|
|
|
Reviews
Uncertain Encounters: Indians and Whites at Peace and War in Southern Oregon, 1820s–1860s
|
By Nathan Douthit
|
Oregon State University Press, Corvallis, 2002. Notes, bibliography, index. 256 pages. $22.95 paper.
|
Reviewed by Gregory E. Smoak
Colorado State University, Ft. Collins
|
|
|
| Since its publication in 1991, Richard White's The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815, has influenced numerous studies of the interactions between Native peoples and colonizers. Combining ethnohistorical methods and cultural theory, White emphasized the complex and contingent nature of intercultural communication. In such a view, Indian peoples are active participants in their own histories, and peaceful interchange is as important as violence in understanding Indian-white relations. With Uncertain Encounters, Nathan Douthit attempts, with mixed success, to bring White's analytical concept to the history of Indian-white contact in southern Oregon from the fur-trade era through the removals following the Rogue River War. |
1
|
|
Uncertain Encounters works well as an updated narrative of the events surrounding the Rogue River War. As his title suggests, Douthit questions the standard historical interpretation (best seen in Stephen Dow Beckham's Requiem for a People [1975]), which overemphasized violent encounters and cast Indians as passive victims of history. Instead, he focuses on the indeterminate yet often peaceful interchange between whites and Indians. The book is divided roughly in thirds. The first two chapters retell the story of Indian-white encounters during the decades of the fur trade and early white settlement. The author then moves on to a period of treaty-making and cultural adjustment during the early 1850s. These two chapters are theoretically and historically the strongest. The final three chapters deal with the war and the removal of the Rogue River bands in its aftermath. Douthit has referenced much of the more recent literature on American Indian history, including demographic studies, which inform a valuable appendix concerning pre-contact Native populations and mortality rates. |
2
|
|
It is in the realm of theory that Uncertain Encounters runs into trouble. Douthit's rather unsophisticated use of White's middle ground concept as well as his sparing use of ethnohistorical methods undercut his greater intentions. At numerous points he writes of "establishing" or "continuing middle ground relationships," thus reifying an analytical construct. Yet, the author only provides a very vague definition of the middle ground as "the development of interpersonal, as well as social, political, and economic ties between Indians and whites" (p. 2). While he routinely cites White's concept, he adopts none of its nuances. For White, the middle ground is less a set of measurable relationships than a series of creative cultural misunderstandings. Each side in this equation speaks to parts of the other's culture that seem familiar yet that they cannot truly understand. Moreover, this type of intercultural communication is only possible while neither side can politically or militarily impose its will upon the other. Only in his analysis of the relationship between territorial governor Joseph Lane and the Takelma headman Apserkahar, or "Chief Joe," does Douthit approach the complexity of White's concept of the middle ground. |
3
|
|
Uncertain Encounters would also have benefited from a fuller use of the ethnohistorical method. Rarely does Douthit make use of ethnographic material to interpret Indian intentions or motivations. Indeed, ethnographic evidence concerning the Indian peoples of southern Oregon is mostly restricted to a few pages in the introduction. This separation of the "ethno" from the "history" is all too common in histories of Indian-white relations, and in this case it restricts the very type of analysis the author wishes to provide. |
4
|
|
|
Content in the History Cooperative database is intended for personal, noncommercial use only. You may not reproduce, publish, distribute, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, modify, create derivative works from, display, or in any way exploit the History Cooperative database in whole or in part without the written permission of the copyright holder.
|