Synopses & Reviews
Review
With deep research and sensitive analysis, Melinda Jettandeacute; has written a big history of a small place. In the experiences of the and#39;biculturaland#39; French-Indian families of French Prairie, Oregon, she reveals both the insidious work of colonialism and the inventive ways that individuals--Indians, French Canadians, and other Euro-Americans--adapted to the rapidly changing dynamics of the nineteenth-century American West. A highly satisfying, and often quite surprising, study. --Brett Rushforth, author of Bonds of Alliance: Indigenous and Atlantic Slaveries in New France.
Review
Melinda Jettandeacute;andrsquo;s absorbing history of French Prairie belongs on every western history bookshelf. It reminds us that the history of Oregon does not begin with the Whitmans or the Oregon Trail. The author andldquo;aim[s] to connect French Prairie to the larger history of French-speaking peoples in American history.andrdquo; This she most certainly has doneandmdash;and this French perspective redraws the map. It turns out that the road from Quandeacute;bec passes just south of Portland, Oregon. --Jay Gitlin, author of The Bourgeois Frontier: French Towns, French Traders and American Expansion
Synopsis
Despite the force of Oregonandrsquo;s founding mythology, the Willamette Valley was not an empty Eden awaiting settlement by hardy American pioneers. Rather, it was, as Melinda Jettandeacute; explores in At the Hearth of the Crossed Races, one of the earliest sites of extensive intercultural contact in the Pacific Northwest. Jettandeacute;andrsquo;s study focuses on the andldquo;hearthandrdquo; of this contact: French Prairie, so named for the French-Indian families who resettled the homeland of the Ahantchuyuk Kalapuyans. This history of French Prairie provides a window into the multi-racial history of the Pacific Northwest and offers an alternative vision of early Oregon in the lives of the biracial French-Indian families whose community challenged notions of white supremacy, racial separation, and social exclusion.
About the Author
Melinda Marie Jettandeacute;and#160; is a native Oregonian and a descendant of the French Canadian men and Native women who resettled French Prairie. The recipient of a M.A. in History from Universitandeacute; Laval and a Ph.D from the University of British Columbia, she is Associate Professor of History at Franklin Pierce University in New Hampshire.