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The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815 (Studies in North American Indian History)

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Anyone who has attended an academic history conference in the last five or so years already realizes the impact that this densely-written, but provocatively argued book by an historian of the American west has had on the study of American history. For both good and ill, White's central thesis -- that Indians and Europeans in the Great Lakes region created together and sustained an elaborate system of cultural and political contact that endured for centuries based not on mutual understandings, but mutual MISunderstandings, often deliberate ones -- has come to set the tone for the most recent studies of cultural encounter and creolization in the New World. Indeed, White's "middle ground" bids fair to assume the blanket hegemony exercised over the American historical imagination a decade or more back by the idea of "republicanism." And, not without cause: White's book is in many respects a stupendous achievement -- exhaustively researched, laser-subtle analyses, and ambitious in scope. What weakens the book is White's tendency to often assert the existence of a so-called cultural "middle ground" between Indians and others in advance of the evidence he presents. The "middle ground" is too often presented as a given, one that can act as the explanation, rather than as the hypothetical that it actually is, the actual subject that should be under investigation. This said, the influence of this book will be felt for years to come.

Richard White should be awfully proud of himself. Using a close examination of a particular time in a particular place, he manages to open one's eyes to an entirely new way of thinking about the long term dynamics of human interaction that we call "history". Works like these are the fruit of all the painstaking hard work that American historians have been contributing over the last one or two generations. The studies of gender, environment, disease and race might seem like annoying "political correctness" to the close-minded, but when divorced from ideological polemics (pro or con) they have proven to be goldmines of fresh perspective. This book is an elegant example of what can be achieved when the primary evidence is reassessed in the light of this new spirit of inquiry.

Amply supported by a wide selection of primary sources, White plunges into a detailed dissection of the course of history in what the French called the "Pays d'en haut"--the roughly triangular territory bounded by the Mississippi, the Ohio and the Great Lakes--from the establishment of French hegemony to the defeat of Tecumseh at the hands of the United States. Characters, landscape and events are vividly drawn, but underlying it all is White's astonishing theoretical angle: that the various participants--traders, chiefs, colonial officials, missionaries, prophets, warriors and women--were forced to continually construct the rules of a common game that their respective cultures and traditions were inadequate to navigate by themselves. Of course, neither Europeans or natives discarded their cultural baggage wholesale--rather, they raided each other's ideologies and practices for tools they could use for their own purposes, refashioning them into novel combinations and thus a new "culture". Under White's sharp lens, activities and categories which might seem unambiguous--"murder", "trade", "prostitute", "father", "metal tool"--are shown to actually be embedded in a kaleidoscopically shifting galaxy of symbols, mutually forged, mutually apprehended (and misapprehended) by the resourceful women and men of the "middle ground". White carefully traces the strategies of exploitation and survival mediated by French, Algonquin, British and Iroquois participation in this new world--scenes of sickening brutality, unexpected mercy and clever dealing merge with those of day-to-day business and coexistence in a vast mural that rings as true as any history I've yet encountered. I am eager to see how this brand of method and insight will be employed in other histories.

Richard White managed to write a historical book that combines political, social, and cultural history with a wonderful writing style, which captures the readers' attention from the very beginning.

White indicated in the introduction of his book that he "seeks to step outside the simple stories of Indian/white relations- stories of conquest and assimilation and stories of cultural pesistence." The book is about a search of accommodation and common meaning, according to the author.

Richard White maintains that in the Middle ground of the Great Lakes, many different cultures met and accommodated their differences to be able to live together. This Middle ground of overlapping cultures and lifestyles brought mutual understanding, changes in all societies and influence on one another, not assimialtion. The big colonial wars, however, concludes White, led to sudden ruptures of accommodation and common meanings between Europeans and Indians.

