PDF Masters of The Middle Waters Indian Nations and Colonial Ambitions Along The Mississippi Jacob F Lee Ebook Full Chapter

Masters of the Middle Waters Indian
Nations and Colonial Ambitions along

the Mississippi Jacob F. Lee
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://textbookfull.com/product/masters-of-the-middle-waters-indian-nations-and-colo
nial-ambitions-along-the-mississippi-jacob-f-lee/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...
London Londoners and the Great Fire of 1666 1st Edition

Jacob F. Field
https://textbookfull.com/product/london-londoners-and-the-great-
fire-of-1666-1st-edition-jacob-f-field/
Ontology and the ambitions of metaphysics 1st Edition

Hofweber
https://textbookfull.com/product/ontology-and-the-ambitions-of-
metaphysics-1st-edition-hofweber/
Indian Migration and Empire A Colonial Genealogy of the

Modern State 1st Edition Radhika Mongia
https://textbookfull.com/product/indian-migration-and-empire-a-
colonial-genealogy-of-the-modern-state-1st-edition-radhika-
mongia/
Cinema and the Wealth of Nations Media Capital and the

Liberal World System 1st Edition Lee Grieveson
https://textbookfull.com/product/cinema-and-the-wealth-of-
nations-media-capital-and-the-liberal-world-system-1st-edition-
lee-grieveson/
Aztec Salmon and the Puebloan Heartland of the Middle
San Juan Paul F. Reed
https://textbookfull.com/product/aztec-salmon-and-the-puebloan-
heartland-of-the-middle-san-juan-paul-f-reed/
Urban Heritage Along the Silk Roads: A Contemporary

Reading of Urban Transformation of Historic Cities in
the Middle East and Beyond Fatemeh Farnaz Arefian
https://textbookfull.com/product/urban-heritage-along-the-silk-
roads-a-contemporary-reading-of-urban-transformation-of-historic-
cities-in-the-middle-east-and-beyond-fatemeh-farnaz-arefian/
How the West Was Drawn Mapping Indians and the

Construction of the Trans Mississippi West David
Bernstein
https://textbookfull.com/product/how-the-west-was-drawn-mapping-
indians-and-the-construction-of-the-trans-mississippi-west-david-
bernstein/
Leo 11 Masters of the Zodiac Golden Angel
https://textbookfull.com/product/leo-11-masters-of-the-zodiac-
golden-angel/
Virgo (12-Masters of the Zodiac) S. Cinders.
https://textbookfull.com/product/virgo-12-masters-of-the-zodiac-
s-cinders/
Masters of the M iddle Waters
M ASTER S of the
M I DDL E WAT ER S
Indian Nations and Colonial Ambitions

along the Mississippi
Jac ob F. L ee
T H E B ELK N A P P R ES S O F
H A RVA R D U N I V ER S I T Y P R ES S
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
2019
Copyright © 2019 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
First printing
Cover Art: Henry Lewis, Falls of Saint Anthony, Upper Mississippi, 1847. © Museo
Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, SpainTarker/Bridgeman Images
Cover design: Annamarie McMahon Why
9780674239784 (EPUB)
9780674239791 (MOBI)
9780674239777 (PDF)
The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
Names: Lee, Jacob F., author.

Title: Masters of the middle waters : Indian nations and colonial ambitions
along the Mississippi / Jacob F. Lee.
Description: Cambridge, Massachusetts : The Belknap Press of Harvard
University Press, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018039441 | ISBN 9780674987678 (cloth)
Subjects: LCSH: Indians of North America—Mississippi River Valley—Politics
and government. | Indians of North America—Mississippi River
Valley—History. | Indians of North America—K inship—Mississippi River
Valley. | Illinois Indians—History. | Illinois Indians—Politics and
government. | Indians, Treatment of—Mississippi River Valley. |
Mississippi River Valley—History. | Europe—Colonies—A merica—History.
Classification: LCC E78.M75 L44 2019 | DDC 977 / .01—dc23
LC record available at https:// lccn.loc.gov/2018039441
To my family
CONTENTS
Introduction: Cities of the Living, Cities of the Dead 1
1. In Cahokia’s Wake 13
2. Conversions 49
3. Alliances and Fractures 84
4. A New World? 122
5. An Empire of Kin 156
6. Conquest 195
Conclusion: The Deep History of the Midcontinent 231
Abbreviations 239
Notes 243
Acknowledgments 329
Credits 333
Index 335
Masters of the M iddle Waters
Introduction
Cities of the Living, Cities of the Dead
I n 1836, an American traveler named Edmund Flagg stood on the crest of

a Mississippian Indian mound in the northern suburbs of St. Louis. The
scene overwhelmed him. “There are few more delightful views in the vicinity
of St. Louis of a fine evening,” Flagg wrote, “than that commanded by the
summit of the ‘Big Mound.’ ” From his vantage point, he watched the broad
Mississippi River cut through its wooded valley, and he could hear it crashing
against the limestone cliffs that lifted the city above the river’s rushing waters.
Flagg’s gaze followed the river’s current from north to south. On its banks,
he observed engineers contemplating how to ensure deep w ater at the
St. Louis docks, and southward, he noted the richness of the landscape and
the “delightful villas and country seats” that punctuated the forests on the
city’s outskirts. Beholding “the empire valley of the West,” Flagg predicted
that the region and its seemingly inexhaustible soil would soon become “the
garden of North America.”1
As Flagg envisioned the future of the midcontinent, he also tried to make
sense of its past. Like most Americans, Flagg believed the continent’s his-
tory began when European colonists arrived on its shores. But as he wan-
dered through the ancient metropolis of Cahokia and its western suburbs in
St. Louis, Flagg confronted the remnants of monumental architecture that
predated the presence of Europeans in the region by more than half a mil-
lennium. Moreover, he understood that Cahokia’s planners had weighed the
same f actors as had the founders of St. Louis. As Cahokians built their city,
1
2 M a s t er s of t he m i ddl e wat er s
Fig. I.1 St. Louis as seen from the east bank of the Mississippi. The Big Mound
appears on the far right.
they had capitalized on the spot’s location near the intersection of multiple
rivers and on the region’s verdant landscape. “It is evident from t hese monu-
ments of a former generation,” Flagg wrote of the mounds, “that the natural
advantages of the site upon which St. Louis now stands were not unappreci-
ated long before it was pressed by the first European footstep.”2
For Flagg, the ruins, remnants of some great civilization long since dead,
raised more questions than they answered. He did not know that, around
AD 1050, Mississippian Indians had erected the city and, from it, ruled the
midcontinent for two centuries. Nor did he have any understanding of the
four hundred years of migration, warfare, diplomacy, and trade that followed
the demise of the mound builders and predated European colonization. From
atop the mound, Flagg asked, “What vicissitudes and revolutions have, in
the lapse of centuries, rolled like successive waves over the plains at its base?”
Flagg looked over “the cities of the dead . . . side by side with the cities of
the living,” pondering his question and finding no satisfactory answers. He
recognized that the past of Cahokia and the f uture of St. Louis intersected
under his feet, but he could not fit the pieces together into a coherent story,
beyond the usual nineteenth-century platitudes about the “onward march of
civilization.”3
I n t roduc t ion 3
Flagg did not know it, but the fall of Cahokia and the rise of the United
States bookended a tumultuous era in the long history of M iddle America.
This book uncovers that story and, in d oing so, offers a new history of colo-
nial North America. In the centuries between the collapse of Cahokia and
the U.S. conquest, power flowed through the kinship-based alliances and
social networks that shaped travel and communication along the many rivers
of the midcontinent. B ecause most economic, military, and political activity
in M iddle America took place along the region’s waterways, commanding
those conduits allowed Native peoples and Europea ns to vie for status,
influence, and wealth.
Empires exist to dominate. They assert paramount sovereignty over vast
regions to extract wealth and resources. Yet, in practice, imperial domina-
tion can be fragile, as it often rests on alliances with local people. In Middle
America, where many powers struggled for authority, alliances became the
key to projecting power in an uncertain environment. And those partner-
ships depended on kinship ties. As a result, successful alliances w ere rooted
in reciprocity. Allies joined forces for mutual benefit, and kinship ensured
that interests remained entangled. Empires, nations, and individuals could
attract allies without kinship, but those tenuous relations depended even
more heavily on outsiders demonstrating their political, economic, or mili-
tary value to the peoples who ruled the midcontinent.4
Indians and colonists alike organized society around kinship—both fa-
milial and fictive—and they understood that the bonds of kinship reinforced
alliances between individuals and between polities. In the midcontinent, am-
bitious p eople depended on marriage and ritual adoption to build the per-
sonal connections that fueled their endeavors. Consequently, early American
empires operated as a series of overlapping familial, economic, and diplo-
matic networks. Th ose networks permeated empires and extended beyond
their borders, and kin ties pulled in multiple directions. The bonds that linked
the desires of colonists to the interests of the empire weakened the further
one ventured from the seat of power, b ecause traders, officials, and o thers
became enmeshed in new networks. Put another way, colonists’ primary
loyalties w ere often to their families and their local communities. Officials
struggled to link the ambitions of the colonists of the midcontinent to the
needs of the empire. By embedding intertwined Native and imperial histo-
ries in the social and physical geography of the midcontinent, this book re-
veals the power of personal relationships embedded in a complex, dynamic
environment to shape the course of empires.5
Between the fall of Cahokia and the rise of the United States, waves of
Native peoples, missionaries, traders, settlers, and imperialists attempted to
remake the Mississippi valley to suit their interests. In each instance, the past
influenced the new regime. The French empire appended itself to the Native
political landscape of the midcontinent, and its efforts to control the region
hinged on established relationships between Indian nations as much as on
interactions between those nations and the French. When Spain and Great
Britain replaced France in the 1760s, they discovered that the actions and
policies of their predecessors had forged a political landscape that needed to
be navigated as carefully as the rivers of the physical landscape. At the turn
of the nineteenth c entury, Americans believed that the United States and
its experiment in republicanism stood apart from its Indian and imperial
predecessors. But as much as they pretended otherwise, Americans built
their empire atop the remnants of French, British, and Spanish colonies on
a continent still largely dominated by Native p eoples. The legacies of t hose
preceding centuries inscribed an indelible mark on the f uture of an emerging
American empire.6
≈ Too often, historians establish a false dichotomy between Native

