Three Fires Unity

The Lake Huron area of the Upper Great Lakes region, an area spreading across vast parts of the United States and Canada, has been inhabited by the Anishnaabeg for millennia. Since their first contact with Europeans around 1600, the Anishnaabeg have interacted with—and struggled against—changing and shifting European empires and the emerging nation-states that have replaced them. Through their cultural strength, diplomatic acumen, and a remarkable knack for adapting to change, the Anishnaabeg of the Lake Huron Borderlands have reemerged in the twenty-first century as a strong and vital people, fully in charge of their destiny. Winner of the North American Indian Prose Award, this first comprehensive cross-border history of the Anishnaabeg provides an engaging account of four hundred years of their life in the Lake Huron area, showing how their history has been shaped and influenced by European contact and trade. Three Fires Unity examines how shifting European politics and, later, the imposition of the Canada–United States border running through their homeland continue to affect them today. In looking at the cultural, social, and political aspects of this borderland contact, Phil Bellfy sheds light on how the Anishnaabeg were able to survive and even thrive over the centuries in this intensely contested region.

The Lake Huron area of the Upper Great Lakes region, an area spreading across vast parts of the United States and Canada, has been inhabited by the Anishnaabeg for millennia. Since their first contact with Europeans around 1600, the Anishnaabeg have interacted with--and struggled against--changing and shifting European empires and the emerging nation-states that have replaced them. Through their cultural strength, diplomatic acumen, and a remarkable knack for adapting to change, the Anishnaabeg of the Lake Huron Borderlands have reemerged as a strong and vital people, fully in charge of their destiny in the twenty-first century. Winner of the North American Indian Prose Award, this first comprehensive cross-border history of the Anishnaabeg provides an engaging account of four hundred years of their life in the Lake Huron area, showing how they have been affected by European contact and trade. Three Fires Unity examines how shifting European politics and, later, the imposition of the Canada-United States border running through their homeland, affected them and continue to do so today. In looking at the cultural, social, and political aspects of this borderland contact, Phil Bellfy sheds light on how the Anishnaabeg were able to survive and even thrive over the centuries in this intensely contested region.

Providing rare insights into the doodem tradition and the concept of council fires, this book explores Indigenous law and the Anishinaabe's holistic approach to governance, territoriality, family, and kinship structures.

"A balanced and readable account of the 1791 battle between St. Clair's US forces and an Indian coalition in the Ohio Valley, one of the most important and under-recognized events of its time"--

Relatively little attention has been paid to American military history between 1783 and 1812—arguably the most formative years of the United States. This encyclopedia fills the void in existing literature and provides greater understanding of how the nation evolved during this era. This encyclopedia offers a comprehensive examination of U.S. military history from the beginning of the republic in 1783 up to the eve of war with Great Britain in 1812. It enables a detailed study of the Early Republic, during which ideological and political divisions occurred over the fledgling U.S. military. The entries cover all the important battles, key individuals, weapons, Indian nations, and treaties, as well as numerous social, political, cultural, and economic developments during this period. The contents of the work will enable readers at the high school, college, university, and even graduate level to comprehend how political parties emerged, and how ideological differences over the organization, size, and use of the military developed. Larger global developments, including Anglo-American and Franco-American interactions, relations between Middle Eastern states and the United States, and relations and warfare between the U.S. government and various Indian nations are also detailed. The extensive and detailed bibliographies will be immensely helpful to learners at all levels.

Kinship, as an organizing principle, gives structure to communities and cultures—and it can vary as widely as the social relationships organized in its name. Making Relatives of Them examines kinship among the Great Lakes Native nations in the eventful years of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, revealing how these Indigenous peoples’ understanding of kinship, in complex relationship with concepts of gender, defined their social, political, and diplomatic interactions with one another and with Europeans and their descendants. For these Native nations—Wyandot, Shawnee, Delaware, Miami, Ojibwe, Odawa, Potawatomi, Dakota, Menomini, and Ho-chunk—the constructs and practices of kinship, gender, and social belonging represented a daily lived reality. They also formed the metaphoric foundation for a regionally shared Native political discourse. In at least one English translation, Rebecca Kugel notes, Indigenous peoples referred to the kin-based language of politics as “the Custom of All the Nations.” Clearly defined yet endlessly elastic, the Custom of All the Nations generated a shared vocabulary of kinship that facilitated encounters among the many Indigenous political entities of the Great Lakes country, and framed their interactions with the French, the British, and later, the Americans. Both the European colonizers and Americans recognized the power-encoding symbolism of Native kinship discourse, Kugel tells us, but they completely misunderstood the significance that Native peoples accorded to gender—a misunderstanding that undermined their attempts to co-opt the Indigenous discourse of kinship and bend it to their own political objectives. A deeply researched, finely observed work by a respected historian, Making Relatives of Them offers a nuanced perspective on the social and political worlds of the Great Lakes Native peoples, and a new understanding of those worlds in relation to those of the European colonizers and their descendants.

A radical reinterpretation of early American history from a native point of view In Masters of Empire, the historian Michael McDonnell reveals the pivotal role played by the native peoples of the Great Lakes in the history of North America. Though less well known than the Iroquois or Sioux, the Anishinaabeg who lived along Lakes Michigan and Huron were equally influential. McDonnell charts their story, and argues that the Anishinaabeg have been relegated to the edges of history for too long. Through remarkable research into 19th-century Anishinaabeg-authored chronicles, McDonnell highlights the long-standing rivalries and relationships among the great tribes of North America, and how Europeans often played only a minor role in their stories. McDonnell reminds us that it was native people who possessed intricate and far-reaching networks of trade and kinship, of which the French and British knew little. And as empire encroached upon their domain, the Anishinaabeg were often the ones doing the exploiting. By dictating terms at trading posts and frontier forts, they played a crucial role in the making of early America. Through vivid depictions of early conflicts, the French and Indian War, and Pontiac's Rebellion, all from a native perspective, Masters of Empire overturns our assumptions about colonial America and the origins of the Revolutionary War. By calling attention to the Great Lakes as a crucible of culture and conflict, McDonnell reimagines the landscape of American history.

This collection of eleven original essays goes beyond traditional, border-driven studies to place the histories of Native Americans, indigenous peoples, and First Nation peoples in a larger context than merely that of the dominant nation. As Transnational Indians in the North American West shows, transnationalism can be expressed in various ways. To some it can be based on dependency, so that the history of the indigenous people of the American Southwest can only be understood in the larger context of Mexico and Central America. Others focus on the importance of movement between Indian and non-Indian worlds as Indians left their (reserved) lands to work, hunt, fish, gather, pursue legal cases, or seek out education, to name but a few examples. Conversely, even natives who remained on reserved lands were nonetheless transnational inasmuch as the reserves did not fully “belong” to them but were administered by a nation-state. Boundaries that scholars once viewed as impermeable, it turns out, can be quite porous. This book stands to be an important contribution to the scholarship that is increasingly breaking free of old boundaries.