Word of warning: It has been several years since I read this book. There are several excellent review on this page which you should read first including Mr. Hendricks critical review (excellent summary, mistaken criticism). My purpose is to give support to those reviewers who have mentioned the influence of this book. I cannot speak to its influence in academia. Me, I work in a production fab as part of the maintenance team. But I read a lot of history and philosophy and the central concepts in this book clarified a lot of issues in those fields for me.
I frequently find myself understanding what I am reading in other histories in terms of this concept. Right now I am reading Renaissance Civic Humanism and came across the following line- "as Gilbert interpreted it, a republican ideology could easily become an instrument adopted and manipulated by both parties in a particular episode of class struggle." And the first thing I thought of was White's work. I think what makes this so useful is that White has taken an insight into social dynamics that was nebulous in the thought of many scholars and given it definition.
One of the central problems in any theory of ideology has been to explain how resistance and change is possible if there is this hegemonic ideology that shapes the perceptions and thinking of everyone.
White's central insight is that this hegemony is contested and fluid especially when the opposing parties are of equal power. The result is that the middle ground (the world of mutual understandings and misconceivings) is constantly changing. Sometimes (and this is where Mr. Hendricks goes wrong) it seperates into seperate spheres entirely where there is not mutuality and one side (like the British and later the Americans) simply misunderstand the other side because of their own conceptual limitations. [Mr. Hendricks also complains about White's reliance on European records to explore the thinking of the Algonquin peoples. I remember White as being fairly clear about that as a limitation. He spent a lot of time in the written records of the French missionaries because he felt they were the one European source that actually tried to understand the Algonquin peoples on their own terms (to better convert them). It struck me as I read White's book, however, that he was mostly claiming to present the European side of the middle ground. In any case, Mr. Hendricks brings up an important theme for any reader of the book to judge for themselves.]
As I said, many other scholars over the last forty years or so have circled around a similar insight in their work. By given it a clear definition and a well written historical example, White has given many different fields a research program, a conceptual focus that can be expanded, critiqued and improved.
Anyone who reads history should read this book. As a bonus, it is also a classic in the area of revisioning American colonial history. The American Indians were basically defeated after the death of Tecumseh. But prior to that, for over 300 years, they were a military and social equal in North America. There were hundreds of years when the Iroquois were the military equals of the British, the Dutch, the French and the Americans. As such they had to be negotiated with as equals. I found White's book to also be a valuable history of the Algonquin people of the Old Northwest.
So there you go- a great history exemplifying an important methodological
insight. My highest recommendation.

This belongs on any list of the five best books of American Indian history, or of North American colonial history. Richard White is brilliant. Read this book.

"The Middle Ground" is a professional and scholarly study of the complex relationships between the Whites and the Indians in the Great Lakes Region from 1650-1815. The term "Middle Ground" describes a land in which the European cultures that were not totally European and the Indian cultures that were not totally Indian. Substantively, this book deals with the Indians interactions with a series of White powers. Initially the French had the field unto themselves until they were later challenged by a rising British rival. After the French and Indian War, the British had the ascendency until the American Revolution brought a new competitor for the Indians' trade and loyalty.

In the early parts of the book the French were building the economy of New France on the fur trade which could prosper only on a continent with light European settlement. During this period the Indians became dependent on French good and their protection form other tribes. French diplomacy consisted of establishing relationships with the tribes even as the Indians used their alliances to gain ascendency over rival tribes. All this time the Indians were becoming less dependent on their traditional ways as they relied more on their role as fur trappers and traders. Many lament the destruction of the Indian economy, but this was the process of division of labor which proceeded all over the world as technological advances made the production of surpluses possible. During the time that the Indians were becoming more dependent on the French and, therefore, less Indian, many French were absorbing more Indian culture. Their livelihood and even their lives became intertwined with Indian life. Many took Indian wives, even while retaining French wives back in Montreal and Quebec.

The advent of the British provided a competitor for Indian trade and loyalty. The Indians could now play one against the other in order to get the best goods and the most protection. It came as a shock and betrayal to the Middle Ground when European diplomats ceded the French interests to the British. The Indians were then deprived of commercial competitors who would vie for their furs. As British colonial settlement expanded the roles changed as the British became a source of protection from the colonists. When the colonists became rebellious the British were able to use their influence with the Indians against the Americans both in the Revolution and through the period of the War of 1812.

This book is an outstanding work of historical research which is recognized as authoritative. I have heard it cited during at least one historical conference. Because of its nature it does go into more detail than many casual readers would want. Just work through it and remember what is important to you. You will learn examples of mistakes on both sides that, if avoided, could have made the settlement of America a more peaceful process. This is a book that does not just tell you, it leads you to an understanding. Although the Middle Ground is defined early, it takes hundreds of pages for the concept to gradually sink in. Only gradually does the reader come to realize how the cultures influenced each other, not to be blended in a melting pot, but to change each other none the less. As readers of my Amazon reviews know, I have read much about the French era in America as well as the Revolutionary period. This book helped me, not just to know, but to understand what was happening when those traders went among the Indians, when the British bought settlers scalps from the Indians and when and why the settlers chose not to live among the Indians, but to drive them out. A book that can achieve that is worth a read.

