Born of Lakes and Plains Audiobook Libro.fm

Description

A fresh history of the West grounded in the lives of mixeddescent Native families who first bridged and then collided with racial boundaries

Often overlooked there is mixed blood at the heart of America And at the heart of Native life for centuries there were complex households using intermarriage to link disparate communities and create protective circles of kin Beginning in the seventeenth century Native peoplesOjibwes Otoes Cheyennes Chinooks and othersformed new families with young French English Canadian and American fur traders who spent months in smoky winter lodges or at boisterous summer rendezvous These families built cosmopolitan trade centers from Michilimackinac on the Great Lakes to Bellevue on the Missouri River Bents Fort in the southern Plains and Fort Vancouver in the Pacific Northwest Their family names are often imprinted on the landscape but their voices have long been muted in our histories Anne F Hydes pathbreaking history restores them in full

Vividly combining the panoramic and the particular Born of Lakes and Plains follows five mixeddescent families whose lives intertwined major events imperial battles over the fur trade the first extensions of American authority west of the Appalachians the ravages of imported disease the violence of Indian removal encroaching American settlement and following the Civil War the disasters of Indian war reservations policy and allotment During the pivotal nineteenth century mixeddescent people who had once occupied a middle ground became a racial problem drawing hostility from all sides Their identities were challenged by the pseudoscience of blood quantumthe instrument of allotment policyand their traditions by the Indian schools established to erase Native ways As Anne F Hyde shows they navigated the hard choices they faced as they had for centuries by relying on the rich resources of family and kin Here is an indelible western history with a new human face

Cover art Sault Ste Marie Showing the United States Garrison in the Distance 18361837 oil on canvas by George Catlin SmithsonianAmerican Art Museum GiftofMrs Joseph Harrison JrCourtesyofSmithsonian Institute