People, Places & Time
Above: Le cours du Missisipi, ou de St. Louis, fameuse riviere d'Amerique septontrionale aux environs de laquelle se trouve le païs appellé Louisiane. Nicholas de Fer, Le Cours de Missisipi, 1718 (Newberry Library, Ayer 133 .F34 1718). View at Internet Archive
How can we learn about Native perspectives on history?
Native perspective is found in collections of oral history and writings by Native people (including tribal newspapers, as well as published work by Native scholars). Go to "Indian Perspectives" for more detail.
For thousands of years, the Midwest region has been home to indigenous peoples, many of whose descendants belong to Indian “tribes” today. Tribal groups came into being when the U. S. began to negotiate treaties with Native peoples in the late 18th and 19th centuries. Treaties were signed between “sovereign nations,” that is, the United States and particular Native groups the U. S. considered tribes. Tribal states continue to be recognized by Congress and the Supreme Court.
What has been constant and what has changed for Indian peoples?
The values that shaped the ways Native people treated others, related to the natural world, and established relationships with spirit beings have great historical depth. Over time—that is, during several centuries before European arrival, during the French and English preeminence in America, and after the birth of the United States—they adapted to new circumstances in ways compatible with these values. Go to "Eras" for more detail.
The people in the tribal communities also belonged to “ethnic groups,” whose history can be traced back to before Europeans arrived. Members of ethnic groups shared a common language, ideas about their homeland and their history, and social customs. When, over time, members of ethnic groups settled in different areas and experienced different local histories, they developed local variants of ethnicity. In the Midwest, in some cases, ethnic identity conflates with tribal status. The Menominee are both a tribe and an ethnic group. On the other hand, there are several tribes the members of which share a localized sense of history and also culturally affiliate with a larger ethnic group. Each of the nineteen Ojibwa tribes in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan has a localized sense of identity and a cultural affiliation with the large ethnic group or Nation of Ojibwa people (Anishinabe).
How do Native and non-Native scholars try to understand Indian history?
Anthropologists—archaeologists, linguists, and ethnographers—and historians have specialized in studying change using profession-specific methodologies. Go to "How We Know" for more detail.
As members of ethnic groups and, more recently, as tribal members, indigenous people played an important role in the history of the Midwest as, over time, they adapted to new circumstances yet found ways to survive as culturally distinct communities.
The “Eras” section explores the history of ethnic groups and tribes in the Midwest. “Indian Perspectives” discusses Native reflections on their history, and the “How We Know” section examines some of the methods scholars currently use to understand Indian history.