The Middle Ground is one of the seminal texts on colonial history covering the converging areas that Europeans (British, French and eventually Americans) and Native Americans (Algonquins, Iroquois, Shanwees, and many more) shared in and around the great lakes region for the years 1650-1815. Before the term middle ground was taken out of context by a slew of authors following Richard White you see the narrow definition that was meant to exist. By finding an area where these cultures did not dominate but share to give something new in his so called Pays d'en haut. By focusing on the complex relationships that built up between these groups and not simply stopping at resistance and assimilation White puts into context Pontiac and Tecumseh through a look at the ebbing and flowing of political and economic power in the area. From the power plays between Europeans and the ways in which native Americans exploited them to win trade concessions and expand their goods. Europeans also exploited the differences not only in tribes but even in the familial relationships and this book does an excellent job of delving into the structure of Indian society dispelling the myth of the great Indian chief. The chiefs that many people envision are a European creation that did arise after Europeans were able to funnel goods through one person and often the one Europeans wound up fighting was a chief of their own creation. While this book can by dry and dense at times it really is the best on the subject and not one to be missed for those interested in colonial history.

A CRITICAL REVIEW OF RICHARD WHITE'S
THE MIDDLE GROUND

By Jeff Hendricks

Richard White. The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991.


Richard White's The Middle Ground is a detailed and extensive study of the inter-relationships between various European colonists and the Native American tribes they encountered in the Great Lakes reigon of the current United States from 1650 to 1815. The study traces the development of what Richard White argues was a "middle ground" of cultural accomodation that was created as a result of these encounters. The whole of White's book is dedicated to proving his "middle ground" argument.

At the beginning of White's study, he creates a category that lumps together the Native Americans of the Great Lakes region, known as the pays d'en haut, into a grouping that he refers to as the Algonquins. The Algonquins were an assortment of tribes from various areas surrounding the pays d'en haut who had been forced together into the region due to warfare in the east. White's study begins with descriptions of the brutal and murderous situation taking place in the pays d'en haut as the various factions of the Algonquins engaged in inter-village warfare amongst themselves, as well as war against the Iroquoi federation, which had been attacking the region from the east. In addition to these inter-tribal wars, the Algonquins living in the region were also forced to deal with the French colonists, who had begun to enter the pays d'en haut in order to profit from the fur trade. The entrance of the French traders into the region set in motion the events that would eventually lead to the formation of White's "middle ground."

White argues that the middle ground begins to form slowly, as the French colonists insert themselves into the day to day happenings of the pays d'en haut and work to achieve a position in the area that will allow them to carry on trade with the Algonquins. White shows how, in order to achieve a profitable trade situation, the French quickly realize that they need to bring the inter-tribal warfare to a hault - or at the least reduce it enough to permit trade to occur. In their attempts at building a trading realtionship with the Algonquins, the French realized that the Algonquins' social system differed greatly from their own. The French were products of a hierarchal society, and from that society they had been conditioned to see obedience and respect as things that were gained through force. When the French tried to impose their own notions of social order on the Algonquins, who lived in a collective based non-hierarchal society, they soon realized that they would have to accommodate and negotiate with the Algonquins to form a profitable trade relationship with them. Simply brutalizing the Algonquins into submission was not going to work. For the Algonquins, brutality did not breed submission - it bred resistance.

Another obstacle that the French encountered in their trade with the Algonquins was the differentiation between their respective economic systems. To put it simply, Algonquin economics were based on need, whereas French economics were based on excess accumulation and profit. The Algonquins were not accustomed to exploitative economic relations and thus resisted any type of trade that they did not view as meeting the needs of both parties involved. The French, on the other hand, could not understand an economic system based on mutual aid and cooperation. In order to push past this cultural/economic barrier to relations, the French had to create a system of trade that the Algonquins could view as a mutual exchange of gifts rather than a purely economic exchange of material for private profit.

The story of the formation of the "middle ground" was based on these and other mutual agreements and accomodations that were developed between the French and the Algonquins. To facilitate trade, the French singled out individuals from various factions of Algonquins to mold into trade emissaries, whom they referred to as "Cheifs." The French instituted a system in which they bestowed gifts to these Algonquin Cheifs, who in turn would distribute the gifts amongst their own village population. In time, these Algonquin Cheifs developed a degree of authority within their villages due to their distribution of goods, as well as their ability to communicate with the French. The European goods that the Cheifs distributed to members of their village soon became objects of status in the Algonquin world. As the Algonquins developed a want of these European goods, they began to spend some of their excess time hunting fur animals for the French which they could then trade in exhange for items such as rum, guns, knives, cloth, and various metalic utensils. Soon this system became cemented, enabling trade to take place in a somewhat peaceful manner.

