Reviewed by Steven W. Hackel | Book Review | The William and Mary Quarterly, 63.2

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Reviewed by Steven W. Hackel | Book Review | The William and Mary Quarterly, 63.2 | The History Cooperative

Reviews of Books

Steven W. Hackel, Oregon State University

Paths to a Middle Ground: The Diplomacy of Natchez, Boukfouka, Nogales, and San Fernando de las Barrancas, 1791–1795. By Charles A. Weeks. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2005. 304 pages. $45.00 (cloth).
In the decades following the conclusion of the Seven Years' War, the lower Mississippi Valley entered a period of increasing uncertainty as diplomats redrew the map of eastern North America, Indians struggled to maintain their autonomy, and a host of American settlers and Spanish officials jockeyed for Indian lands and alliances. Under the terms of the Treaty of Paris of 1763, New Orleans and Louisiana passed from French to Spanish control, the British took over the French lands east of the Mississippi River, and Spain gave way to Britain in Florida. With the end of the Revolutionary War just two decades later, Spain regained Florida and made it known that it would not accept the thirty-first parallel as the southern border between its land and the United States. Forced to settle for this boundary, the Spanish then sought to rely on military posts in the lower Mississippi Valley to block a further American advance. Then, quite suddenly, in a reversal of fortune for Indians and Spanish officials in Louisiana, Spanish diplomats in Madrid agreed to the Treaty of San Lorenzo (1795), also known as Pinckney's Treaty. Through this agreement Spain formally accepted the thirty-first parallel boundary and committed itself to a withdrawal from all its posts north of that line. With a few strokes of a pen, Spanish Minister of State Manuel de Godoy negated years of Spanish assurances that Spain would protect and support its Indian allies of the lower Mississippi Valley as long as they remained opposed to an American advance.	1
In Paths to a Middle Ground, Charles A. Weeks explores the complex rituals of diplomacy and alliance pursued by Indians and Spaniards of the lower Mississippi Valley in the years leading up to the Treaty of San Lorenzo. Part 1 of this book discusses the evolution of a culture of diplomacy in the southeast through the eighteenth century, part 2 examines key moments in Indian-Spanish negotiations during the early 1790s, and part 3 presents seventeen documents in translation on which much of the volume rests.	. . .

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