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Introduction: Emerging Borderlands
by
Nora Faires
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Surrounded by four of the Great Lakes, Michigan occupies a distinct space in a transnational region marked by centuries of cultural, economic, environmental, political, and social interaction. To explore this facet of the state's history, the spring and fall 2008 volumes of the Michigan Historical Review are special issues on the "Borderlands." The volumes feature thirteen articles by scholars from both Canada and the United States, the spring issue focusing on the early period, the fall issue on the modern era. Offering a variety of perspectives and investigating a range of topics, the authors share a commitment to reaching across political boundaries and conceptual categories to situate the history of Michigan within broader contexts. Their research refines and deepens our knowledge of the state and its transnational region, adding texture and nuance to familiar stories and offering new narratives of the varied peoples who have occupied the lands and traversed the waters of the Great Lakes basin over more than two centuries. The volumes aim to contribute to the emerging body of scholarship that understands borderlands as both tangible and intangible spaces where boundaries are drawn and redrawn, with myriad effects.1 As the articles in these volumes suggest, Michigan, whose two peninsulas have borders with the nation of Canada (specifically the province of Ontario) and with three substantial midwestern states (Ohio, Indiana, and Wisconsin) and whose lakes and rivers connect to a broad expanse within North America and eventually to the Atlantic, offers an especially rich field for such investigations. |
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The six essays in this spring issue span developments from the mid-1700s through the inauguration of Michigan statehood in 1837, a status the territory achieved only after the short-lived "Toledo War." Earlier military rivalries, conquests, and depredations were far bloodier than this small-scale conflict between the State of Ohio and the Territory of Michigan. Throughout the eighteenth century and continuing into the nineteenth, the Great Lakes basin was a site for brutal warfare waged by various Europeans and Americans against Native and Métis peoples as whites sought resources—pelts, fish, grain, timber, and preeminently land. At the same time, in conflicts closely related to these struggles, the region became a major battleground for empire, as evidenced in the Seven Years' War, the American Revolution, and the War of 1812. Often intermingled with these conflicts were bitter battles pitting various Native groups against each other, sometimes in shifting alliances with whites. All these contestations further transformed, in complex and variegated ways, the region's demography, economy, politics, and environment. |
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Consequently, the theme of war courses through this volume, appearing in various guises in each essay. It also provides the motif for the cover illustration, a portrait of Maj.-General John Sullivan of the Continental army that depicts him resplendent in uniform, armed with lance and sword, and standing in front of a sturdy tree. Rather undistinguished throughout most of his career, Sullivan is remembered most for a horrific episode of the American Revolution, the prosecution of a campaign against Indian allies of the British in upstate New York. In September 1779, following George Washington's express orders, he commanded his troops to destroy more than forty Indian towns. The soldiers left the Seneca and other Iroquois groups with neither shelter nor food, razing homes, confiscating corn, and cutting thousands of fruit trees to the ground. In his contribution to this volume, "Apples on the Border: Orchards and the Contest for the Great Lakes," William Kerrigan asks us to ponder the significance of European-style orchards planted and nurtured by Indians and felled by whites. Looking anew at accounts by Sullivan and others during the late-eighteenth century, Kerrigan reveals recurrent mention of luscious apples and peaches grown in Native villages, a phenomenon such narrators found remarkable. Kerrigan rekindles that wonder, bringing to the foreground a fascinating subject—Indian horticulture—that forms the literal backdrop to some well-known narratives of the Great Lakes region. Thus, the cover portrait of Sullivan serves two purposes. It is both a reminder of the salience of war and its gruesome outcomes and a metaphor for the value of altering one's perspective—in this case, moving the tree from the background to the foreground—in order to see the region's landscapes and peoples afresh. This spirit of reimagination, of transgressing customary categories, animates the articles throughout this volume. |
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