wjmcomposer

There isn't a deluge of books focusing specifically on the history of the Potawatomi to choose from, so the book gets an extra star just for being what it is. It lost 1 star for being written down to, by which I mean this book is written as though for young adults, without being actually well written for that audience. I'd have preferred something meatier, or been more understanding of something less dry with that reader in mind. It lost another star simply for being quite understandably of it's time:At a certain point in history writing in the US, the first re-examination of historic truth led to a somewhat reflexive counterattack upon the already slanted way of looking at the past, especially when it comes to the early history of North America. This first (really second if you include the initial whitewashing) wave of revision mostly falls along the lines of "White people always bad/wrong/hapless/doomed/yet somehow winning" and the other of "the other people great/pure/uncorrupted/right/superior/doomed/barely losing". There are PLENTY of times however, where these tropes are quite literally true. We've since learned to nuance our understanding of history to show that pretty much everybody was wrong and a bit dodgy, including the Europeans, but also including indigenous peoples. This book tends to jeer at French, English, and early Americans, but does at least avoid the other whitewashing. I think that if you're searching for fairly objective information on a specific group of people who did have a great impact on the history of the area, you're going to come up just a little short with this slender volume. It's tantalizing though, to think of the volume someone has yet to write (as far as I know) who could objectively relate the story of this great band of native peoples, who went from gentle souls and learnt cunning, bravery, and cruelty through a series of displacements, beginning with the Indian peoples of Eastern North America, running through the French of trapping times, the English of Revolutionary America, and the United States during the War of 1812 through the re-settlements and reservations which form a common thread of woe in the history of all indigenous peoples.