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Catherine Denial , Making Marriage: Husbands, Wives and the American State in Dakota and Ojibwe Country , Saint Paul : Minnesota Historical Press , 2013. Pp. 208. $19.95 paper (ISBN 978-0-87351-906-9 ).
Book Reviews
In her first book, Catherine Denial chronicles the racial-ethnic and gendered applications of marital law between 1820 and 1845 in portions of the Northwest Territory that are now Minnesota and Wisconsin. Denial argues that "marriages...were inextricably bound up with questions of nation and identity for the Dakota, the Ojibwe, mixed-heritage individuals, and Americans alike," and that through such unions, "we can trace the uneven fortunes of American expansion in the early nineteenth century and the nation-shaping power of marital acts" (4). Denial places marriage and the household at the center of early Western history, sharing ideological ground with scholars such as Sarah Carter, Anne Hyde, and Peggy Pascoe. In the context of today's conversation about marriage equality as a fundamental civil right, Denial's discussion of the historical imposition of state-sanctioned forms of marriage as an imperial mechanism is provocative.
Readers in different historical fields will benefit unevenly from Denial's introductory chapter. Historians of indigenous and fur-trade history will find an accessible and thorough review of the basic principles of coverture and patriarchy embedded within American marital law, but gender historians will miss an equally important survey of the Northwest Territory's legal history. Despite this uneven start, Denial's subsequent chapters offer richly detailed inquiries into marital practices...