Once the French had created Cheifs within the villages who could weild some degree of authority amongst their own people, they began to use their economic control of these Cheifs to press them to pacify the warriors of their respective villages. In this way, the French were able to help bring about the cessation of hostilities amongst many of the villages of the pays d'en haut. Soon, according to White, the various Algonquin peoples came to view their relation to the French as one of a child to its father. The French became the only people who could bring about an end to the bloody fighting amongst the various tribes that was occuring in the area. With this positon of negotiated power, the French were able to pacify the pays d'en haut long enough to build a profitable fur trade.

By 1701, the French had managed to help negotiate a peace between the Algonquins and the Iroquoi federation and thus had succeded in creating an atmosphere that would be favorable to their own economic exploitition of the region. A period of relatively peaceful French / Algonquin interaction existed on the "middle ground" for the next few decades as the French and Algonquins engaged in trading relations. However by the 1720s, the English had begun to inch in on French economic turf and by 1728 warfare had broken out between the English and the French/Algonquin alliance. Although White continues with his "middle ground" hypothesis throughout the remainder of his book, the war of 1728 was, in reality, the beginning of the decline of the "middle ground." Shortly after the French/Algonquin alliance succeded in driving back the British, the Algonquins broke apart into pro and anti French groupings. By the 1740s, many of the Algonquins had turned against their French-made village cheifs, who preached peace and conciliation, and joined a republic comprised of various Indian nations whose purpose was to disengage from the "middle ground" and regain their traditional pre-European lifestyles. As it became increasingly apparent to the Indian villagers that the the French and English were engaged in their own imperial struggle and were only really interested in using the villages as pawns towards their own ends, the middle ground laid down on its death bed.

From this point on, many tribes, including the Iroquoi, developed an understanding of the true imperial nature of both the French and the English and refused to fight on either side. Those tribes/villages who did decide to continue to fight on the side of the French in the Seven Years War (1754-1761) were doing so only as a part of their own strategy to rid the pays d'en haut of all European invaders - once the English had been driven out, the tribes had planned to turn on the French and drive them out as well. Although there were still short lived re-births of "middle ground" relations between the Algonquins and the French, these were not the norm. Concerning the English, there was almost never any middle ground of cultural accomodation between themselves and the Algonquins. After the defeat of French in the Seven Years War, the British occupied French positions in the pays d'en haut (in violation of a promise not to) and as White himself states, "[the British] vision of the pays d'en haut was a simple one: the British were conquerors; the Indians were subjects. It was a view that abolished the middle ground." The problem for the British was the fact that the Algonquins had never actually been conquered - they still retained village cohesion and the ability to resist British incursions with force. As the Algonquins began to resist the British with force, the British cynically tried to bring back a policy of cultural accomodation with the Algonquins in order to normalize trade relations. This transparent attempt to become "fathers" to the Algonquins was quickly scrapped in the face of Algonquin resistance to what they came to realize were British attempts to occupy their lands. By the 1760s, open warfare had once again broken out amongst the Algonquins and against the British. This pattern of short lived peace followed by rebellion and war became the norm in the pays d'en haut for the remainder of White's study, as the various factions of Europeans encroached upon Algonquin lands. By the early 19th century, at the conclusion of the book, the French traders and English traders had, for the most part, been replaced by American frontier squatters who, along with the implicit and explicit support of Washington, embarked on a campaign of removal and extermination.

Thus, a major flaw with White's analysis is the fact that the "middle ground" of cultural accomodation, which White describes throughout the book as being of central importance to the relations between the tribes of the pays d'en haut and the European invaders, was in fact already dead before White had even progressed halfway through his study. Although White's descriptions of the various ways that the French and English developed methods to facilitate cultural understanding with the Algonquins were interesting and insightfull, it really should not have been the central theme around which the book was written. The over-the-top focus on the "middle ground" argument found throughout White's book also leads one to question what political effect White had intended his study to have on the previous and current historiography on the subject.

White's book has been described by many historians and reviewers as a refreshing and intelligent attempt to tell the story of Native Americans in a way that it has never been told before. Colin G. Calloway, upon reviewing, The Middle Ground, stated that he believed it to be a success because it altered from the established norm: "most studies of Indian-White relations [are] too simplistic in their story of conquest and assimilation or of cultural persistence in the face of tremendous odds." This speaks to what seems to be an attempt by White to frame his study as the real story - a story that attempts to avoid taking sides, either by resorting to romanticization of the Algonquins or slander of the Europeans. However, the overall attempt at fairness and objectivity with which White seems to cloak his study in seems transparent at many points.

