The Shawnees and Their Neighbors, 1795-1870

Stephen Warren traces the transformation in Shawnee sociopolitical organization over seventy years as it changed from village-centric, multi-tribe kin groups to an institutionalized national government led by wealthy men with only marginal kin ties to the people they claimed to represent. The Shawnees and Their Neighbors, 1795-1870 lays bare the nexus of myth and history produced by Shawnee interpreters with a telling analysis of their vested interests in modernizing the tribes. Until recently, historians have assumed that Central Algonquians derive from politically unified tribes, but by analyzing the crucial role that individuals, institutions, and policies played in shaping modern tribal governments, a messier, more complicated history of migration and conflict emerges.With a particular focus on the role played by Christian missionaries in Shawnee life, Warren explores how Native peoples used agents of assimilation to craft enduring and distinctive responses to American cultural imperialism. Specifically, Warren examines how and why tribal leaders defied government plans for tribal consolidation by allying themselves with Methodist, Baptist, and Quaker missionaries. Ultimately, Warren aims to establish that the form of the modern Shawnee "tribe" was coerced in accordance with the U.S. government's desire for an entity with whom to do business, rather than as a natural development of traditional Shawnee ways.Stephen Warren is a visiting assistant professor of history at Augustana College in Rockford, Illinois.