Synopses & Reviews
In the beginning, North America was Indian country. But only in the beginning. After the opening act of the great national drama, Native Americans yielded to the westward rush of European settlers.
Or so the story usually goes. Yet, for three centuries after Columbus, Native people controlled most of eastern North America and profoundly shaped its destiny. In Facing East from Indian Country, Daniel K. Richter keeps Native people center-stage throughout the story of the origins of the United States.
Viewed from Indian country, the sixteenth century was an era in which Native people discovered Europeans and struggled to make sense of a new world. Well into the seventeenth century, the most profound challenges to Indian life came less from the arrival of a relative handful of European colonists than from the biological, economic, and environmental forces the newcomers unleashed. Drawing upon their own traditions, Indian communities reinvented themselves and carved out a place in a world dominated by transatlantic European empires. In 1776, however, when some of Britain's colonists rebelled against that imperial world, they overturned the system that had made Euro-American and Native coexistence possible. Eastern North America only ceased to be an Indian country because the revolutionaries denied the continent's first peoples a place in the nation they were creating.
In rediscovering early America as Indian country, Richter employs the historian's craft to challenge cherished assumptions about times and places we thought we knew well, revealing Native American experiences at the core of the nation's birth and identity.
Review
In his acclaimed volume Facing East From Indian Country, Daniel Richter turns the tables on 'conventional' histories of early European-Indian relations by looking east from the Mississippi River rather than west from the Atlantic Ocean...Richter approaches, from the Indian perspective, the history of early contact with Europeans through the founding of the U. S., with emphasis on tribes' immeasurable contribution to the history of the continent. He culls Native voices from surviving documents and records, pulling Indians from the periphery of white America's memory and making them the focal point of the post-contact story. Alan Taylor, author of < i=""> William Cooper ' s Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic <>
Review
Richter insists that we must look over the shoulders of American Indians to see the Europeans who settled the New World to have a complete understanding of our origins. His depiction of how these original Americans adapted to the new-comers and how they were inevitably betrayed by generations devoted to "freedom" and "opportunity" are especially telling. M. L. Tate - Choice
Review
From its title to its very last page, Facing East from Indian Country spins us around. But rather than dizzying, this turnabout is clarifying, freeing us from the blinders of a European perspective on the early American experience. Vast in scope yet intimate in its attention to particular people, places, and moments, Richter's book is a moving, thought-provoking work of scholarship. Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News
Review
With keen insight, deep reading, and a sparkling wit, Richter makes new and compelling sense of American history, radically shifting our perspective on the past. Balancing vivid imagination and a respect for the unknown, Richter crafts a powerful and engaging story that is essential to understanding our place in time on this continent. Philip J. Deloria, author of < i=""> Playing Indian <>
Review
Richter here offers a masterly work that eschews the long-standing perception that Native Americans were nothing more than marginalized bystanders as Europeans colonized North America. Focusing on the period between the 15th and 18th centuries, the author instead shows that Native American communities adapted to the many stresses introduced by the arrival of the Europeans and were active participants in creating a new way of life on the continent...[He] provides a valuable perspective that is often overlooked in books about the same period. Highly recommended for all public and academic libraries. John Burch
Review
At the center of this bold and thoroughly astonishing history of Native Americans are narratives of three Indians generally known to Euro-Americans: Pocahontas, Blessed Catherine Tekakwitha, and the Algonquin warrior Metacom, also known as King Philip. Telling each of these stories--a romance, the life of a saint, the destruction of a 'noble savage'--from the European and then the Native American perspective, Richter elucidates an alternative history of America from Columbus to just after the Revolution...Gracefully written and argued, Richter's compelling research and provocative claims make this an important addition to the literature for general readers of both Native American and U.S. studies. Library Journal
Review
Most American histories treat North America's indigenous peoples as ancillary to the more important story of the establishment of a European nation in the New World. What would happen if one shifted focus and transformed the usual bit-players into stars? Richter...makes that shift and produces what may, for its impeccable use of primary sources, smoothly well-wrought prose, and passionate argument, become a classic. Publishers Weekly
Review
An excellent, ambitious attempt to restore to history long-overlooked Indians who 'neither uncompromisingly resisted...nor wholeheartedly assimilated' in the face of white encroachment...A hallmark in recent Native American historiography that merits wide attention. Patricia Monaghan - Booklist
