Book Review

Canada and the United States

In the preface to her thoroughly researched and scrupulously detailed biography of Shingwaukonse, a nineteenth-century Canadian Ojibwa leader, Janet E. Chute tells of her good fortune in finding a pair of American Indian communities eager for a young scholar to recount the life of their ancestral chief. "How often does a doctoral student receive an invitation," she writes, "to acquire data on a subject in which she has had an interest for many years? It seemed like a dream come true" (p. xi). The people of Garden River and Batchewana, near Sault Ste. Marie, pointed Chute to all the information she could hope for, and she has repaid their generosity with a book of high quality.	1
The locals will surely read this story—of Shingwaukonse (Little Pine, 1773–1854), his Native contemporaries and offspring, as well as his white adversaries and allies—with a strong sense of urgency and recognition. American Indian history is most often local, and this book dwells on the personages and events who shaped the present state of these localities. At the same time, the book is worthy of attention by general readers in American Indian history.	2
Shingwaukonse was a man of mixed ethnicity. His father was white, but his mother raised him as an Ojibwa, and he chose as an adult to identify wholly with his Indian kin. As a youth, he achieved spiritual powers through a vision. He became a practitioner of the divinatory shaking tent ritual and an esteemed member of the Midewiwin medicine society. He fought with prowess against the Americans during the War of 1812; his skill as an orator earned him political as well as religious and military prestige. In the author's terms, he was a paradigmatic power-holder and a provider-of-services for his Ojibwa people.	. . .