Skip to Main Content

Gathering Together: The Shawnee People through Diaspora and Nationhood, 1600-1870

Online ISBN:
9780300182316
Print ISBN:
9780300180619
Publisher:
Yale University Press
Book

Gathering Together: The Shawnee People through Diaspora and Nationhood, 1600-1870

Sami Lakomäki
Sami Lakomäki
University of Oulu
Find on
Published:
12 August 2014
Online ISBN:
9780300182316
Print ISBN:
9780300180619
Publisher:
Yale University Press

Abstract

This book traces the history of Shawnee nation-building and diaspora through the era of European colonialism and state-making in North America. Focusing on Native American politics, it argues that the Shawnee people created two competing strategies for coping with the colonial invasion. In the late seventeenth century the shockwaves of the European intrusion scattered the Shawnees from their Ohio Valley homelands across eastern North America. This diaspora taught many Shawnees to rely on mobility and flexible community fissions to survive in the colonial world. Others, however, came to see dispersal as dangerous and began to seek security from broader national cooperation. They built institutions of collective decision-making and developed a notion of a shared Shawnee country where the entire nation could gather together. The book reveals that these strategies were based on two competing and continually evolving visions of society, peoplehood, and space. Neither vision was more or less “traditional” than the other. Both stemmed from cultural ideas, social structures, and political philosophies that were unquestionably old; yet the Shawnees constantly reworked these roots creatively in new settings. This book, then, encourages historians to pay serious attention to dynamic political thinking and debates in Native American societies and to explore how such thinking and debates shaped the interactions between Indians and Euroamericans. It argues that understanding Native American political ideologies and strategies as creative and powerful forces is essential for understanding American history.

Contents
Close
This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

Sign In or Create an Account

Close

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

View Article Abstract & Purchase Options

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

Close