eoples who built societies around kinship and Europeans who focused on
p
race. In early America, both Indians and Europeans organized society pri-
marily through kinship. As they differentiated between family and strangers,
they divided their worlds into three realms: the household; the community;
and the outside world.7 When navigating the boundary between the com-
munity and the outside world, all relied on notions of kinship to decide how
to engage with foreigners.
Kinship—familial and fictive—united individuals into households and
communities. The household formed the primary building block of society.
In Illinois society, for example, as among many of the midcontinent’s Native
peoples, family members, including parents, c hildren, and grandchildren,
lived together across generations in a longhouse of two dozen or so relatives.
Europeans, by contrast, typically lived in single-family households, which
newlyweds formed at the time of their marriage. Extended kinship ties
linked them to parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins in their
towns and hamlets and occasionally in the world beyond the city limits. Like
their Indian counterparts, Europeans called on relatives for aid and support,
and they used personal relationships to acquire influence and wealth.8
Beyond the household, fictive kinship bonds of culture, politics, class, and
religion forged lineages into larger communities. Although dispersed from
I n t roduc t ion 5
what is now Iowa to present-day Arkansas, the eleven divisions of the Illi-
nois composed a single nation, united by kinship, language, ceremony, and
commerce. The same was true for Osages, Miamis, and other nations that
maintained distinct villages separated by many miles. Likewise, the French,
as children of their king and the Catholic God, shared common bonds that
united them into larger political and religious communities. Similar ties
linked British and Spanish subjects into coherent communities. And so,
Indians and Europea ns in the midcontinent encountered one another as
representatives of nations and empires as well as individuals.
Over centuries of migration, trade, and war, M iddle Americans repeatedly
encountered newcomers, and kinship provided a framework for under-
standing p eople who looked, spoke, and dressed differently. In North Amer
ica and in Europe, individuals without kinship ties were strangers and poten-
tial enemies. When Indians and Europeans met foreigners, they assessed the
benefits of incorporating those newcomers into their communities. When
desirable, they integrated strangers into their families and nations through
ritual adoption, marriage, or both. In other instances, they excluded them.
Rituals became crucial tools to build connections with valuable allies
beyond the boundaries of the community and, in effect, to expand those
borders. In the midcontinent, Indians used the calumet ceremony to adopt
outsiders and build alliances between nations. By the middle of the seven-
teenth century, some 300 years after its introduction, the calumet—a pipe
with a decorated stem—had spread throughout Middle America, and each
nation in the region adopted the ritual as its own. As Indian leaders en-
countered outsiders, they greeted them with a calumet and, through an
elaborate ceremony, converted enemies and strangers into allies and kin.
Europeans brought their own rites. As they established outposts in North
America, colonists performed an array of rituals—speeches, parades,
planting crosses and other objects—which ostensibly transformed foreign
lands into the holdings of their kings. On an interpersonal level, mission-
aries baptized Indians to establish a shared identity as the children of God.9
Indians and colonists used marriage to build and reinforce relations across
political and cultural boundaries and to incorporate outsiders into h
ouseholds
and, by extension, the community at large. Marriage played a central role in
forging diplomatic and economic alliances. Men and women bound together
these networks. By the middle of the seventeenth century, Illinois Indians
had employed marriage and ceremonies to forge alliances with many nations
throughout the Mississippi River valley. Illinois women married men from
the Miami, Kickapoo, Osage, Quapaw, and other nations to strengthen ties
between those polities. At the end of the next c entury, Osage leaders bro-
kered marriages between their female relatives and francophone traders to
facilitate commerce and increase their authority within their nations and
abroad. In Europe, families used marriage to build economic and political
alliances. When colonists journeyed across the Atlantic Ocean, they applied
their understandings of kinship and community to the p eoples they encoun-
tered in North America. Fur traders married into Native communities, and
through t hose unions, they gained access to furs while their in-laws enjoyed
a direct source of European goods. Missionaries in M iddle America de-
pended on marriage between Indian women and French men to build the
pious nuclear families they believed defined Christian society.10
Kinship linked individuals and communities, but it excluded outsiders as
much as it included relatives. Indians drew sharp distinctions between their
clans, towns, and nations, on one hand, and outsiders, on the other. Many
Indian nations referred to themselves as “the people,” “the real people,” “the
men,” or other names that bestowed superior status on themselves and de-
meaned outsiders as lesser beings, sometimes less than h uman. In other in-
stances, names reflected commonalities or differences between nations. The
name “Illinois” originated among the closely related Miamis, who noted their
kinship with their western neighbors, who could “speak the regular way.”
Those within the household or community united together in a common
identity that excluded foreigners, who spoke different languages, held dif
ferent beliefs, and bore different appearances—usually in dress and hairstyle,
more than skin color. Outsiders had no rights, and they could be killed or
enslaved without fear of retribution, except from the victim’s kin in some
distant nation.11
At the same time, Native peoples believed they could transform outsiders
and incorporate them into their nations. The treatment of captives offers one
of the clearest examples of how Native p eoples remade outsiders into com-
munity members. Illinois, Osages, Chickasaws, and the other nations of the
midcontinent adopted captured enemies to replace deceased loved ones. Upon
returning from battle, captors selected captives for adoption. They usually
chose women and children. Adult men trained as warriors posed too g reat
a danger to incorporate into the community. Townspeople sent the adop-
tees through the gantlet, stripped them of their clothing, cut their hair, and
placed them with families that had lost members. Over time, as adoptees
learned their new community’s language and expected social behaviors, they
became fully integrated as community members.12
I n t roduc t ion 7
Likewise, u ntil the early nineteenth century, most European theorists be-
lieved that differences between themselves and Indians stemmed from en-
vironmental and cultural, rather than biological, factors. As Europeans en-
countered Indians, they fit them into their theories about the earth and its
inhabitants, and they posited that all shared a common ancestor in Noah,
the ark builder of the Abrahamic tradition. In other words, kinship united
them, even as differences in physical appearance and culture made them dis-
tinct. To be sure, Europeans believed that they possessed superior cultures to
the peoples they encountered in North America, but they also believed that
by altering the behavior of Native peoples, they could incorporate them into
the “civilized” world. From French imperialists and Jesuits in the 1600s to
the proponents of U.S. “civilization” policy late in the following c entury,
secular and religious officials believed that education and religious conversion
could transform Native p eoples.13
During the early nineteenth century, however, Europeans and Euro-
Americans contracted the borders of kinship. Race became the primary cri-
terion for establishing the para meters of acceptable interaction between
different groups. Beginning in the late 1700s and gaining acceptance in the
early 1800s, new theories posited that the creator had formed the peoples of
the earth at different times and that Europeans, Indians, and Africans did
not share a common ancestor. Having never been connected to Indians and
Africans through familial ties, Europeans concluded that such relation-
ships were unnatural. Moreover, they decided that they were destined to rule
North America, while Africans and Indians would serve and disappear,
respectively.14
U.S. imperialists w ere not the first outsiders to bring restrictive ideas about
kinship and race to the midcontinent, but they w ere the first empire to wield
the power needed to implement their vision of an ethnically and racially ho-
mogeneous society. During the early 1700s, French officials banned inter-
marriage between French colonists and Native peoples because they thought
Indian spouses lured French men into Indian Country, where they became
ungovernable. Yet, beyond a few towns in the Illinois Country, the French
lacked the influence to halt French-Indian marriage, which continued largely
unabated. From 1763 to 1765, the Ottawa war leader Pontiac and the Dela-
ware prophet Neolin preached a pan-Indian message that promoted a uni-
fied Native identity in opposition to European colonists. However, Pontiac’s
supporters rallied around him because of his many kinship ties to the nations
of Middle America, not because of his rhetoric. The number of American
colonists immigrating to the region gave the United States power un-
matched by earlier empires, and their growing authority forced francophone
midwesterners to ally e ither with the United States or with Native p
eoples.
Most chose the United States. As Americans remade the midcontinent, they
upended 150 years of interaction between Indians and Europeans even while
they relied on kinship with francophone Louisianans as a foundation of their
trans-Mississippi empire.
≈ Centered on the site of the ancient city of Cahokia, where Edmund

