands Edited by Karl S. Hele]. Ontario History, 101(2), 253–255. https://doi.org/10.7202/1065622ar Copyright © The Ontario Historical Society, 2009 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/ book revews 253 area, a natural occurrence in a small colonial did not win. At times, too, the story seems society. He associated with many of the im- like one from another era. The Butlers, of portant early inhabitants of the colony, from Butler’s Rangers, for instance, show little of Joseph Brant to powerful merchants such as the ferocity which recent scholarship would Robert Hamilton and Richard Cartwright attribute to them. Trying to cover so much (Richard’s cousin), as well opponents such as ground also makes it more likely that small John Beverley Robinson and Allan MacNab. errors will creep in. Benedict Arnold was not Had the author concentrated on Rich- a Major General in 1776, and did not com- ard’s life and struggles, From Bloody Begin- mand the attack on Quebec in 1775. Wil- nings would have provided valuable addi- liam von Moll Berczy’s men did not start tional insights into Upper Canada’s history. the clearing of Yonge Street, which was then By trying to do so much more—in effect to finished by the Queen’s Rangers, nor was it give a partial history of the American Revo- a wide boulevard. William Warren Baldwin lution in Upstate New York and Pennsylva- did not agree to be part of a new executive nia, and of Upper Canada until 1841, and after a successful rebellion in Upper Canada. to provide a portion of the information in Tecumseh was not skinned after the battle at imagined dialogue—he distracts from what Moraviantown, or at least we do not know would have been a more effective work. The that he was, as his body was not found by dialogue adds little, and is sometimes stilted. the triumphant Americans. There is much to The additional information is at times so recommend From Bloody Beginnings, but the compressed that it requires a second reading author seems to have been carried away by to take it all in. his enthusiasm, and tried to do too much. When Richard is discussing the poli- tics of Upper Canada, it would have been Ronald Stagg, Ryerson University helpful for the author to point out that this description was Richard’s view of the situa- Bibliography: tion, and that not everyone agreed with him. Watt, Gavin. The Burning of the Valleys: Without that explanation, the results of Daring Raids from Canada on the New York some of the elections do not make sense, as Frontier in the Fall of 1777. Toronto: Dun- those who shared Richard’s reform views durn Press, 1997. Lines Drawn upon the Water: First Nations and the Great Lakes Borders and Borderlands Edited by Karl S. Hele Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2008. xxiii + 351 pages. $85.00 hardcover. ISBN 978-1-55458-004-0 (wlupress.wlu.ca) his collection of twelve essays stemmed personal experience growing up in Sault Ste Tfrom a 2005 conference at which schol- Marie and from established theory, Hele ars shared their ideas on how colonial and contends that borderlands exist as regions national boundaries influenced aboriginal within themselves. Most selections relate to communities in the Great Lakes region. Ontario and to the province’s Chippewa, Throughout the book ‘borderlands’ describes Ojibwa and Potawatomi First Nations, col- territory—the land—rather than political lectively known as the Anishinabeg. divisions of state or province. Drawing from The first two essays examine the bor- 254 ONTARIO HISTORY derland experience of native ing community astride the groups living in the Great river. Their socio-cultural Lakes watershed astride the agendas were often designed political boundary. Edmund to subvert international bor- Danzinger finds that nine- der policies. Co-authors Jan- teenth-century American and et Chute and Alan Knight Canadian governments enter- challenge the thesis that the tained similar plans for their Métis settlement at Sault Ste native populations, but ex- Marie died out after the War ercised different approaches. of 1812 because it was no Groups responded with mid- longer needed as an inter- dle-of-the-road coping strate- mediary between imperial gies, selectively appropriating powers and other aboriginal policies and non-native prac- communities. Rather, the tices from each side as suited community thrived. Told them. In “Cross Border Treaty mostly through biographical Signers” Phillip Belfry reports sketches, Chute and Knight that the several treaties forged during the attribute this success to the importance of nineteenth century warranted that each sig- strong female partnerships, lasting kinship natory band send its best and brightest mem- ties and an established sense of Métis culture bers to the table, regardless of which modern and heritage. country was home. The Americans and Brit- A substantial part of Lines Drawn upon ish, fully accepting that First Nations wished the Water focuses on Walpole Island and to demonstrate that their territories took its Lake St Clair environs, a southern On- precedence over any line drawn on a map, tario borderland. David McNab examines condoned such Anishinabeg diplomacy. Bor- the journals of the missionary and teacher ders were fluid. Bellfry adds that this spirit Ezhaaswe (William A Elias, 1856-1929) for of cooperation continues to be recognized instances of trespass and larceny. Using cur- through such modern cross-border collabo- rent turns of phrase, McNab speaks of Amer- rations as the US Environmental Protection icans who slipped across the line and robbed Agency’s Great Lakes Declaration of 2004. and pillaged Walpole residents as terrorists; Following essays flesh out the analyses by he describes Canadian and Native policing as Danzinger and Bellfry. Mark Meuwese exam- examples of homeland security. ines the diplomacy of the Mohawk leader Ca- Co-authors Lisa Philips and Allan Mc- naquees (fl. 1650s-1680s), who functioned as Dougall examine changes in physical and a messenger and negotiator between the Iro- epistemological boundaries in their study quois and the colonies of New York and New of the so-called Baldoon mysteries. Baldoon France. Meuwese demonstrates how shifts in was an agricultural settlement established balance of imperial power—in this case in- in 1804 by Lord Selkirk near the Walpole creased aggression of New France—compro- Island reserve. By the early 1820s Baldoon mised Mohawk security and autonomy. In one farmers were encroaching on the reserve, of the strongest essays of the collection, Hele and residents started reporting mysterious examines the Sault Ste. Marie borderlands in happenings: stones flying through the air, the pre-1870’s era. Despite the presence of random and inexplicable fires, and so on. a physical line—the St Mary’s River—Ani- These “Baldoon mysteries” became the stuff shinabeg, Métis and Europeans were a thriv- of folklore. Philips and McDougall conclude book revews 255 that, through the years, storytellers reshaped ties themselves over issues of matrilineality the facts to suit the ears of the dominant and marriage to non-status and non-Cana- population; the Aboriginal agency steadily dian native people. Ute Liscke’s examination diminished. In a second Baldoon essay, Rick of the works of Cree-Métis writer Louise Er- Fehr uses the failure of the settlement’s “uto- drich (born 1954) forms the final chapter of pian vision” to drain the wetlands as a basis Lines Drawn upon the Water and allows the for rethinking environmental sustainability reader to review contemporary examples of in the Lake St Clair region in the twenty- the aboriginal experience with the interna- first century. Fehr believes these borderlands tional border. Like the Sault communities would function best by blending Aboriginal discussed by Hele, and Chute and Knight, notions of sustainability with traditional Eu- Erdrich’s words reveal a sense of identity and ropean land-use knowledge. cultural solidarity that transcends the artifice The last four chapters take up intangi- of boundaries. ble borderlands. Catherine Murton Stoehr Hele hoped that these essays would en- speaks of borderlands of spirituality, wherein courage American and Canadian scholars southern Ontario First Nations were able to to consider the international border “not blend comfortably the millenarian teach- as a barrier but as a crucible where conflict- ings of Anishinabeg religious leaders with ing currents of identity, history and culture the penitential and redemptive preachings shape local and national communities.” (p. of Methodism. Michelle Hamilton explains xiii) The two introductory chapters and the how Pauline Johnson, her sister Evelyn, and subsequent essays on the Sault Ste Marie the Brant-Sero family functioned on the area lend themselves most strongly to this academic borderlands as anthropologists, mandate.