Settling Ohio: First Peoples and Beyond

by Timothy G. Anderson (Editor), Brian D. Schoen (Editor)

Scholars working in archaeology, education, history, geography, and politics tell a nuanced story about the people and dynamics that reshaped this region and determined who would control it. The Ohio Valley possesses some of the most resource-rich terrain in the world. Its settlement by humans was thus consequential not only for shaping the geographic and cultural landscape of the region but also for forming the United States and the future of world history. Settling Ohio begins with an overview of the first people who inhabited the region, who built civilizations that moved massive amounts of earth and left an archaeological record that drew the interest of subsequent settlers and continues to intrigue scholars. It highlights how, in the eighteenth century, Native Americans who migrated from the East and North interacted with Europeans to develop impressive trading networks and how they navigated complicated wars and sought to preserve national identities in the face of violent attempts to remove them from their lands. The book situates the traditional story of Ohio settlement, including the Northwest Ordinance, the dealings of the Ohio Company of Associates, and early road building, into a far richer story of contested spaces, competing visions of nationhood, and complicated relations with Indian peoples. By so doing, the contributors provide valuable new insights into how chaotic and contingent early national politics and frontier development truly were. Chapters highlighting the role of apple-growing culture, education, African American settlers, and the diverse migration flows into Ohio from the East and Europe further demonstrate the complex multiethnic composition of Ohio’s early settlements and the tensions that resulted. A final theme of this volume is the desirability of working to recover the often-forgotten history of non-White peoples displaced by the processes of settler colonialism that has been, until recently, undervalued in the scholarship.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

292 pages, Paperback

Published June 6, 2023

Reviews

[Benjamin Phillips · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of essays designed to flesh out the narratives surrounding that presented by McCullough in “Pioneers” (2019).
Overall, a very enjoyable collection. Several were a little too presentist IMO, but it was generally of a consistent and solid quality.

[David Clifton · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of eleven essays by eleven different writers. The goal was to add other voices to the dominant Anglo-European/American narrative of the settling of Ohio.
The book is worth reading, if only for William Kerrigan's chapter, "Johnny Appleseed and Apple Cultures in Early Ohio." As I travel through rural Ohio today, it's easy for me to imagine the cider culture - "characterized by small, resource-poor farms, often remote from markets, where both labor and cash were scarce commodities."

[Cole Branham · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you want to understand the historic cultural-political landscape of Ohio, this is a must read. This book comprehensively covers topics from the region's ancient origins to the modern era (20th Century). The book heavily focuses primarily on the years 1700-1900, however. The authors provide unique perspectives on the different cultures and peoples that moved into the former Northwest Territory and explain how this formed an uneasy melting pot of the cultures and origins of colonial America. They discuss Natives, Blacks, and newer immigrants contributions to the state as well as how older populations have adjusted to these changes over time. This is truly a historical ethnography if there is one. Perhaps one of the most comprehensive and intriguing books written on Ohio in the last 100 years. It is structured as a collection of academic essays and studies in history, geography, ethnography, demographics, and politics.

After reading this book, you'll not only understand Ohio's history but why the state is so diverse in terms of micro-regions within the border of a single political entity. It explains why Ohio has often been a swing state and bellwether as well as propagating that states and regions are not as homogenous as they are often assumed to be and that history can explain modern complexities.

[Janet]

Th his is a recent title regarding Ohio history which is not about the well know founders and politicians of Ohio. I am choosing to call the people and subjects I this title”the second tier people”, it is the forgotten ones, the ones who did a lot of the hard work and labor to found Ohio, not the ones sitting around discussing ideas. Each topic is written by different history authors and includes a list of well searched
bibliographic sources. There is even a section on Johnny Appleseed and a section on the establishment of public education in the Northwest Territory.
I heard the two editors speak in Marietta, Ohio and was not overly impressed. There comments on early migrations into Ohio made me wonder if they knew anything about the migration of Marylanders into western Pennsylvania were there was a large group of people on the frontier ready to surge into Ohio while it was still the Northwest Territory.
This title is definitely a different look at Ohio History.

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

A really good, deep dive into current scholarship on the settling of what is now Ohio by people from the original inhabitants to Europeans of all backgrounds. When you spend some time digging beyond the more familiar stories of wealthy speculators and pay attention to the experiences of the vast majority of people who lived in this area, everything that is here now becomes so much more meaningful. While I wish that the essays had been less academic-technical, it was still fascinating reading.

[Frank Lavin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating background on Ohio and the Ohio Territory. Chapters on Native Americans, the Northwest Ordinance, African-American settlers, and Johnny Appleseed all well worth a read.

[Sharon Buxton · Rating 3 out of 5]

B-. nonfiction, history