Flagg surveyed the landscape in the 1830s, the midcontinent is a region de-
fined by rivers. North America’s major rivers—the Illinois, Mississippi,
Missouri, Ohio, Tennessee, and Wabash—a ll meet within less than 200
miles of one another. Those waterways affected daily life, imperial ambitions,
trade, and war. Rivers served as avenues of colonial expansion. Conversely,
the vulnerability of river travelers offered opportunities for those who wished
to halt commerce or invasion. For centuries, numerous Indian nations, Eu
ropeans empires, and individuals struggled for power and wealth and fought
to limit the authority of others. Because rivers were central to so many as-
pects of Native and colonial life in the midcontinent, they w ere often the
front lines of these contests.15
Waterways linked regions too often seen as discrete—the South, the Great
Plains, and the Great Lakes—in a shared history. In turn, those connections
shaped large expanses of North America as ripples from the midcontinent
spread in all directions. In the borderlands of the central Mississippi River
valley, rivers joined disparate and distant groups of Indians and Europeans
in an interwoven social landscape of movement and interaction. Under-
standing the midcontinent as a point of convergence for diverse peoples re
orients Native and imperial histories away from artificial lines of demarca-
tion dictated by colonial claims or imagined by outsiders. The social geography
of the midcontinent was a network of alliances and rivalries that sprawled
across the region’s waterways. Three Indian nations—Illinois, Chickasaws,
and Osages—controlled much of the midcontinent into the early nineteenth
century. The middle waters connected them in a unified history that crossed
linguistic, cultural, and environmental borders. Interactions between t hose
three nations and between them and Europeans—sometimes peaceful,
sometimes not—altered the course of history for all in Middle America, and
events in the midcontinent reverberated throughout eastern North America
and across the Atlantic.16
I n t roduc t ion 9
Beyond the simple facts of river-based travel and communication, under-

standings of the landscape changed depending on who viewed the region,
how they perceived the environment around them, and what they hoped to
accomplish there. During the seventeenth century, Illinois Indians took con-
trol of the central Mississippi River valley by seizing important crossings
and confluences. In command of choke points, Illinois built commercial and
political alliances with neighboring nations. Soon, they controlled the trade
in slaves, furs, and European goods between the western G reat Lakes, eastern
Great Plains, and lower Mississippi valley. Illinois power stemmed from their
ability to travel unhindered from Lake Superior to present-day Arkansas and
from Lake Michigan west onto the Plains.17
Beginning in the early eighteenth century, imperialists saw the Missis-
sippi and its tributaries differently: as passageways, links between their col-
onies in the interior of the continent and European markets. In the midcon-
tinent, it was easier to stop travelers than to ensure safe passage, and Indian
nations who could halt canoes and convoys—or protect them for the right
price—became the most important allies to aspirational European empires.
During the first half of the 1700s, France needed access to the Mississippi,
Illinois, and Wabash Rivers to supply the Illinois Country from Louisiana
and Canada and to communicate between the Gulf Coast and the St. Law-
rence valley. A fter 1765, Great Britain relied on the Ohio—not the Illinois
and the Wabash—to reach the midcontinent and on the Mississippi to re-
turn to the Atlantic seaboard. At the same time, Spain, with its colonial ad-
ministrators based in New Orleans, depended on safe travel on the lower
Mississippi to govern St. Louis and the rest of Upper Louisiana. For more
than a c entury, Europeans could not run or, in some cases, even reach their
colonies in M iddle America without the aid of Native peoples.
Even groups that traveled predominantly by foot or horseback used their
command of waterways to become formidable powers, and their relationship
to water shaped their identities. The Osage Nation, based west of the
Mississippi, rose to prominence as equestrians. Yet rivers play a central role
in Osage history. Long ago, when Sky People, Land People, and Water People
joined together, they called themselves Ni-u-kon-ska, Children of the Middle
Waters. Their name symbolized “the universe of sky and earth and land and
water.” It also reflected their understanding of the geography of M iddle
America and their place in it. Likewise, Omahas and Quapaws took names
that reflected their location in relation to related nations, including Osages.
The name “Omaha” (um0hą) means “upstream people,” indicating their
presence farther up the Missouri, while “Quapaw” (okáxpa) denotes “down-

stream people,” referring to their place at the confluence of the Arkansas
and Mississippi Rivers. Long after the Children of the Middle Waters be-
came known as Wazhazhe (wažáže), which French colonists heard as
“Osage,” they ruled the rivers that linked the midcontinent and the Great
Plains. They blocked dangerous traffic, detained intruders, and thwarted in-
vasion. Into the early nineteenth century, Osages controlled the middle
waters, especially the lower Missouri and its tributaries, and dominated
Indian and European neighbors alike.18
In the late 1700s and early 1800s, the United States followed in the foot-
steps of its imperial predecessors, recognizing the importance of western
rivers in linking its trans-Appalachian colonies to markets on the Atlantic
coast and in Europe. Without safe passage on the Mississippi River, Ohio
valley colonists could not transport their produce to New Orleans, the en-
trepôt for all trade west of the Appalachians. As the U.S. empire began
spreading west, American officials acquired use rights from Spain, which
claimed the west bank of the Mississippi, and bought or seized lands along
the Ohio and Mississippi from Native peoples.19 In 1803, the United States
purchased all of Louisiana including the Mississippi. West of the g reat river,
the United States continued to push rivals away from important waterways.
Beginning with the Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1804–1806, the Mis-
souri River became the primary avenue of American movement into the Far
West, and the empire secured the river starting with an 1808 treaty by which
Osages ceded all of their lands along the lower Missouri. As Americans in-
vaded farther up the Missouri, Arkansas, Red, and other rivers, they re-
played t hese negotiations over use and control of waterways.
Across centuries, rivers remained the central feature of the midwestern
geographic landscape and a key to shaping its social landscape. Individuals,
nations, and empires all recognized the necessity of controlling the rivers or,
at least, maintaining access to them. Those who amassed wealth and influ-
ence invariably succeeded in harnessing the potential of waterways, using
them to construct networks of kinship and other diplomatic ties, while
t hose who did not often misread the landscape or stumbled in their efforts
to rule it.
≈ In 1836, as Edmund Flagg gazed out across St. Louis and the Missis-
sippi River, he witnessed the remade North American midcontinent and
heard echoes from a deep past. The rivers remained, r unning toward New
I n t roduc t ion 11
Orleans and the Gulf and carrying American produce to market, but the
United States had splintered the social networks that had once dominated
trade and diplomacy in Middle America. Driven by ideas of racial supremacy
and a belief in its destiny to span the continent, the United States had en-
acted an aggressive policy of colonization in the midcontinent, and unlike
under previous empires, colonists poured into the region and spearheaded
conquest. In 1804, about 10,000 Euro-Americans lived in Missouri. In 1830,
Missouri’s population stood at 140,000. A decade later, more than 380,000
Americans lived within the state’s borders.20
Having conquered Middle America, the United States and its colonists
drove out or oppressed all those they considered unfit to be Americans. A
circumscribed understanding of kinship lay at the core of this exclusionary
and eliminationist impulse. Hardened theories about innate differences
between races replaced earlier ideas about the mutability of appearance and
culture. Americans in the Midwest still depended on kinship to explain their
relationships to people around them, but they demarcated stricter bound
aries between the community and the outside world. The United States
created a new kind of empire. Officials and colonists deemed Indians per-
manent outsiders doomed to extinction, to “vanish” in the language of the
day, not potential members of the community.
As Flagg described the mounds and their builders, he captured American
sentiments toward all Indians, not just the long-deceased residents of Ca-
hokia: “the far traveller, as he wanders through this Western Valley, may
linger around these aged piles and meditate upon a power departed, a race
obliterated, an influence swept from the earth for ever.”21 Still, despite the
rhetoric of American imperialists and colonists, mirrored in Flagg’s musings,
the United States dispossessed Native peoples but did not destroy them.
Forced out of their homelands, Native peoples moved west to Indian Territory,
where they rebuilt their nations and used old alliances as the framework for
new associations on the eastern Plains. Indians adapted to the pressures of
U.S. colonialism by drawing on the power of kinship networks that dated
back to the precolonial era.
Midwesterners often preferred to look toward the f uture rather than the
past. Yet, all around them, reminders of the midcontinent’s deep history en-
dured. Although worn by erosion and damaged by farmers and relic hunters,
Cahokia’s mounds loomed over the landscape as a symbol of ancient Indian
power. The francophone elite of St. Louis bore witness to the persistent in-
fluence of French culture in the midcontinent. Through it all ran the rivers.
Just as they connected disparate provinces of North America, those water-

