14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wonderful Addition to the Literature - a review of "Stealing Indian Women", April 26, 2008
This review is from: Stealing Indian Women: Native Slavery in the Illinois Country (Hardcover)
"Stealing Indian Women" is a remarkable piece of academic work. I didn't realize initially how strongly I felt about the book until after I began reading Shirley Christian's "Before Lewis and Clark: The Story of the Chouteaus". Though Christian's book is well documented, it has been nothing but a slog. And despite the detail with which she has written about Auguste and others, I don't feel any particular attachment to their characters, nor do I feel like I understand their motivations. Which is entirely unlike the experience I had reading "Stealing Indian Women". Once I started it, I could hardly put it down. And the pictures of the community was so well composed, and enthusiastically presented, that I have to say that I was left caring about the people I was introduced to -- something that doesn't often happen with an academic book.
Structurally the book falls into two sections. The first lays out the background for the development of French relations with the Indian tribes of the Upper Louisiana Territory -- commonly called the Illinois Country. These discussions cover personal relationships, such as the many forms of 'marriage' that existed between French men and Indian women, as well as general politics. And there is also quite a bit of interesting material that pertains directly to the Indian notion of slavery and how the Indians worked over time to pressure and finagle the French to bend and accept the practice.
The second half of the book focuses on what the author calls "The Celadon Affair". Leaving behind all general discussions of the Illinois Country, Dr. Ekberg plunges the reader into the midst of one of Ste. Genevieve's few serious crimes. The story begins when a party of young people, some of whom are free and some of whom are slaves, cross the river to get drunk with some friends on the British side of the Mississippi. Celadon is amongst them. A metis, he's somewhat of a bold character, and one prone to thumb his nose at authority. In any case, at some point, he and and a young female slave get separated from the rest of their party, and somehow in a botched effort to escape with Celadon, or else return home, she is shot.
The question is was it accidental or deliberate? In most cases the historian would be left with only scanty evidence on which to surmise. But the records of Ste. Genevieve are hardly sparse and Dr. Ekberg is able to fit together a scenario based on the numerous depositions that were taken at that time.
Besides being entertaining, Ekberg deftly handles this material and uses it to draw together all the previous threads of discussion --slavery, gender relations, politics -- so that you are left with a vivid sense of how these factors affected the lives of ordinary people on the frontier.
SUMMARY :::
I had a marvelous time reading this book. Dr. Ekberg certainly turned quite a few of my historical notions on their head. It was absolutely fascinating to read about how the Indians worked to modifying French politics, as well how Indian/French slavery was very much different than that practiced in the American South.
For those who have read Ekberg's "Colonial Ste. Genevieve" and wonder what this new book has to offer, I would say that it provides a refinement on Ekberg's previous research. One thing that I noticed, for example, was that his population figures have been tweaked.
I would highly recommend this book to anyone with a serious interest in the earliest European settlements/settlers along the Mississippi, especially if you are interested in a different sort of cultural interface between Europeans and Indians.
Pam T.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
HISTORIC SURPRISES, March 11, 2008
This review is from: Stealing Indian Women: Native Slavery in the Illinois Country (Hardcover)
This fourth volume of Dr.Ekberg's series of books on Colonial Ste. Genevieve, the oldest settlement on the west bank of the Mississippi, is full of surprises. Indian slavery is not a topic with which many readers are familiar but Indian women slaves loomed large in pioneer Ste. Genevieve. They ranged from housekeepers to concubines and wives of colonists. Moreover, some Indian women slaves, either widows of French mates or free in their own right, had the same civil right as white women.
Another surprise is the amount of intercourse between the west bank and the east bank of the Mississippi recently occupied by the British victors of the French-Indian war. This is accented by Dr. Eckberg's assertion that "the preferred venue for a good debauch was on the east side of the Mississippi, the British side." Hence would be revelers from the French village braved the currents of the river by means of pirogues to reach the English settlement. Such a hedonistic venture led to the dramatic events of March, 1773, to which a large portion of Ecberg's book is devoted. What the author terms "the Celedon Affair" is sufficiently theatrical to provide a movie script. It involves kidnapping of an Indian slave woman from the British colony by a half-breed French woodsman, her subsequent death either by murder or accident, the futile search for the suspected killer, and climaxed by the fugitive's successful kidnapping of a second Indian woman slave. Amid all ths exciting narrative the author scores keen insights into the wide scope of French frontier culture and the easy social relations between classes and races, free and slave, officials and residents. This volume is based upon sound research of archival documents on two continents and backed by the author's record as a prize-winning historian. This opus more than lives up to its subtitle by covering the history of Indian slavery under French and Spanish regimes. Thanks to Ekberg;s supple style the book provides an unusual and interesting view of Colonian history and a good read.
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