A major symptom of this problem lies with White's research materials and his interpretation of them. White's study relies very heavily on documentation produced by the colonizers themselves. This reliance may be a result of objective circumstance, as the Algonquins did not leave written documentation of their own activities, however when one is forced to rely on one-sided documentation to make a historical argument, it should be common sense to understand that documents cannot always be accepted as factual interpretations of past events. White runs into deep trouble when he incorporates, sometimes word for word, the writings of those Europeans whose economic and religious intrests rested with the demonization and slander of native populations.

In the case of European/Native American interactions, historians such as David Stannard in his book American Holocaust, have shown that many of the European accounts of interaction with Native Americans were deliberate exaggerations, if not outright fabrications. Stannard has shown that it was common for European Army officers or Priests to exaggerate accounts concerning violence, spirituality, and sexuality in order to justify to themselves and their superiors that their conquests and conversions were of necessity. Continually throughout his book, White relays descriptions from military officers and priests that portrayed the Algonquins as savage, brutal, cannibalistic, drunken savages. Attacks committed by Algonquins against Europeans are continually described in bloody detail while European attacks against Alqonquins are most often only stated as dry numerical fact.

There are other problamatic factors with White's choice of event descriptions in his study. Granted, no historian can include everything in one historical study, White makes a few profound ommissions of historical occurances that would have had great impact on the overall cause and effect cycle of his study. As was stated earlier, White begins his study in the midst of a brutal war beging waged against the Algonquin refugees by the Iroquoi federation. White takes great time reprinting the descriptions of this warfare written by French colonists such as Allouez and Priests such as Nicolas Perrott. Page after page, White allows descriptions of extreme, bloody and canibalistic brutality being waged by the Iroquoi Federation against the Algonquins to enter his narritive without so much as a single remark about the possibility of exaggeration on the part of the colonizers. The worst offense of these opening pages is the fact that White fails to even mention at all the fact that the Iroquoi were only in the pays d'en haut because they had been pushed west into Algonquin lands by the British.

White's opening pages paint a picture of the Iroquoi as brutal imperialistic invaders out to steal land and kill off animals for profit - White calls the Iroquoi Federation "an engine of destruction." All of this in the first few pages really begs the obvious question: what then were the Europeans? White shows his carelessness, or possibly his sympathy for European conquest, when he continually describes effects without refrence to their origin. Why were the Iroquoi fighting with the Algonquins? Why had Indian on Indian violence become endemic within the pays d'en haut region? Why were Native American village structures falling apart? Why was there rampant alcohol abuse? Why did some of the Native Americans succumb to killing animals for profit? White is only providing the symptoms while ignoring the root of the problem.

The debate over victimization and agency is one that is needed and correct for historians to involve themselves in and this debate is especially important when writing histories that deal with the European invasion of the Americas. However, White's The Middle Ground has vastly over-emphasized the agency at the expense of the tragic victimization of the Native American peoples of the pays d'en haut. White and his supporters are correct in appluading the fact that White's work has moved away from a Turnerian paradigm in which the Native Americans were marginal and inconsequential barriers to progress which were quickly overrun by Manifest Destiny. To its credit, White's book is an execellent resource for researchers, and his extensive documentation of dates, places and names makes his book important as an encyclopedic refrence. However, the analysis and arguments contained within The Middle Ground cannot lead to a realistic interpretation of how the events of the pays d'en haut actually played out.

Native American historians such as David Stannard, Ward Churchill, and others of the victimization with agency school, come much closer to a realistic portrayal of what the cirumstances were when it came to the interactions between the European invaders and Native American Tribes. Their success stems from the fact that they make a concerted effort to get at the Native American perspective on the colonization of the Americas wheras White makes absolutley none.

Although in many ways White's book moves away from the classic Turnerian framework, it remains fully within it in at the same time. White fails to move away from basing his analysis on primary sources written by the colonists themselves and in doing so he has produced yet another one-sided account, in line with the Turnerian framework. White's book may not be Eurocentric, as it does involve the Algonquins as central players in the narrative, but it still remains entrenched in European bias and, because of this, it fails in its attempts to make a legitimate argument or to provide a realistic view of the actual events that occurred in the pays d'en haut from 1650-1812.

Jeff Hendricks
www.tiamatpublications.com