ways linked Middle America’s history and its f uture. As long as Americans
depended on the rivers to transport people and goods, they participated in
an ongoing history of M
iddle America that was deeper and more complex
than they understood or wanted to acknowledge.
chapter one
In Cahokia’s Wake
T hree villages sat on the rich flatlands overlooking the Des Moines River,
a few miles above where its waters met the southward rush of the
powerf ul Mississippi. The 300 longhouses of Peouarea and two other towns
stretched along the river’s south bank on a vast tallgrass prairie broken oc-
casionally by stands of maple, walnut, and cedar trees. Upward of 8,000
Illinois Indians moved through the town streets, tended cornfields, and
ventured out to look for game or gather supplies. A few weeks earlier, only
a small population of guards and farmers inhabited the rush-covered lodges.
They protected the year’s fledging corn crop while the rest of the townspeople
stalked bison on the grasslands to the west. Now, well into anaahkapi kiiri-
hswa (the month when the corncob appears), the hunters had returned. The
towns bustled with activity. Some Peoria w omen prepared the spoils of the
expedition, scraping bison hides and smoking meat from as many as 2,000
animals. Others nurtured the corn, ensuring the roots remained covered with
soil and inspecting the ears for worms. They welcomed the steady rains that
fell as the cool spring gave way to a warm, humid summer. Soon, the first
harvest would begin. Meanwhile, men hunted and fished in the forests
that punctuated the prairies and lined the waterways. Before long, they
would leave town again, this time heading north to Green Bay, where they
would sell enslaved Indians and bison hides to their Miami and Ottawa al-
lies. On their return, they would bring iron axes and knives, copper kettles,
porcelain beads, cloth blankets, firearms, and other goods that traveled
13
Lake Superior
Chequamegon Bay OJIBWES

Mission de St. Esprit
(1665–1671) Kiskakon Ottawa town
(1658?–1671) Mission de St. Ignace (after 1671)
Kiskakon Ottawa town
FOXES (after 1671)
Mi s Kiskakon Ottawa, Huron, Petun,
siss
Bay
ipp Mission de St. François Xavier and Potawatomi town (1652–1658?)
en
Gre
i Ri (after 1669)
er Lake
v
SAUKS Fox River OTTAWAS

Mascouten, Miami, and Kickapoo town Huron
(after ca. 1665)
ver Lake
i n Ri Michigan HURONS
Wiscon s
Moingwenas
KICKAPOOS
POTAWATOMIS Lake Erie
M issou
Tapouaros
es M
D
oin Kaskaskia (ca. 1630–1691)

ri Riv e r
es R Peorias ILLINOIS
iver Kaskaskias
Coiracoentanons
MIAMIS
Peouarea
er
R iv
(ca. 1640–1683) ois

rh R ive
Illin
MISSOURIAS
SHAWNEES
Wabas
Cahokias O hi o R i v
OSAGES ouri River er
Miss Chinkoas?
Osage River Tamaroas
Chepousas
Espiminkias?
Michigameas
Michigamea town (ca. 1670s)
Arkansas MOSOPELEAS
Rive
r
ILLINOIS Indian Nation

QUAPAWS Cahokias Division of Illinois
Indian and French Towns
150 miles
0
250 km
The Illinois Country, ca. 1673

Map 1 The Illinois Country, ca. 1673.
I n C a hok i a’s Wa k e 15
from Europe to the Great Lakes in French ships and Ottawa canoes. But that
was in the weeks to come. For now, life centered on the work to be done at
home.1
Shouts startled the Peorias. They looked up from their work and filed out
of their longhouses, searching for the source of the noise. The voices sounded
close. Scanning the prairie, they spotted two strangers standing in the tall-
grass near the edge of town. Any trepidation the Peorias felt disappeared
when they noticed the distinctive black gown worn by one of the two men.
It marked him as a friend. Black-clad Jesuit priests lived among Ottawas and
Miamis, and Illinois traders and diplomats spoke to them each autumn
during their sojourn to the G reat Lakes. Some, maybe many, Peorias had
seen Europeans on previous occasions. But none of the foreigners had ever
ventured into the Illinois Country. Four old men carrying two calumets—
highly decorated, ceremonial pipes used to greet visitors—ventured out to
meet the newcomers.2
The two foreigners had traveled hundreds of miles to visit the Peorias and
the rest of the Illinois Nation. Along with five companions, they had pad-
dled their canoes down the waterways that linked Lake Michigan to the
Mississippi River and found their way through swamps, marshes, and lakes
that obscured the route. By the time they passed the confluence of the Des
Moines and Mississippi Rivers on June 25, 1673, they had not laid eyes on
another h uman in more than two weeks. One recalled, “we knew whither
not we were going, for we had proceeded over one Hundred leagues without
discovering anything except animals and birds.” L ater that day, just down-
stream from the mouth of the Des Moines, they spotted a trail leading away
from the west bank of the Mississippi. Following the footpath, the Black
Robe and his companion feared who they might meet at the end of their
walk. The priest later wrote that such an “investigation [was] a rather haz-
ardous one for two men who exposed themselves, alone, to the mercy of a
barbarous and Unknown people.”3 Far from discovering danger, the two so-
journers received a warm welcome from the four elders who approached
them.
Standing before the Illinois men, one of the strangers identified himself
in a shared language. He was Father Jacques Marquette. Thirty-five years
old, Marquette had devoted more than half of his life to serving God. Don-
ning the black robes of the Jesuit order as a teenager, he spent a dozen years
studying, teaching, and praying in French universities and monasteries. From
a young age, he craved the adventure of North America with its unconverted
masses and, should it come, the glory of martyrdom. A fter arriving in New
France in September 1666, the zeal that drove the Jesuit to leave Europe
pushed him to venture beyond the limited bounda ries of French North
America. Marquette spent the next six years learning half a dozen Native
languages and traveling from the small outposts of Quebec and Montreal
to the westernmost Jesuit missions in the G reat Lakes. Stationed at Sault
Ste. Marie, Chequamegon Bay, and Michilimackinac between 1668 and
1673, Marquette collected stories and rumors about lands along a great river
to the west and the Indian nations that populated its banks. Marquette hun-
gered for new converts, and the nations along the Mississippi River offered
an opportunity. Beginning in 1669, Marquette and the fur trader Louis
Jolliet planned an expedition that would take them west to the Mississippi
and south to anticipated riches in furs and souls. The ambitions of the Jesuit
and the trader converged with the dreams of French officials, who chased
two legends: the gold mines of the kingdom of Quivira and a w ater route
to China. In the spring of 1673, Jolliet arrived at Marquette’s mission to the
Ottawas at Michilimackinac with word that the colonial government had
approved their proposal. He and Marquette prepared to travel west.4
Leaving Michilimackinac on May 17, Marquette, Jolliet, and five com-
panions had l ittle idea of what they would find in the “Unknown countries”
beyond Green Bay, the last outpost of the Jesuit mission system. Over the
next four months, they encountered nations and lands that French colonists
knew only through tales of distant wars and disjointed accounts of a river
that went somewhere, maybe to the Pacific Ocean. Before this voyage, the
French had, at best, four decades of conflicting knowledge about the Illi-
nois and their homelands. In 1634, the explorer Jean Nicolet reported that
the “Eriniouai” lived in some unspecified location west of the Menominees
and Ho-Chunks of Green Bay. As Jesuit missionaries moved farther into the
Great Lakes, they learned more and more about the p eople called “Irinons,”
“Linioueks,” “Alimoueks,” and other variations. But the reports were hap-
hazard and contradictory. The Illinois lived somewhere in the West. Maybe
they numbered sixty towns. Maybe it was ten. In 1658, a Jesuit placed the
Illinois population at over 100,000. A little more than a decade later, one
Jesuit on Lake Superior reported 2,000 Illinois to the south, while another
at the same mission estimated four times as many. One missionary stated
that “continual wars” reduced the Illinois to two towns, but three years l ater,
they w ere living in “five large Villages.” In short, the priests had little reli-
able information about the Illinois and their neighbors. The Catholic friars
I n C a hok i a’s Wa k e 17
based their reports on incomplete accounts provided by a range of p eople with

