Content area
Full Text
Stephen Warren , The Worlds the Shawnees Made: Migration and Violence in Early America (Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press , 2014, $39.95). Pp. 320. isbn 978 1 4696 1173 0 .
Reviews
In The Worlds the Shawnees Made: Migration and Violence in Early America, Stephen Warren has constructed a remarkably coherent and inclusive history of Shawnees in early America. Warren chronicles three centuries of Shawnee diplomacy, trade, and movement, emphasizing the breadth of Shawnee influence across the boundaries and peoples of eastern North America. Additionally, The Worlds the Shawnees Made speaks to broader concerns about the construction of American Indian histories. Here, Warren challenges both colonial perceptions of the Shawnees as politically disorganized and geographically "wandering" peoples and contemporary historical interpretations that fixate on Native nation building. Thus, rather than emphasizing tribal coalescence and political progression, the narrative centers on the development of tribal villages and networks and the efforts of early Shawnees to maintain political independence in a tumultuous world.
As in his previous monograph, The Shawnees and Their Neighbors 1795-1870 (2009), Warren focusses on patterns of tribal migration and violence as he examines the proto-historic origins of the Shawnees. His examination of village-level society and structure is often not as strong as in his first book,...