Book reviews -- A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745-1815 by Gregory Evans Dowd

Abstract

Review.

A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745-1815. By Gregory Evans Dowd. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992. xxvi + 261 pp. $24.95, ISBN 0-8018-4236-0.)

Within the past decade historians have reexamined the relationship between religious revitalization and intertribal political movements among the Indian tribes of the trans-Appalachian West. Richard White has asserted that attempts by the tribes to form pan-Indian tribal coalitions during this period were logical, if vestigial, patterns inherited from the French period, while Joel Martin and R. David Edmunds have argued that the coalitions were primarily religious in origin and assumed a political structure only as a secondary manifestation. In A Spirited Resistance, Gregory Evans Dowd reexamines the spiritual and political perspective of both northern and southern tribes and argues that attempts by Native Americans to form intertribal political movements during his period of study were spiritual movements, and that for leaders such as Tecumseh, religious and political motivation essentially were the same.

In his initial chapter, Dowd explores the concept of "power" within the tribal world and illustrates that by the mid-eighteenth century most Indians realized that they were being overwhelmed by the Europeans. While some tribespeople sought to rebuild their societies through cooperation with the Europeans, others blamed their demise upon their association with these newcomers: in their attempts to ally themselves with other Indians who subscribed to similar views, these nativists established the "central premise of the militant, pan-Indian religious movements of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries." Dowd also argues that in associating with individuals of a similar persuasion, regardless of their previous tribal identity, the nativists forged a new concept of Indian identity, subscribing to a "theory of polygenesis, stressing both the common origin of all Indians and the spiritual impurity" of both the Anglo-Americans and those tribespeople who championed acculturation.

Ironically, the high point of intertribal unity occurred in the decade following the American Revolution and was championed by such leaders as Alexander McGillivray and Joseph Brant. Dowd argues that although both of these leaders adopted selected European cultural patterns, they attempted politically to unify the tribes, and their moderate stance provided the more acculturated tribespeople with an alternative to the militant nativists. Eventually, however, McGillivray and Brant encountered increased opposition from the militants, and when the British and Spaniards failed to honor their commitments, the pan-Indian alliances in both the North and the South collapsed. Consequently, according to Dowd, it is not surprising that renewed attempts at unity, such as those led by the Shawnee Prophet, by Tecumseh, and by the Red Stick movement among the Creeks, again turned to a more militant nativism. But by 1812 the tribespeople were outnumbered, their economic base had eroded, and, suffering from "violent internal divisions over the issue of federal interference in their societies," both the militants and those Indians who opposed them were overwhelmed. Dowd points out that renewed nativism could be found in Native American resistance during the Seminole campaigns and the Black Hawk War, but such outbursts were only vestiges of the earlier activities.

Dowd asserts that the combination of nativism and political unification was a major focus for Indian people during this period, but he also admits that "the nativists failed." Indeed, historians might argue that although the Indian communities experienced a series of religious revitalization movements during these years, attempts at intertribal political unity repeatedly failed because the tribespeople were never as committed to the pan-Indian movement as were some of their leaders. Still, Dowd clearly demonstrates that attempts at intertribal political unity continued to emerge during the last half of the eighteenth century, and Native American historians will be forced to take Dowd's thesis into account. This carefully researched and well-written volume should emerge as a "standard work" on Native American history during this period.

R. David Edmunds

Indiana University

Bloomington, Indiana