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E-book
Author Nelson, John William, author.

Title Muddy ground : native peoples, Chicago's portage, and the transformation of a continent / John William Nelson
Published Chapel Hill : The University of North Carolina Press, [2023]
©2023

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Description 1 online resource (275 pages) : illustrations
Series The David J. Weber series in the new borderlands history
David J. Weber series in the new borderlands history.
Contents List of illustrations -- Introduction. Murky waters and muddy ground: continental conquests and the view from Chicago -- A guide to the peoples of Chicago's portages -- Chapter One. Openings: from ecotone to borderland -- Chapter Two. Barriers: imperial ambitions and failures at Chicago's portages -- Chapter Three. Crossroads: indigenous resurgence at the portages -- Chapter Four. Thoroughfare: American order and the threat of a fluid frontier -- Chapter Five. Floodgates: rendering indigenous space into an American place -- Epilogue. Closings: rethinking the history of Chicago and the continent -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- Index
Summary "John W. Nelson charts the many peoples that traversed and sought power along Chicago's portage paths from the seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries, including Indigenous Illinois traders, French explorers, Jesuit missionaries, Meskwaki warriors, British officers, Anishinaabe headmen, and American settlers. Each group sought to harness Chicago's portages as a space of waterborne movement in a bid for wider regional control. Nelson compellingly demonstrates that even deep within the interior, power relations fluctuated based on the control of waterways and local environmental knowledge. The book challenges readers to take waterborne mobility and strategic geography seriously while showing how Native peoples, along with incoming Europeans, leveraged Chicago's waterways and portage paths to consolidate their control over the region. Pushing beyond political and cultural explanations for Indigenous-European relations and eventual US conquest in the borderlands of North America, Nelson shows how the environments in which collaboration and contest took place directly influenced such interactions"-- Provided by publisher
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (JSTOR, viewed December 5, 2023)
Subject Indians of North America -- Great Lakes Region (North America) -- History
Indians of North America -- Illinois -- History
Indian trails -- Great Lakes Region (North America) -- History
Indian trails -- Illinois -- History
Portages -- Great Lakes Region (North America) -- History
Portages -- Illinois -- Chicago -- History
Race relations
Portages
Indians of North America
Indian trails
SUBJECT United States -- Race relations -- History
Subject United States
Illinois -- Chicago
Illinois
Great Lakes Region
Genre/Form History
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9781469675220
1469675226