The New Southern Gentleman Book

Incredible account of the interactions between European settlers and Native Americans in the Old Northwest, the region spanning roughly from Upper Canada through the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley in the modern Midwest. White's book posits the "middle ground" as an uneasy meeting place between empires, where cultures and personalities conflict, play off and ultimately shape on another in a sort of sociological syncretism. White shows this borderland as constantly in flux as new players enter the scene, each with their own cultural perceptions that render easy analysis difficult. French settlers and fur traders work to integrate with natives, especially the Algonquin (here, a broadly-defined group of linguistically and culturally similar Nations including the Shawnee, Miami, Kickapoo, Winnebago and other groups), through trade, negotiation and intermarriage that establish them as equals, in theory if not practice; the British, who reject French social assimilation in favor of patronizing dominance and (increasingly one-sided) co-dependence; and the Americans, initially too weak to press their claims but ultimately reflecting elements of both predecessors' approaches. The book's full of interesting pen portraits of dozens of native and white leaders, along with insightful looks at the maintenance of this "middle ground": how Britain's victories over France in the French and Indian War caused its erosion, only for Pontiac's War and other confederations to reinstate it; how the Algonquins used their military and economic strength to leverage favorable terms with the whites, until the situation grew too uncertain to maintain their independence; how Britain's postwar treaties ultimately abandoned them to the Americans, who showed little interest in coexistence, let alone cooperation with Natives; how divisions between nations, clans and individual leaders prevented effective resistance, emerging only in sporadic alliances (Blue Jacket's war against St. Clair and Wayne, Tecumseh's confederation) that proved unsustainable. It's an incredibly absorbing, fine-grain portrait of frontier relations, a tough read that defies easy synopsis. But for those seeking an understanding of early American history, it's well-worth the effort of digesting it.