“Borders Thick and Foggy”

• Main Author: Marrero, Karen L.
• Format: Book Part
• Language: English
• Published: University of North Carolina Press 2017
• Subjects: Canada; Detroit; Indian; anishina*
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.5149/northcarolina/9781469631516.003.0013

This paper examines transnational movements at the northern border in 1838, a pivotal year in United States, British, and indigenous relations. In that year, the Upper and Lower Canada Rebellions were launched from Maine to Detroit as an attempt by local people on both sides of the border to over throw a small cadre of British elites who dominated a conservative political machine. That same year, Potawatomi of the southern Great Lakes who had traditionally freely crossed the border due to treaty arrangements negotiated at the end of the eighteenth century, utilized these transnational options to flee forced removal by the U.S. government. Similarly, indigenized French, individuals who were the products of over a century of integration into Native communities, were migrating away from these communities as British Indian agents attempted to protect indigenous homelands. At Detroit, a key location for migrating Potawatomi and other Anishinaabe, the movements of these three groups came together, dislocating and relocating families, and at times breaking out into armed conflict that threatened a British/American neutrality agreement. Detroit’s location at the apex of the indigenous buffer zone made the performance of indigeneity a crucial means to negotiate and sometimes thwart the agendas of the two Euro-American nations. Of the three groups, Potawatomi were most successful in maintaining their communities.