Land Too Good for Indians: Northern Indian Removal (Volume 13)

New Directions in Native American Studies

by John P. Bowes

The history of Indian removal has often followed a single narrative arc, one that begins with President Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal Act of 1830 and follows the Cherokee Trail of Tears. In that conventional account, the Black Hawk War of 1832 encapsulates the experience of tribes in the territories north of the Ohio River. But Indian removal in the Old Northwest was much more complicated—involving many Indian peoples and more than just one policy, event, or politician. In Land Too Good for Indians, historian John P. Bowes takes a long-needed closer, more expansive look at northern Indian removal—and in so doing amplifies the history of Indian removal and of the United States.

Bowes focuses on four case studies that exemplify particular elements of removal in the Old Northwest. He traces the paths taken by Delaware Indians in response to Euro-American expansion and U.S. policies in the decades prior to the Indian Removal Act. He also considers the removal experience among the Seneca-Cayugas, Wyandots, and other Indian communities in the Sandusky River region of northwestern Ohio. Bowes uses the 1833 Treaty of Chicago as a lens through which to examine the forces that drove the divergent removals of various Potawatomi communities from northern Illinois and Indiana. And in exploring the experiences of the Odawas and Ojibwes in Michigan Territory, he analyzes the historical context and choices that enabled some Indian communities to avoid relocation west of the Mississippi River.

In expanding the context of removal to include the Old Northwest, and adding a portrait of Native communities there before, during, and after removal, Bowes paints a more accurate—and complicated—picture of American Indian history in the nineteenth century. Land Too Good for Indians reveals the deeper complexities of this crucial time in American history.

Genres: History, American History, Nonfiction, Native American

324 pages, Hardcover

Published May 25, 2016

Reviews

[Hannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

A more unbiased view of this time period and experiences of the removal of Native Americans from their lands in the east to the west.

[Kent · Rating 3 out of 5]

A primarily diplomatic/political history putting together the often localized and complicated history of the who, what, when, and how of Indian removal west of the Mississippi for some of the major native residents of the "old northwest." Bowes makes the case that this is a long history which basically begins with the NW Ordinance and Land Ordinance of the 1780s; it is not one which begins with the 1830 Removal Act or Black Hawk's War. Nor is this history the same as that of the Cherokee -- the most famous part of Indian removal and whose discourses against removal were in some ways unusual.

The book is best for the overview of this various and long process (which Bowes continues for many of the groups once they go across the Mississippi River). It goes little into the social, familial, or cultural realities of the native groups and how they (in particular those of mixed ancestry) played into decision making of native peoples or relationships between them, American state officials, and American settlers.

[Roger Green · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book focuses on northern Indian removal in the Ohio and Great Lakes regions. Bowes importantly contextualizes his study within a broader unrelenting approach to removal sought by the U.S. government from the outset of the nation, shaping policies, rhetoric, public opinion, and legal decisions that would attack natives from various points. Among one of the most interesting aspects of the study is the ways merchants and traders parasitically involved themselves to capitalize on Indian annuities, draining them of resources so they could keep pushing Indians further West. The chapter on Chicago is particularly enlightening. This study gives a more nuanced approach to an era people have come to gloss as the Trail of Tears. There were many trails, over many years, and many deaths, and the policies remain in neocolonial forms affecting Native peoples today.

[Kevin Nolan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really good coverage of northern struggles against and with removal. Great to dispel the common notion that Indian removal involved only Andrew Jackson and the "Five Civilized Tribes" of the southeast. Indigenous struggles to preserve land, culture and life in the face of invading European settler colonialists is more varied than the number of tribes documented by Euro-American history. Dr. Bowes makes that clear. Highly recommended for anyone interested in a full telling of US and North American history. Knowing the story of indigenous struggle, survival, persistence, revival that was inflicted by the US "manifest destiny" is important for all citizens of the US.

[Ai Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bowes's book makes an important case for the localization of removal, rather than seeing Cherokee removal as the be-all, end-all of removal policy and how it operated. In many ways, Bowes's book takes that localization and makes it dizzyingly accurate--the chapters whip across location and time in their focus on each nation, and it can be difficult to keep all the actors in each chapter straight. The use of settler colonialism as a theoretical framework is also pretty underused--but the importance of his intervention is nonetheless made clear as the specificity with which he deals with each nation reveals the ways individuals in those nations navigated the options they were presented. The chapter on the Ojibwe and Odawa peoples in Michigan in particular were a very revealing look into the logics of removal and the way that Native people could negotiate various policies to try to maintain connection to their homelands.

[Bill Finley · Rating 1 out of 5]

I am try to find something positive to say. The book was poorly, IMHO, organized with too many redundant passages and too little analysis.

[Jeremy Canipe · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this book, historian Dr. John P. Bowes argues that, while most historians and most of American public memory focuses upon Indian Removal in terms of the southeastern portion of North America culminating with the Cherokee Trail of Tears, the fuller history can only be understood by deeper study of the removal of Native people from the Northwest Territory between the end of the American Revolution and the American Civil War. This book is a sobering one and fully proves this argument with solid primary and secondary sources.