Andrew S.

Terrell
HIST 6393: Atlantic History to 1750
Review Essay
• White, Richard. The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes
Region, 1650-1815. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
• Greer, Allan. Mohawk Saint: Catherine Tekakwitha and the Jesuits. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2005.

Richard White’s and Allan Greer’s monographs look at late colonial interactions between

northern Native American tribes (Algonquins and Iroquois) and the French. The books are not,

however, of differing arguments. We see in White’s synthesis how French-Indian relations began

by ambiguous paternal definitions in the mid to late seventeenth century, then how these

relationships grew to a more mutual understanding until the French were forced out of much of

their American territories by the British wars and later the United States manifest destiny

conflicts of the early nineteenth century. While this larger survey serves its purpose by giving

more agency to the Native tribes of the Great Lakes region, Greer looks more closely at the

“Mohawk Saint,” Catherine Tekakwitha and her Jesuit priests in order to identify her equally of

Indian descent, and Catholic conversion. The middle ground that White speaks of was more than

a geographic location, but an entity filled by sentiments and relationships. Likewise, Greer tends

to associate the Jesuit mission village for Iroquois along the St. Lawrence River as another

middle ground between New France Catholicism and the savage-infested wilderness between

New York on Montreal. So what is “the middle ground” for Natives and North American

colonists?

Identifying what the middle ground stands for is the large link between these two

monographs. According to White, modern scholars have only recently begun to break away

from patterns of regarding Natives as victims or grouping them into larger tribes and patterns

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thus avoiding the depiction of what North America was in the colonial era. In perhaps a stretch

of interpretation, placing Native American history in US & Canadian history is also in search of

a middle ground. With White’s level of analysis in mind he shows his readers how the French

arrived to find a largely fragmented network of refugees and intertribal warfare in the Great

Lakes region. The middle ground here grew out of mutual necessity for security, social progress

and economic prosperity. The French realized quickly that they needed to adapt to certain Indian

customs in order to expedite any lucrative trade alliance. Rather than acting as a paternal

overlord, the French had to recognize that as “fathers” of the growing alliance they were

expected to serve as mediators. This was the first step in forming a middle ground between the

two societies. Greer adds another level of identification for “the middle ground:” religion. The

reciprocity of trade and mutually beneficial coexistence was shared between the Great Lakes

Algonquin tribes and the Jesuit mission outside of Montreal. However, the story of Tekakwitha

serves as a testament to the humanity of the perceived savages in the seventeenth century. Her

twenty-four year lifespan has become a sort of legend claimed by Native, Canadian, and

American heritages. What Greer shows is that she could be all of those things and more.

One noticeable difference in the two narratives is identifying the instigators for

progressive alliances. In White’s monograph, we see how the French had to yield to Native

expectations and customs. This is significant because it is contrary to the traditional narrative of

European interaction with Native American tribes. French traders realized the importance of

village chiefs--that is to say they figured out the political structure of the tribes quickly--and

created a lavish client system that would allow goods to be distributed among tribes through

these local chiefs. White shows that this arrangement was not exactly what the French desired,

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but it remained prevalent because of its practical application in furthering positive relations. The

imperialism that developed thus, White argues, was more based on mediation because this path

worked while using brute force did not. In the latter eighteenth century, the French unraveled the

balance of this mediation empire strategy. The ensuing French-Indian war saw the conclusion of

successful relations south of the Great Lakes. Pontiac’s rebellion was the culmination of French

neglect of their former soft imperialism and the Native tribes retracted to their independent

customs as the British and Americans moved in to repeat the process the French figured out a

century earlier. The instigators of peaceful alliances for the Algonquin tribes were the French,

but they were also the reason for fallout.

Whereas White shows the instigators of peaceful alliances for the Algonquins were the

French, Greer illustrates how Tekakwitha chose her path against the rebuke of her tribe members

thus we have a reversal of active roles. Tekakwitha’s baptism in 1676 pushed her more into the

Catholic-European camp and thus she migrated with other converts to Kahnawake. Greer

maintains the change in atmosphere was drastic beyond our comprehension because of our

inability to properly place ourselves in the shows of Natives of this era. The Native migrants

were introduced to Catholicism but they had to make sense of things on their own because of

their heritage and upbringings. Tekakwitha looked to the nuns and replicated their patterns

devoting herself to physical penance practices in an attempt to fully grasp what Catholicism was.

However, this ultimate devotion was her undoing and she died three years after the move to

Kahnawake. The Iroquois were slow to accept the Catholic faith at large, however. In Greer’s

middle chapters he expounds the disdain of men in the village against the women who proved to

be more susceptible to conversion. This was a large reason for Tekakwitha’s legacy’s popularity;

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the significance resting on the instigator for progress being a woman and not a French

missionary who would have to coerce his way into societal prominence.

Greer goes further into the effects her death had a local missionary, Claude Chauchetiére

who began the movement to show how a Native may have been a Saint. The middle ground for

the French Jesuits and the Iroquois nations of northern New England ended up being embodied

in Tekakwitha and her legacy. Greer also claims that in searching for sources to expand upon the

story of Tekakwitha and Chauchetiére he became a literary critic, “attempting to analyze,

critique, and decode enigmatic texts.” Unlike White’s tendency to mix all the tribes of the Great

Lakes regions into “Algonquin,” Greer takes care to expound on the individual and their

experiences. The two writing styles serve their purposes; White’s as a synthesis, and Greer’s as a

comprising history of the legacy left by the Mohawk Saint after three centuries of ongoing

stories in hopes of getting her canonized which has yet to come to fruition.

What readers can take from both of these fine works is a greater appreciation for French

relations with the Native Americans. Though there were armed conflicts, at large it seems both

of these monographs strive to convey a lost narrative in the colonial period: that Natives and

Europeans could cross cultural divides to form successful, peaceful alliances. That one draws

similar conclusions from both a macro and microhistory is a testament to the progress of

historical scholarship and analysis. “The middle ground” between the French and Native

American tribes is all things that happen in forming peaceful coexistence; religion, language,

customs, reciprocity, and cooperation.