Review
Richter demythicizes the standard accounts...to demonstrate how white settlers consciously created false images to justify economic, religious, and military exploitation of Native inhabitants...This [is an] innovative and well-written book. Kirkus Reviews
Review
Richter offers a brilliant retelling of the old stories of European colonies and empires through Native eyes. Facing East from Indian Country may be as close as any scholar has come to synthesizing an "Indian perspective" on early American history This is a book not to be missed. James H. Merrell, author of < i=""> Into the American Woods: Negotiators on the Pennsylvania Frontier <>
Review
[Richter] has written a provocative new interpretation of early America from pre-contact to the early 19th century
[H]e places early America in the context of Native American society and history and not solely in the rush of colonial expansion
Historians of the American West and scholars of Western Native American studies will find much value in Richter's retelling of early American History. Tom Wanamaker - Indian Country Today
Review
Thanks to the work of Richter and others like him who have set out to break with the traditional Eurocentric narrative, 'the people without history' have been given back their voice. Joseph Key - Journal of the West
Review
and#8220;In this thoroughly researched and well-written study, Catherine Cangany shows how the people of late-eighteenth-century Detroit participated fully in a vibrant Atlantic economy.and#160; Indeed, she demonstrates persuasively that traditional notions of a simple life on the frontier do not hold for this settlement.and#160; Detroitand#8217;s entrepreneursand#8212;Native Americans as well as Europeansand#8212;developed exciting new trade goods, such as moccasins, that sustained a sophisticated level of commerce.and#160;Frontier Seaport is an impressive and challenging accomplishment.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;Catherine Canganyand#8217;s marvelous new book on Detroit excavates a previously unappreciated history of a fascinating place.and#160; Across a period of more than a century, Cangany traces the evolution of Detroitand#8217;s economic and political activity in a series of fine-grained layers.and#160; In the process, she succeeds in detailing the distinctive character of a unique community: an inland frontier seaport that was tied to Atlantic patterns of cosmopolitan culture but was also shaped by its location in a border region that brought together Native Americans, French and British colonists, and Americans across shifting political boundaries in fluid patterns of exchange and adaptation. and#160;It is an impressive achievement.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;Frontier Seaport tells the story of Detroitand#8217;s evolution from an isolated fur trading post to an inland seaport that dominated commerce on the upper Great Lakes.and#160; Cangany stretches our notions of Atlantic history to include a community 650 miles inland from the coast, reconstructing the flow of people and commodities that gave Detroit its unique intercultural and cosmopolitan character.and#160; Although nominally subject to five different regimes between 1701 and 1837, the native and colonial peoples of Detroit persistently defied imperial pretensions to sovereignty over them.and#160; Canganyand#8217;s skillful reconstruction of their economic, social, and political lives forces us to reconsider what it meant to live on a colonial borderland in early America.and#8221;
Review
"Catherine Cangany's wonderful new book explores the tensions between localism and cosmopolitanism in early Detroit by creatively juxtaposing the concerns of recent scholars of North American borderlands and Atlantic commerce. Delineating Detroit's extensive connections with places far beyond the Great Lakes, Cangany gives us merchants, consumers, and smugglers whose behavior subverts familiar categories of analysis and demands that historians think in fresh ways."and#160;
Review
"Cangany is one of a trio of young historians who are finally providing a new portrait of one of colonial Americaand#8217;s most fascinating placesand#8212;Detroit! and#160;At once a frontier town, a seaport connected to the Atlantic World, and a bustling trading center with an incredibly diverse population, Detroit at the end of the eighteenth century was a city-in-waiting where one might see a bear ambling down the main street or find the latest Paris fashions. Anyone interested in frontier history, native studies, urban history, and the period of transition from empire to republic (territorial government under federal appointees) will profit mightily from reading this sparkling portrait of early Detroit. Chapter three relates the history of the moccasin trade, which begins in Detroit as a local cottage industry reflecting the cityand#8217;s hybrid culture and develops into a national fad from the 1790s to the 1830s. Marketed as a and#8216;health aidand#8217; as well as a quintessentially American, western, and native fashion statement, moccasins reinforced Detroitand#8217;s continuing integration into the Atlantic-World marketplace. This brilliant and fascinating chapter alone is worth the price of admission. This is history at its best: surprising, entertaining, fresh, and informative. It will challenge your stereotypes about Detroit and reaffirm your interest in the frontier. Enough biographies of the same old political figures! Buy several copies of
Frontier Seaport and give them to your friends. Youand#8217;ll be glad you did. Highly recommended for all students, young and old, of American History."