competing motives and agendas, and they must have had difficulty separating
good intelligence from bad. Even if their information had been accurate, the
Jesuits could be careless in their estimates, as one father recognized in 1671
when he noted that, b ecause the French had met the Illinois first, they
applied that name to all the nations of the central Mississippi valley. 5 As
Marquette headed west, he could not have felt confident in his knowledge
of the people he would meet.
For Peorias, Marquette and Jolliet represented direct access to French
traders and a chance to cut out Ottawa and Miami middlemen. Peorias did
not know the specific origins of t hese two strangers, but they could have
guessed much about them and their voyage. Peoria traders and diplomats
knew the best routes between their town and the missions of the Black Robes
on the western G reat Lakes. Some of t hese Illinois may have even chatted
with Marquette a few years earlier at Mission St. Esprit on Lake Superior.
Moreover, by 1673, Illinois associated the French with the metal, porcelain,
and cloth goods they acquired on the Great Lakes. The presence of those
items in Peouarea comforted Marquette. He noted that he felt safe when
offered the calumet: “much more so when I saw them Clad in Cloth, for
I judged that they w ere our allies.” 6
The arrival of Marquette and Jolliet in the midcontinent in the summer
of 1673 was one in a series of encounters between newcomers and locals
stretching back thousands of years. Between the collapse of Cahokia in
the thirteenth century and the invasion by the Illinois 300 years later, the
American midcontinent experienced a period of profound political, economic,
and social upheaval. Cahokia’s demise was but one part of the turmoil that
swept the Mississippi valley. In the c entury or so a fter Cahokia fell, the re-
gion’s other chiefdoms collapsed, and new p eoples arrived from the north
and east and challenged dwindling Mississippian power. Oneota peoples
drove rivals out of prime locations, built alliances, and formed sprawling
trade networks that carried goods hundreds, if not thousands, of miles
through the interior of the continent. By 1400, Oneotas controlled the water-
ways and trade routes between the central Great Plains and the western
Great Lakes.
In the early 1600s, as Illinois Indians remade M iddle America, they em-
ployed strategies that would have been familiar to many of their predeces
sors. They recognized the power that came from controlling waterways and
river travel. And they built kinship-based alliances that linked their towns
to trading partners in the western G reat Lakes, the Great Plains, and the
lower Mississippi valley. In the decades that followed their entry into the
Mississippi valley, Illinois established towns at important river crossings and
confluences. With this strategy, they exerted influence over a region that ex-
tended well beyond the confines of their towns. Meanwhile, they used their
alliances with neighboring nations to safeguard their own trade routes across
the midcontinent. Through blood and fire, captives and calumets, the Illi-
nois became masters of the m iddle waters.
≈ Near the beginning of the last millennium, long before the Illinois Na-
tion mastered Middle America, a metropolis emerged near the confluence
of the Mississippi, Missouri, and Illinois Rivers. In this land of rich, black
soil, l ater called the American Bottom, Cahokia rose from scattered farming
communities to become the largest city north of Mexico. Fueled by a warming
climate and a subsequent agricultural revolution, Cahokians used intensive
corn agriculture to feed thousands of residents. In time, it became the largest
of the Mississippian chiefdoms that stretched across much of the present-
day U.S. South and along the Mississippi from the Gulf to what is now Wis-
consin. Although politically distinct, these communities shared cultural
and agricultural practices, most notably their construction of imposing flattop
mounds and their dependence on corn. At the city’s height, Cahokia and its
suburbs h oused as many as 20,000 p eople and encompassed 120 earthen
mounds, some of which represented the greatest monumental architecture
in North America. The rivers of the American Bottom connected Cahokia
to people and natural resources across much of eastern North America,
bringing exotic shells, stones, and metals into the hands of the city’s elite.
As it became the most powerful polity in the region, the lords of Cahokia—a
paramount chief and his extended f amily—conquered neighboring peoples
and settled them on fertile farmlands on the edge of the city. These upland
vassals provided agricultural surpluses and craft goods that fed the city
and perpetuated the rule of urban elites. Laborers also ventured into the
Ozark Mountains, returning with much-needed minerals, stone, and wood.
As the city’s status grew, Cahokians ventured up the Illinois and Mississippi
Rivers, carrying their practices far to the north.7
Soon a fter Cahokia’s ascent in the eleventh c entury, immigrants from the
city brought Mississippian culture to the central Illinois valley. At the con-
fluence of the Spoon and Illinois Rivers, southwest of present-day Peoria,
these newcomers led the building of ceremonial mounds and the creation of
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
nachs wist ie ’t altaid vàst, dat ie d’r was.… Moar op dag, gong ’t
weg!.. Kaik da’ ha je se weer.… Nou stonge se weer om sain.… ’n
heule bende swarte kerels!.… En nou stonge se weer an s’n strot te
trekke.… kaik!.… soo weer aldegoar sterretjes veur s’n ooge.…
huhu!.… pal d’r veur.… Enn.… nou.. kaik!.… wá’ donker ’t word.…
hoho!.… enne.… enne.. tùg dag.… was ’t strak-en-an!.. Sou die in
de hel komme?.. enne.… Spulle waa’s nooit van sain.… nooit had ie
wá’ f’rkocht.… nooit sou ie s’n spulle weer anroàke!.… Enne.… hai
sou weggaife.… teruggaife.… alles.… alles! Aa’s ie nou moar nie
dood hoefte!.… Jesis wá’ wàrm om s’n hoofd.. begon ’t weer te
gloeie, om s’n kop.—kaik!.… nog donkerder.… veur s’n ooge.…
Jesis waa’n benauwing!.…
Zitten, doodstil, bleef ie ’n poos, verkneed in hijgenden lucht-

snakkenden angst, met z’n handen woest-grabbelend aan z’n
[335]kiel, of ie iets wou loswringen dáár. Langzaam eindelijk zakte
weer gloeiing van z’n kop, begon ie weer te peinzen, stil.. Nou sat ie
nie meer in donker.… Moar kaik!.… de kerels.… die swarte kerels
van sain, woare weg! Moar tug most ’r ies skrikkeliks beure mit sain.
Da’ was vast woar!.. vast woar.. hoho!.… Net of d’r swoare onweer in
de lucht sat.… soo bangelik, beverig en angstig, gejoagd, en keliekig
voelde ie s’n aige!.… Hai wou wel loope.… loope.… Want al die
swoare wolke.… satte op sàin kop.… dá’ voelde ie puur. En nou
kwam ’r weer donkerte veur sain ooge.… donker wier ’t.… heul
donker.…
Schuifelend was ie in den leegen koel-beschaduwden stal, in ’n

duister hoekje op ’n steen neergezakt, met z’n hoofd tegen ’t rem. En
z’n handen, slap en trillerig, hingen langs z’n lijf.
Nou mostie moar bedoàre.… stilletjes.… sain gangetje goan.… dà

konne.… de wolleke soo op s’n kop drukke.… en.… aa’s d’r bliksem
kwam.… kon die nie bai sàin.… nie sien.… want veur sain ooge was
’t donker.… stikke donker.… heulegoar puur nacht.… nou most ie
bedoare.… puur nacht.… stikke benauwd.… puur nacht!.…
[Inhoud]
II.
Hooge zang van werkers galmde uit, achter stekjes en rijzen, den
Juni-ochtend in. Prachtige zangklanken, die zeilden in sonore trilling
door diep luchtenblauw, uit de overal dichtgegroeide en omzonde
groente-tuinen.—In kleur-klatering goudde de aarde, en overal uit de
gaarden, van singelgroen en hagen ingesloten, dampte ochtendgoud
van jongen zomer, nevelvroege dauw, die vonkvuur schoot en
paarlen spatte tusschen grashalmen en bladeren. Achter de hagen,
als groene sierwanden tusschen elken akker òpgegroeid,
schemerden blauwkielen door, werkers die hurkten òver het
lichtverstuivend prachtgroen van aardbeibedden. [336]
Jonge, zoete geuren-hitte trilde uit de gouden aarde en lichtelijk

