Middle Ground
Generalizations about Indians and
Empires
Where Europeans settled in large numbers, built farms and towns, established mining operations, etc., they soon established control.
In the interior of the Americas, away from areas of dense European settlement, Indians remained more independent, into the 20 th century in some places
L.G. Moses & Margaret Connell Szasz, “’My Father, have pity on me!’ Indian Revitalization Movements of the
Late-Nineteenth Century,” in Religion in the West, ed.
F.M. Szasz (Manhattan, KA: Sunflower Univ. Press, 1984)
In the Spirit of Crazy Horse (PBS documentary;
YouTube)
Karl Jacoby, Shadows at Dawn
http://brown.edu/Research/Aravaipa/peoples.html
Pekka Hämäläinen, “The Rise and Fall of Plains Indian
Horse Cultures,” Journal of American History 90 (Dec.
2003), 833-62
Middle Ground Relations
French colonization efforts,
1500s-1600s
Wars with the Iroquois, 1609-
1701
Inability to use force to control Indian peoples
Defining the Middle Ground
Places where neither side could determine the relationship
(militarily, economically, politically)
For pragmatic reasons, negotiated a third culture, a common world neither wholly Indian nor European
Each side was forced to adapt, but also had some room to adapt on its own terms
Indians and Europeans were not exotic or alien to each other
Sometimes was violent
The middle ground declined when European-Americans became dominant economically and militarily
The “Pays d’en Haut” or Upper Country
Examples of the Middle Ground
Fur trade
“Coureur de bois” &
“Voyageurs”
Military relations
Inter-marriage
“country” marriages; “á la façon du pays”
Métis
Missions
Onontio
Ties Between
Metropolitan
Centers and
Frontiers
Impact on Indians
Rising standards of living (e.g., new opportunities for Indian women)
Connection to military alliances
Technological dependence, over time
Environmental degradation
Decline of fur-bearing game and food game in the 1700s, east of the Mississippi
Disease
Decline of the Middle Ground
British conquest of New France (1760)
Proclamation Line (1763)
Economic decline for Indians in eastern
North America, 1750-1820
Social problems in Indian communities
“shatter zones”
American Revolution
Joseph Brant, Molly Brant, & General
William Johnson
Impact of the Revolution &
Independence
The War of 1812
Policies in the U.S. and BNA (Canada): reservations & removal
Conclusions
Successful adaptation, resistance for centuries by many
Indians
The material basis of Indian decline was environmental
(disease, loss of resources), economic (decline of fur trade, greater manufacturing power of European-Americans), and political-military
In North America, they became wards, victims, only after loss of power (no longer could determine the course of their own adaptation)
