The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650 - 1815

“The American Republic succeeded in doing what the French and English empires could not do. Americans invented Indians and forced Indians to live with the consequences of this invention. It is the Americans’ success that gives the book its circularity. Europeans met the other, invented a long-lasting and significant common world, but in the end reinvented the Indian as other.”

This statement by White highlights the imbalance of power in shaping history. He suggests that the “invention” was not merely a misinterpretation but a deliberate self-serving creation, reflecting the power dynamics and cultural clashes that ultimately led to the imposed identity. While there was once a shared world, the eventual reinvention of the "Indian as other" shows the breakdown in the relationship which previously formed the middle ground..

“Shattered people usually vanish from history, and many of the Iroquoian peoples—the Eries, the Neutrals—who fell before the epidemics and the warfare, disappeared as organized groups. But most Algonquians did not disappear. Instead, together with the Frenchmen, they pieced together a new world from shattered pieces. They used what amounted to an imported imperial glue to reconstruct a village world.”

White references the tendency for broken or conquered communities to vanish from the historical record. In doing so, he highlights that the very nature of surviving Algonquian communities was shaped by adaptation. As survivors of earlier crises, they adapted using elements from their interactions with the French: trade, alliances, and cultural exchange. This rebuilding process reflects the broader idea of the middle ground, where different cultures come together, negotiate, and create a shared space, through a combination of choice and necessity.

“The French equated leadership with political power, and power with coercion. Leaders commanded; followers obeyed. But what distinguished most Algonquian politics from European politics was the absence of coercion.”

White draws a crucial distinction between the French understanding of leadership and political power and the nature of Algonquian politics. In European political systems, leaders were expected to command, and their authority was maintained through coercion, force, or the threat of punishment.