schroeide de zon Wiereland. Tegen den middag alleen, beefde
zwaarder hitte boven het groengoud van velden, flonkerde diep ’t
licht tusschen de bladeren, stond stil de zanglust van werkers, wèg
in zwaren zwoeg.
Dirk en Kees werkten in ’t paarse schaduwlommer, bij Gerrits

aardappelengrond. Aan één zij achteruit, lag hun akker begrensd
door woest, reusachtig tuinbrok van rijken, stillevenden kweeker
Waarmer. Tot vlak achter de meidoornhaag van beukenlaan naar ’t
duin, liep diens tuin, groot en wild. ’n Lompe, nijdige heereboer, stil-
levend en kwaadaardig, was Waarmer. Z’n huis in ’t tuinbrok, lag er
stil dicht-gegroeid en belommerd in groene schemerkoelte, tusschen
reuzige olmen, eiken, beuken en diep gepoort van pracht-wilde
lanen. Voorstuk met ijzerdraad afgepiekt keken de werkers in,
schemerwoeste diep van den tuin, die nu in den Juniochtend te
wonderen groeide, in sproke-atmosfeer van groengoude scheemring
en kleurrankende bloeipracht. Glans-statige kippetjes liepen los,
rond te kokkelen en te kukelen druk en jolig door het gras, doken
glans-schuchter, met punt-wiegelende staartjes wèg in ’t hooge,
blanke waterster, dat er neergesneeuwd wemelde in vonkschitter
bedauwdrupt, broos en wiegelend op teeren, slanken stengel; hooge
boeketten van blank licht, tusschen diep scheemrend goudgroen.
Jonge abeeltjes stonden in wilden stammekronkel te sneeuwen met
hun witte donsblad, te zilver-wuiven tegen luchtglanzen. En weeke
luwte-schuifel zong om ze, als koelende zingende zomerregen in
ruisch-tuin.—
En laag in ’t wilde boomgroen, stond, in oud-goud rood baksteen,

teer-tonig, verzakt en ingeslonken, ’t stalhuis achter sierdans van
gouden regen, slanke stammetjes, met hun gouden trossen, trossen
in prachthang, als lanen waartusschen zonnewebben te verglanzen
ragden, in trillend waas. Midden in tuinbrok kringde open,
schemering van groen grasvlaktetje, goud-zonnig uitduikend onder
woeste beuken. Blanke ganzen waggelden ’r rond, teer ’t oranje van
hun bekken, en om hen dribbelden jonge blonde, kale kuikentjes,
veerloos en druk, wegzakkend [337]in de grashalmen, in eeuwig
eetgepik, kopjes-golvend door ’t pluimgras, achter elkaar, in
waggelend rijtje.—
Hoog, hals-gerekt, in zij-lingschen oogstaar, waakte vadergans, in

blanken waggel achter de pikkende kuikens áán, soms even
stappend in natten zonneschitter, dat er licht van z’n blanke veeren
droop; drentelde moeder-gans méé, achter beschermd jeugdje, in
het schitter-zonnige, zoete grasgroen. Oud bemenied hekwerk,
stond in rood-felle schittering, half bezond, in sier van vuurlijnen voor
’n gedrochtelijk-uitgeholden boomknoest, monster dat gaapte, met
nijlpaarden-muil, aan ingang. En heel diep, in half-bladerduister,
blankte zacht òp, ’t witte huisje van Waarmer, beluwd onder koelend-
groen uitgeurende kastanjes. Rondom, in ’t wild, danste kring van
reuzevarens een woesten horlepijp, fijn in rankte spitsen hun
krullende toppen, als vingeren slank ver-strekkend. En heel naar
achter lag de woeste tuin dichtgegroeid, brak het lentelicht er in, tot
zilver-koele glanzen, mat-blauwig, dampig licht onder blader-donker,
in al gamma’s van schaduwdiep, geheimvol verruischend ’t lied van
de lommerstilte. Als boven graf van gestorven saizoenen, zoemde er
stil, in zilverblauwig waas, gebroken licht, al ijler uitgezeefd en
onderschept door weer ander boom-groen en struik; dreven daar
rond, geheimen van natuurleven, zalig in eenzamen groei, poëzie
van het stilste, zwijgendste lommer.—
Groote heesters bogen in ranken wiegel òver naar wilde graspluim,

en fijn ruischte ’r koele suizel rond van wind, ruischende
eolusharpen, in fluisterenden zangespraak met bloemengroei en
boomleven. Op ’t koele woningmuurtje, vermarmerd blank, ging in
schaduwsier van varen en takjes, geheimvol leven rond van
silhouetten, waartusschen rondgestrooide goudlichtjes en tril-vonkjes
flitsten, verpijld door hooge tak-kronkels.
In de stille, omlommerde vensterruitjes, droomde koel licht van tuin,

teruggeglansd in zachte vegen van gelen gloor, dof en heimelijk. En
naast ’t hekwerk, brokkelde scheef verzakte, donker bemoste,
roestige kringmuur, verweerd en duister, als ruïne van oud kreunend
leven, waarop pauwenpracht uitwaaierde, [338]bronzen goudscherm
van veeren, groenstalen, kijkende schitterings-oogen van glans
alléén. Zacht hondengeblaf dofte soms òp uit den stillen, binnensten
goudschemer van roerlooze lanen.
In den hoek waar Kees en Dirk werkten, lag achter hagedoorn, ’n
plek als leeggehakt, openend gouden tuinhart. Bleek-schoone, lila-
seringen als jonkvrouwen in biechteenzaamheid gevangen, slankten
plots òp uit gloeiende zonneplek, in lange rijen achter elkaar. Fijn,
hun geurige kroonselen zoetten reuken door de lucht, en boven de rij
van bleeke lila’s, dromden verdonkerend bronzen beuken, als
wolken rood-violet licht, hooger òp doorvlamd van zonnegloed, felle
zang van smachtend rood, tegen het bleeke lila, dat èven er onder
uitgeurde, z’n fijne droomtonen, ijl in bedwelmende sfeer. Telkens
zoo éven, schoot, uit de groen-gouë koelte van tuinwoesten groei, ’n
plek open in zon, blankten wat rijtjes narcissen áán, of
vruchtboomen in nabloei, purperend en sneeuwend, met
zwoelenden geur-adem. Gloed zong van kastanje-kroonselen, die te
geuren ijlden in ’t teer-heete Junigoud. En sterker kwamen uitranken
verderop, zangerige lila-trossen, en kranzen hooger. En enkele
seringen buiten de zon, slankten verbroosd in vochtigen wasem van
gebroken zilverende lichtsfeer, koel.—
Op zoog de beukenlaan, vóór Van Ouwenaar’s landgoed,

geurzwijmel van woesten tuin, die ijl te ademen hijgden. Seringen-
adem en jasmijnen, dennengeur, en vochtige boschzoetheid, stoof in
zacht en zwijmel naar de lichtgrot, tusschen al hoogzingender groen
van jong geboomte uit jonkheer’s landgoed.
Als laatste dagpracht van lentefeest, geurde de beukenlaan,

volgedronken van zwoele arooms uit tuinbrok, zwommen in gons,
zang-teer de bijen en vliegen rond, ging lentezwijmel ten offer aan
het licht, het licht dat gloeien en koken wou, naar de gouên grot, aan
’t laan-eind. In zalige weelde, glansde en praalde ’t daggoud, vonkte
’t licht, klaterden de kleuren van bloemen, rond grond en boomen,
lag Wiereland honing te zwelgen uit gouden bloeme-schalen, in
geuren-zoet te zwijmen, in rook van licht en vocht. En overal juichten
en klaroenden de vogels hun zilveren zang door het groen. [339]
Kees was wat later opgehouên dan anders. Er waren karren met
bakken van de haven teruggehaald. Piet had gevent, goed verkocht,
en Kees had van Dirk ’n gulden boven z’n zweetloontje gebeurd.
Noodig voor z’n hongerend nest van dertien, waar ook nù nog,
gevochten werd om broodkruimels.—Voor ’t eerst, met wat geld in
z’n zak, stapte ie naar ’t duinkrot. Stil laat-lichtende lanen liep ie
door, blij met ’t groen, dat ie eerst niet gezien had. Nou was ’t net, of
er iets in z’n ruw leven, z’n driftziel, verzachtte tegen alles. Er woelde
een geur om ’m heen van zoetheid, ijle reuk van bloemen, en er was
iets blij’s in ’m, als hield ie toch van ’t leven.—
Luidloos, in prachtstralende zinking van licht was de vroege

