Writing the history of North America from Indian country: the view from the north-central Plains, 1800-1870

Abstract

This article is based on the premise that an insightful reconstruction of the specific cultural world of American Indians allows a clearer, more in-depth understanding of North American history as a whole. To illustrate our perspective, we examine a concept of geographical and cultural space denoted as “Indian country.” As a case study, we focus our analysis on tribes of the central and northern Plains between 1800 and 1870. Taking the view from this Indian country and using sources produced by Indian people themselves, such as the 1806 Arikara map of Too-Ne, it becomes easier to understand how Plains people envisioned territory and social groupings in their own ways. The confrontation between Indians and Europeans was fueled by mutual misconceptions of land ownership and social and political institutions. From Indian countries, we learn that some categories that seemed common to Euro-Americans, such as tribe or nation, chief, race, and métissage, were not universal categorizations that were understood in North America during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and that they need to be historicized. In this regard, the colonial conquest was not only territorial but was a way in which new social meanings and practices were created.

Keywords

• ethnohistory
• territoriality
• Plains Indians
• Sioux
• Arikaras