A Spirited Resistance

The North American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745-1815
Erscheinungsjahr 1993
ISBN: 978-0-8018-4609-0
Verlag: Johns Hopkins University Press

Buch, Englisch, Band 109, 288 Seiten, Format (B × H): 154 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 387 g

Reihe: The Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science

Winner of the Intolerance in the United States Award from the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Human Rights in the United States

In the early 1800s, when once-powerful North American Indian peoples were being driven west across the Mississippi, a Shawnee prophet collapsed into a deep sleep. When he awoke, he told friends and family of his ascension to Indian heaven, where his grandfather had given him a warning: "Beware of the religion of the white man: every Indian who embraces it is obliged to take the road to the white man's heaven; and yet no red man is permitted to enter there, but will have to wander about forever without a resting place."

The events leading to this vision are the subject of A Spirited Resistance, the poignant story of the Indian movement to challenge Anglo-American expansionism. Departing from the traditional confines of the history of American Indians, Gregory Evans Dowd carefully draws on ethnographic sources to recapture the beliefs, thoughts, and actions of four principal Indian nations—Delaware, Shawnee, Cherokee, and Creek. The result is a sensitive portrayal of the militant Indians—often led by prophets—who came to conceive of themselves as a united people, and launched an intertribal campaign to resist the Anglo-American forces.

Dowd also uncovers the Native American opposition to the movement for unity. That opposition, he finds, was usually the result of divisions within Indian communities rather than intertribal rivalry. In fact, Dowd argues, intertribal enmity had little to do with the ultimate failure of the Indian struggle; it was division within Indian communities, colonial influence on Indian government, and the sheer force of the Anglo-American campaign that brought the Indian resistance movement to an end. An evocative history of long frustration and ultimate failure, A Spirited Resistance tells of a creative people, whose insights, magic, and ritual add a much-needed dimension to our understanding of the American Indian.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Dowd, Gregory Evans

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Amerikanische Geschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Volkskunde Indigene Völker

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Preface and Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1. Power
Chapter 2. The Indians' Great Awakening, 1745 - 1775
Chapter 3. Revolutionary Alliances, 1775 - 1783
Chapter 4. Neutrality, A World Too Narrow, 1775 - 1781
Chapter 5. A Spirit of Unity, 1783 - 1794
Chapter 6. Republican Interlude
Chapter 7. Renewing Sacred Power in the North
Chapter 8. Conflict in the South
Chapter 9. Renewing Sacred Power in the South
Afterword: A Conflict of Memory
Abbreviations
Notes
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Dowd, Gregory Evans
Gregory Evans Dowd is a professor of history and American culture at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He is the author of A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745–1815 and War under Heaven: Pontiac, the Indian Nations, and the British Empire.

Gregory Evans Dowd is a professor of history and American Culture and Director of Native American Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and author of Groundless: Rumors, Legends, and Hoaxes on the Early American Frontier and War under Heaven: Pontiac, the Indian Nations, and the British Empire, also available from Johns Hopkins University Press.