Juniavond om ’m, aan ’t sterven.—Jonge popels lichtelijk bebladerd
slankten ver in avondrood, zachten gloed die als reuzige glansschild
d’aard kwam overdekken.—
Rag en éven groen-verdonkerd lijnden de twijgen in ’t rozerood en

stille murmeling van zoet landgeklank ruischte van akker-verten àf,
als fluisterde nachtleven rond z’n beenen.—Zalig en zoet geurde
bezonken dagzwijmel na, de aarde glansgroenend en
glansvergouênd in droom-rozigen luchtbrand van zonnezink,
madonna-gouïg en heilig ver-aureolend door laantjes en boomblâar.
Dennetjes, licht-groen gezoomd aan donk’re takkransen, stonden

dwars doorlicht in rooien gloed, als heilige kandelabers in reuzige
kathedraal zacht te branden, met de jonge kaarsjes tot den top in
vlam geploft, zacht-glanzend, roereloos kaarselicht, aangestoken in
’t wonder-teere avondgoud. Aan wegkanten van weiland en
glooiigen duingrond, bloedde éven doorvlamd fijn rood gepunt van
eiken hakhout, teer als bladknipsels, looverig rood getintel, dat
arabeske lijntjes droop van zonnig rood door ’t struikgroen. Fijn
paarse hondsdraf toortste, lichtelijk gekringd in stoetjes, in ’t avond
droom-fijne glanslicht, levende wezentjes, zelf bestarend den
zonnezink. En rond, in verre kransen, kroop bijéén in ’t lokkende
goud-zachte gevlam de eereprijs, heel teere blauwe lichtjes,
dwaalzwammetjes in ’t grazend innig-schitterende weigroen.—Als
weggewaaide [340]kleurvedertjes van zwaluwstalig licht, stipten en
trilden ’t blauw-zilverige avondgebloemte in de glanszonne, maar
lichter, weeker van wéérgloedjes, tusschen de blanke boeketjes van
geel-kransige madeliefjes en akkerkoorn, die heel broos, heel blank
kuste ’t licht.—Teer wit, in blank gevloei van licht, al teerder en fijner,
zilverden de witjes-madelieven òp tusschen het schitter-fijne
vergelend gras. Van alle kanten staarden uit den wond’ren
lichtstroom van ’t goud-doorzeisde grasgroen, de bloemgezichtjes.
Overal zongen laat licht, en laat doorgloeide kleuren in den
volstijgenden lentetooi, en ’t diep violet, ’t purper, ’t rood, vloeide en
deinde tusschen ’t dauwende avondpaars. En ’t landschap zong in
avondvergouïng, met keeltjes van duizenden harpenaren.
Tusschen wilgenzilver en abeelensneeuw ging suizeling, die

fluisterde dat lente sterven moest, ging laatste tril nog, in zoete
koortsigheid van grondgeur en jong gras. Hoog, uit de boomen, van
kruinen en dieperen avondglans, zong jubel plòts van nachtegaal,
afscheidszang aan lente.
Tusschen de zoete zomergeuren van wei en tuin en lichtval, die

tooverde roodgoud rond de struiken,—overgoude stof die
verwasemde de avondstille wegjes, rood-zandige kronkelpaadjes en
nauw-door-elkaar harpende boomen,—zilverde neer hun lyrische
jubel.—
Laag op wilgentak, grauwde klein lijfje van nachtegaal. Z’n oogjes

glansden nog van avondrood geluk, en staar en stil, luisterde ze
naar triolenden lokzang, uit eigen wond’re zilverkeeltje, lokzang
opgroeiend in de heilige landstilte, tot zuiltje van parelend kwinkeleer
en zoet tierelier.—Teer verhaperde eerst nog z’n lokkend vleiend
fluitkeeltje, z’n kristallen gorgeltje, wat zangerige weemoeds-
neuriing. En telkens brak z’n liedje, verstomd stil-staand in de
vergoudende avondrust.
Dan plots borrelde zilveren tremolo, ’t kristallen keeltje òpzwellend in

klank-zoet vleiend streelewijsje. Oogjes glansden rooder in gloed,
z’n kopje luisterde zoet. Weer zette dierke in, kwam er smachting in
’t streelewijsje, spoot ’n trillenspartel [341]jubelend hoog, borrelde
voller, klare zilveren toontjes in ’t kristallen gorgeltje. Al luider en
zoetvloeiender beefden de slagen òp uit z’n keeltje, kristallige spartel
en fonkel; al passiënder zwòl de jubel.
Zwijmelende zange-wellust van minnaartjes-drift stortte uit, een

kristalweb van zilveren trillers, en hoog in de lucht sloeg áán een
golf, ’n zoet, zacht, rillend, weemoeds-deinend, jubelend, spartelend
scherzo, klaar als tingelden en klingelden klokjes van kristal,
eind’loos hoog in den hemel rond.
Dan stilte plots; ’t dierke, wèg in eigen jubel, de oogjes rood in

zonnetoover, een takje lager huppelend rond wilgenzilver.
Van verre ruischte hevig-zacht nu, zangestem van aeolus uit

serafientje, een ruischend gevloei van lichte aanslagwijsjes, héél
roffelend-teer, in de diepte van andere keeltjes.—En sterker parelde
’t ààn, kristallen golfjes-ruisch in gouden zomeravondstilte.
Als in druisch van regenkristalletjes, stortten tegen elkaar in

nachtegaal en merel, zanglijster en leeuwrik, zang en kweel van
allen kant.
Sterfhymne aan de lente.
Uit hun donkre, grauwe nachtegaal-borstjes bleef klinken de snik van

’t minnen, ’t zoete lieven; door hun grauwe stille borstjes ging één
kramp van uitstortend jubelgeluk. En engelenkeeltjes filomeelden in
zoeten jubel mee, hoog, van uit ’n hemelschen toren.
Avondschemer donkerde neer over de zoete murmelende landstilte.

Rond het laatste luchtenrood weefden de kristallen vogelen-
gorgeltjes hun webjes van minnebegeerten. En donkerte rondom
zonk uit, de schemer. Als zachte streken op violenkwint, fluweel-
streelde, weende in ’t duisterend groen hun zanggekweel na. En als
kinderkoortjes vèr, in gewijd lied, doorhuiverd van heiligen klank,
tremoleerden terug, uit andere avondlijke schemerboschjes, broozer
en reiner de vogelenkeeltjes, weenend van weemoed naar God.
[Inhoud]
MENSCHENWEE
[Inhoud]
MENSCHENWEE
ROMAN VAN HET LAND
DOOR
IS. QUÉRIDO
HAARLEM
DE ERVEN F. BOHN
Derde Boek
ZOMER.
[1]
[Inhoud]
EERSTE HOOFDSTUK.
Zachte vlekjes rood, donkere en lichte purpering,

schemerden tusschen de vèr-groene, licht-
verstuivende aardbei-akkers, onder laag blad uit. Door
veld en straatjes van Wiereland en Duinkijk, dampten
overal geuren, kittelend-arômig en reseda-zoet, van
aardbeivrucht; zingende aroma van jonge groenten en
frisch-kleurige doppers. De grond, doordrenkt van pas
gevallen regen, wasemde aardvocht uit, verschen
grondgeur, als was er mijlen in ’t rond geploegd. De
lucht koepelde in zilvering van wolken en zonnebrand.
Overal op de akkers was druk jagend gezwoeg. Kerels
in rooidrift, groeven de aarde op, voor zich uitwolkend
damp en zandig stof. Hurkende grondwerkers en
wieders stramden in buk en knieling, dat hun lijven
radbraakten van hitte-uitputting en ploeter. Geuren
zoete rook van pieterselie en jonge selderie, vloeiden
áán uit den grond, woeien door ’t land, de tuinen, en
alles zacht, kwam in bloei en ranken groei de aarde
uitzwellen.
Grove werkershanden, verbronsd, verklauwd, asch-

groenig van aardewroet, graaiden door het jonge
leven, dat bevloeide hun vingers met sappen en
aroma’s van al soorten teelt.—
Geldersche maaiers, in donkere kleeren, met klein

zwarte hoedjes op ernst-koppen, stapten al vroeg uit
de goudbevonkte paadjes, met zeis op den rug, den
polder in, of havenkant òver. Langzaam in gebaar,
enk’len met uitgebogen beenen, de zenboomen
vastgehaakt bij langen dol, ging hun rustig-rhytmische
stap vlak langs het aanhittende akker- en
havengewoel, streepte hun zeis-staal goudvlammen
door de lucht, hoog, tegen prachtgroen van gras en
boomen. [2]
En telkens weer doken donkere ernstige maaiers,

zwijgend in stap, naast elkaar, stille, goudene
weggetjes uit, laantjes met paars-zandigen grond, in
zonnegloed kleurhoog verhit; vlamden boven hun
donkere schouders de zeisen, als droegen ze
verzonken in extaze-kijk, zonnetoortsen rond, door
vrome stedeke-plek.—
In hoogen zonschitter en diepe luchtblauwing trokken