Review
and#8220;An excellent monograph that positions the history of French, British, and American Detroit during the 18th and early 19th centuries within the historiographies of continental and Atlantic history. . . . Highly recommended.and#8221;
Review
andldquo;Cangany offers a stunning new way of understanding the hybrid character of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Detroit. . . . through intensive archival research, Cangany arrives at a sophisticated conceptualization of the cityandrsquo;s historical character. . . . a fresh, illuminating, and most welcome addition to the study of early Detroit.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;Cangany uses masterful research to recover this forgotten chapter of Detroitandrsquo;s past. . . . Canganyandrsquo;s clever historical detective work results in at least two genuine breakthroughs. . . . Frontier Seaport is easily the most important study of Detroit from the mid-eighteenth century to Michigan statehood in 1837.andrdquo;
Synopsis
In the beginning, North America was Indian country. But only in the beginning. After the opening act of the great national drama, Native Americans yielded to the westward rush of European settlers. Or so the story usually goes. Yet, for three centuries after Columbus, Native people controlled most of eastern North America and profoundly shaped its destiny. In Facing East from Indian Country, Daniel K. Richter keeps Native people center-stage throughout the story of the origins of the United States.
Synopsis
2000-2001 Louis Gottschalk Prize, American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies
Synopsis
Finalist, 2002 Pulitzer Prize for History
Synopsis
In Frontier Seaport, Catherine Cangany looks at the economy, culture, and politics of colonial Detroit to better understand its coexistence in both the Atlantic world and the frontier. Although Detroitandrsquo;s frontier associations have been well documented, Cangany argues that Detroitandrsquo;s Atlantic connections were thoroughly established by the mid-eighteenth century andndash; despite the settlementandrsquo;s 650-mile separation from the east coast andndash; and rivaled those of more cosmopolitan spaces. Drawing on business records, customs and port papers, personal and commercial correspondence, visual images, and much else, Cangany demonstrates that Detroitandrsquo;s positioning as a successful yet remote fur-trading center in fact hastened its economic and cultural incorporation into the broader Atlantic world. Located at the heart of the Great Lakes, inhabited and fought over by three world powers, and within easy reach of furs and fur-suppliers, Detroit occupied a geographically desirable and financially profitable niche in the fur trade. This position in turn made it prone to regular influxes of eastern merchants and other transplants, who brought with them their transatlantic commercial networks and their desire for and access to popular culture and merchandise. By considering andldquo;frontierandrdquo; and andldquo;Atlanticandrdquo; together, and by parsing Detroitandrsquo;s political, commercial, and cultural ties to each, Canganyforces a reimagining of early America and its relationship with empire.
Synopsis
Detroitand#8217;s industrial health has long been crucial to the American economy. Todayand#8217;s troubles notwithstanding, Detroit has experienced multiple periods of prosperity, particularly in the second half of the eighteenth century, when the city was the center of the thriving fur trade. Its proximity to the West as well as its access to the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River positioned this new metropolis at the intersection of the fur-rich frontier and the Atlantic trade routes.
Inand#160;Frontier Seaport, Catherine Cangany details this seldom-discussed chapter of Detroitand#8217;s history. She argues that by the time of the American Revolution, Detroit functioned much like a coastal town as a result of the prosperous fur trade, serving as a critical link in a commercial chain that stretched all the way to Russia and Chinaand#151;thus opening Detroitand#8217;s shores for eastern merchants and other transplants. This influx of newcomers brought its own transatlantic networks and fed residentsand#8217; desires for popular culture and manufactured merchandise. Detroit began to be both a frontier town and seaport cityand#151;a mixed identity, Cangany argues, that hindered it from becoming a thoroughly and#147;Americanand#8221; metropolis.
About the Author
Daniel K. Richter is Roy F. and Jeannette P. Nichols Professor of American History and the Richard S. Dunn Director of the McNeil Center for Early American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.
University of Pennsylvania
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: and#147;The Appearance of the Settlement Is Very Smilingand#8221;
1. and#147;In Time This City Will Become Conspicuousand#8221;: The Development of Non-Fur-Trade Commerce
2. and#147;The Inhabitants Are Well Supplied with Provisions of Every Descriptionand#8221;
3. and#147;Altogether Preferable to Shoesand#8221;: The Fashioning of Moccasins
4. and#147;Detroit, Politically . . . Remains . . . an Isolated Moral Massand#8221;
5. and#147;Advisable to Improve the Arrangement of the Townand#8221;:and#160; Rebuilding after the Great Fire of 1805
6. and#147;Sinister Conductand#8221;: The Pervasion of Staples Smuggling
Epilogue: and#147;Exceedingly Well Situated for a Commercial Portand#8221;
Notes
Index