Settler Colonial Strategies and Indigenous Resistance on the Great Lakes Lumber Frontier

The geographic and economic setting of the nineteenth century Upper Great Lakes region created unique challenges to American settler colonialism and encounters with the Indigenous people of this land of lakes and forests. Many Anishinaabeg bands responded creatively through the use of Christianity,...

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Published in:Middle West Review
Main Author: Karamanski, Theodore
Format: Text
Language:unknown
Published: Loyola eCommons 2016
Subjects:
Online Access:https://ecommons.luc.edu/history_facpubs/61
https://doi.org/10.1353/mwr.2016.0007
https://ecommons.luc.edu/context/history_facpubs/article/1066/viewcontent/Karamanski1.pdf
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spelling ftloyolauniv:oai:ecommons.luc.edu:history_facpubs-1066 2024-06-23T07:45:35+00:00 Settler Colonial Strategies and Indigenous Resistance on the Great Lakes Lumber Frontier Karamanski, Theodore 2016-01-01T08:00:00Z application/pdf https://ecommons.luc.edu/history_facpubs/61 https://doi.org/10.1353/mwr.2016.0007 https://ecommons.luc.edu/context/history_facpubs/article/1066/viewcontent/Karamanski1.pdf unknown Loyola eCommons https://ecommons.luc.edu/history_facpubs/61 doi:10.1353/mwr.2016.0007 https://ecommons.luc.edu/context/history_facpubs/article/1066/viewcontent/Karamanski1.pdf http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ History: Faculty Publications and Other Works Colonialism Indigenous Territories Great Lakes Mid West Lumber Frontier Settlement History Public History United States History text 2016 ftloyolauniv https://doi.org/10.1353/mwr.2016.0007 2024-06-12T03:24:34Z The geographic and economic setting of the nineteenth century Upper Great Lakes region created unique challenges to American settler colonialism and encounters with the Indigenous people of this land of lakes and forests. Many Anishinaabeg bands responded creatively through the use of Christianity, education, and American law in an attempt to fortify their presence in the region. European Americans, who sought to appropriate the wealth of the Upper Midwest’s vast stands of hardwood and pine forests, only seldom needed to resort to guns to take control of the land. Instead of a war of conquest they entangled Anishinaabeg property owners in a bewildering legal and extralegal thicket that facilitated the plunder of the region’s most marketable resource. The initial phase of pine logging laid waste to Anishinaabeg property rights but left the Indigenous population remaining on their traditional lands. The ill treatment of Anishinaabeg landowners should have been a warning signal to policymakers in the 1880s seeking to reform national Indian policy through severalty. In his 2012 study of Great Lakes Indian history in the colonial and early national periods, historian Michael Witgen emphasizes the transregional society shared by the Anishinaabeg while at the same time documenting the “flexibility†and autonomy of action reserved to local bands. This essay is concerned with the Indigenous response to the lumber frontier’s variation of settler colonialism in the Upper Great Lakes region—the heartland [End Page 27] of the Anishinaabeg. The bulk of the essay, however, is anchored in northern Lower Michigan with the inclusion of some examples from northern Wisconsin and Minnesota. The Odawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi in Lower Michigan—sometimes known as the Three Fires Confederacy and who all embraced the native name Anishinaabeg—did not respond to the intrusion of lumbering in the same way as bands in other parts of the region. Yet the impact of the logging frontier on the Indigenous people was, with rare ... Text anishina* Loyola University Chicago: Loyola eCommons Indian Middle West Review 2 2 27 51
institution Open Polar
collection Loyola University Chicago: Loyola eCommons
op_collection_id ftloyolauniv
language unknown
topic Colonialism
Indigenous Territories
Great Lakes
Mid West
Lumber Frontier
Settlement
History
Public History
United States History
spellingShingle Colonialism
Indigenous Territories
Great Lakes
Mid West
Lumber Frontier
Settlement
History
Public History
United States History
Karamanski, Theodore
Settler Colonial Strategies and Indigenous Resistance on the Great Lakes Lumber Frontier
topic_facet Colonialism
Indigenous Territories
Great Lakes
Mid West
Lumber Frontier
Settlement
History
Public History
United States History
description The geographic and economic setting of the nineteenth century Upper Great Lakes region created unique challenges to American settler colonialism and encounters with the Indigenous people of this land of lakes and forests. Many Anishinaabeg bands responded creatively through the use of Christianity, education, and American law in an attempt to fortify their presence in the region. European Americans, who sought to appropriate the wealth of the Upper Midwest’s vast stands of hardwood and pine forests, only seldom needed to resort to guns to take control of the land. Instead of a war of conquest they entangled Anishinaabeg property owners in a bewildering legal and extralegal thicket that facilitated the plunder of the region’s most marketable resource. The initial phase of pine logging laid waste to Anishinaabeg property rights but left the Indigenous population remaining on their traditional lands. The ill treatment of Anishinaabeg landowners should have been a warning signal to policymakers in the 1880s seeking to reform national Indian policy through severalty. In his 2012 study of Great Lakes Indian history in the colonial and early national periods, historian Michael Witgen emphasizes the transregional society shared by the Anishinaabeg while at the same time documenting the “flexibility†and autonomy of action reserved to local bands. This essay is concerned with the Indigenous response to the lumber frontier’s variation of settler colonialism in the Upper Great Lakes region—the heartland [End Page 27] of the Anishinaabeg. The bulk of the essay, however, is anchored in northern Lower Michigan with the inclusion of some examples from northern Wisconsin and Minnesota. The Odawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi in Lower Michigan—sometimes known as the Three Fires Confederacy and who all embraced the native name Anishinaabeg—did not respond to the intrusion of lumbering in the same way as bands in other parts of the region. Yet the impact of the logging frontier on the Indigenous people was, with rare ...
format Text
author Karamanski, Theodore
author_facet Karamanski, Theodore
author_sort Karamanski, Theodore
title Settler Colonial Strategies and Indigenous Resistance on the Great Lakes Lumber Frontier
title_short Settler Colonial Strategies and Indigenous Resistance on the Great Lakes Lumber Frontier
title_full Settler Colonial Strategies and Indigenous Resistance on the Great Lakes Lumber Frontier
title_fullStr Settler Colonial Strategies and Indigenous Resistance on the Great Lakes Lumber Frontier
title_full_unstemmed Settler Colonial Strategies and Indigenous Resistance on the Great Lakes Lumber Frontier
title_sort settler colonial strategies and indigenous resistance on the great lakes lumber frontier
publisher Loyola eCommons
publishDate 2016
url https://ecommons.luc.edu/history_facpubs/61
https://doi.org/10.1353/mwr.2016.0007
https://ecommons.luc.edu/context/history_facpubs/article/1066/viewcontent/Karamanski1.pdf
geographic Indian
geographic_facet Indian
genre anishina*
genre_facet anishina*
op_source History: Faculty Publications and Other Works
op_relation https://ecommons.luc.edu/history_facpubs/61
doi:10.1353/mwr.2016.0007
https://ecommons.luc.edu/context/history_facpubs/article/1066/viewcontent/Karamanski1.pdf
op_rights http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
op_doi https://doi.org/10.1353/mwr.2016.0007
container_title Middle West Review
container_volume 2
container_issue 2
container_start_page 27
op_container_end_page 51
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