de dagen één na één over de velden, met soms
snikheete gloeiing, op middag-uren.
Drukker en woeliger werkjacht begon er áán te

koortsen in Duinkijk, Wiereland en rondom tuinders-
en kweekersdorpjes.—
In de avonden, door de rood-goud doorzonde

schijnsels als van brandende kathedraalglanzen,
trokken van alle kanten òp, werkers uit verren omtrek,
met karren vol kisten naar de haven van Wiereland,
waar alles heen moest, in laten zomeravondzwoeg.—
In rateling bonkten en dromden de hoog-beladen
karren en wagens door de stille straatjes, waar
knussige renteniertjes in lieve voortuintjes, van
dagsloof en arbeidje uitrustten. Laat dromden de
kerelslijven áán, in zwoegenden hijgduw, zweet
doorzogen en kreunend achter hun kleur-felle hoog
geladen vrachtkarren, twee mannen vooròp, met
snoerende touwen over rugkromming gesjord,
trekkend aêmechtig, doorvloekt van gramschap, van
hevigen sjouw en woest spierzwellende inspanning.
Hun zweet-druppende gezichten gloeiden rood-brons
tegen het zonnezinken in, den haven op; hun
afgemartelde zweetlichamen verstonken in rottende
plunje.—
Een volle werkdag lag al àchter hen; nu kreunden hun

borsten achter d’r karren.—Angstig keken hun oogen
uit, tusschen de breed-uitgestapelde sappige
kleurweelde van hun geur-versch, jubelend groente-
groen en pralend wortelen-rood, bang ergens tegen
aan te bonkeren. Zoo, met hun doormodderde
verzweete kleeren, doorstoofd van schroeiend
zonnevuur, als wroetende dieren, besmet met korsten
van grondvuil, doorzogen van zweet, uitgegrauwd van
dag-zware ploeterramp, stapten ze tusschen hun
fleurige kleurschaterende waar, boot [3]op, boot af,
langs de haven. Van den polder uit woei zoelzoete
hooigeur aan, en soms al, waggelden goud-matte
wagens in langzamen stap van schonkig werkpaard,
door de kleine drukke zomerdagstraatjes,—in hun
geweldigen opbouw boven de huisjes uitzwellend, als
versleepte duinruggen, mat goudgroenig nog van
gras-verschheid.
Heete drang koortste rond, onder de landwerkers om

elkaar vóór te zijn op de markt, met groenten.
Enkelen, vroeg met wat bakken werkend, vervoerden
in stillen trots wortelen en tuinboonen, en hier en daar
stonden al wat mandjes met aardbei uit de zon, zoet
te purperen, zangerig rood, koester-diep karmijn, in al
verspringende gloedtinten, van geranium-vuur naar
dahlia-purper.
Ouë Gerrit was naar de grasveiling en ’t etgroen

geweest. Hij had twee dijken hooi gekocht; te duur,
veel te duur, maar ’t moest. Nijdig nou op zichzelf was
ie, dat ie twee dagen lang daar geloerd had, om ’n
kandelaartje, in de zaal machtig te worden. Z’n heele
zaak had ie ’r voor vergeten. Zoo had ie op ’t end ’n
veel te duur dijkbrok gekocht. Toch praatte ie zich in,
dat ’t nooit goedkooper zou zijn gegaan, omdat ’r zoo
bar prijzig weer gevochten was. De boeren en tuinders
op de veiling hadden elkaar met haat en woeste
afgunst, de hoogte ingejaagd, zoo erg, dat de
landheeren lachten in hun vuistje, de bode listig
knipoogde tegen notaris.
Voor tuinders nu ook, werd ’t vroeg hooien. Dreunvol

en zwaar klonk er klomp-geklos overal. Druk gedrentel
van blank-geschuurde, gloed-nieuwe en vuile klompen
op klinkertjes, weerhalden.—Ouë en nieuwe karren
verwemelden in gezwoeg met trekhonden,
vermartelde, woeste, bloedoogige beesten, heen en
terug van haven naar tuin.
En vròeger, iederen dag poerden de tuinders al op

hun akkers, met zenuwjacht en koortsige werkdrift in
de handen, niet wetend wàt eerst te doen, zóó, in
woesten overvloed kwam groei van al soorten gewas
op woekeren.
Iederen dag drentelde Gerrit ’n beetje mee op ’t land.

Maar morrend giftten en bitsten Dirk en Piet tegen ’m,

PDF Masters of The Middle Waters Indian Nations and Colonial Ambitions Along The Mississippi Jacob F Lee Ebook Full Chapter

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

You might also like

PDF Masters of The Middle Waters Indian Nations and Colonial Ambitions Along The Mississippi Jacob F Lee Ebook Full Chapter

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

PDF Masters of The Middle Waters Indian Nations and Colonial Ambitions Along The Mississippi Jacob F Lee Ebook Full Chapter

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Masters of the Middle Waters Indian

Nations and Colonial Ambitions along

London Londoners and the Great Fire of 1666 1st Edition

Ontology and the ambitions of metaphysics 1st Edition

Indian Migration and Empire A Colonial Genealogy of the

Cinema and the Wealth of Nations Media Capital and the

Urban Heritage Along the Silk Roads: A Contemporary

How the West Was Drawn Mapping Indians and the

Leo 11 Masters of the Zodiac Golden Angel

Virgo (12-Masters of the Zodiac) S. Cinders.

Indian Nations and Colonial Ambitions

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

Names: Lee, Jacob F., author.

Introduction: Cities of the Living, Cities of the Dead 1

3. Alliances and Fractures 84

4. A New World? 122

5. An Empire of Kin 156

Conclusion: The Deep History of the Midcontinent 231

I n 1836, an American traveler named Edmund Flagg stood on the crest of

≈ Too often, historians establish a false dichotomy between Native

≈ Centered on the site of the ancient city of Cahokia, where Edmund

Beyond the ­simple facts of river-­based travel and communication, under-

presence farther up the Missouri, while “Quapaw” (okáxpa) denotes “down-

Just as they connected disparate provinces of North Amer­i­ca, ­those water-

Chequamegon Bay OJIBWES

SAUKS Fox River OTTAWAS

oin Kaskaskia (ca. 1630–1691)

(ca. 1640–1683) ois

ILLINOIS Indian Nation

The Illinois Country, ca. 1673

based their reports on incomplete accounts provided by a range of p ­ eople with

Zitten, doodstil, bleef ie ’n poos, verkneed in hijgenden lucht-

Schuifelend was ie in den leegen koel-beschaduwden stal, in ’n

Nou mostie moar bedoàre.… stilletjes.… sain gangetje goan.… dà

Jonge, zoete geuren-hitte trilde uit de gouden aarde en lichtelijk

Dirk en Kees werkten in ’t paarse schaduwlommer, bij Gerrits

En laag in ’t wilde boomgroen, stond, in oud-goud rood baksteen,

Hoog, hals-gerekt, in zij-lingschen oogstaar, waakte vadergans, in

Groote heesters bogen in ranken wiegel òver naar wilde graspluim,

In de stille, omlommerde vensterruitjes, droomde koel licht van tuin,

Op zoog de beukenlaan, vóór Van Ouwenaar’s landgoed,

Als laatste dagpracht van lentefeest, geurde de beukenlaan,

Luidloos, in prachtstralende zinking van licht was de vroege

Rag en éven groen-verdonkerd lijnden de twijgen in ’t rozerood en

Dennetjes, licht-groen gezoomd aan donk’re takkransen, stonden

Tusschen wilgenzilver en abeelensneeuw ging suizeling, die

Tusschen de zoete zomergeuren van wei en tuin en lichtval, die

Laag op wilgentak, grauwde klein lijfje van nachtegaal. Z’n oogjes

Dan plots borrelde zilveren tremolo, ’t kristallen keeltje òpzwellend in

Zwijmelende zange-wellust van minnaartjes-drift stortte uit, een

Dan stilte plots; ’t dierke, wèg in eigen jubel, de oogjes rood in

Van verre ruischte hevig-zacht nu, zangestem van aeolus uit

Als in druisch van regenkristalletjes, stortten tegen elkaar in

Sterfhymne aan de lente.

Uit hun donkre, grauwe nachtegaal-borstjes bleef klinken de snik van

Avondschemer donkerde neer over de zoete murmelende landstilte.

ROMAN VAN HET LAND

Zachte vlekjes rood, donkere en lichte purpering,

Beyond the simple facts of river-based travel and communication, under-

Just as they connected disparate provinces of North America, those water-

based their reports on incomplete accounts provided by a range of p eople with