Winner of the Intolerance in the United States Award from the Gustavus
Myers Center for the Study of Human Rights in the United States
In the early 1800s, when once-powerful North American Indian peoples
were being driven west across the Mississippi, a Shawnee prophet
collapsed into a deep sleep. When he awoke, he told friends and family
of his ascension to Indian heaven, where his grandfather had given him a
warning: "Beware of the religion of the white man: every Indian who
embraces it is obliged to take the road to the white man's heaven; and
yet no red man is permitted to enter there, but will have to wander
about forever without a resting place."
The events leading to this vision are the subject of A Spirited
Resistance, the poignant story of the Indian movement to challenge
Anglo-American expansionism. Departing from the traditional confines of
the history of American Indians, Gregory Evans Dowd carefully draws on
ethnographic sources to recapture the beliefs, thoughts, and actions of
four principal Indian nations--Delaware, Shawnee, Cherokee, and Creek.
The result is a sensitive portrayal of the militant Indians--often led
by prophets--who came to conceive of themselves as a united people, and
launched an intertribal campaign to resist the Anglo-American forces.
Dowd also uncovers the Native American opposition to the movement for
unity. That opposition, he finds, was usually the result of divisions
within Indian communities rather than intertribal rivalry. In fact, Dowd
argues, intertribal enmity had little to do with the ultimate failure of
the Indian struggle; it was division within Indian communities, colonial
influence on Indian government, and the sheer force of the
Anglo-American campaign that brought the Indian resistance movement to
an end. An evocative history of long frustration and ultimate failure,
A Spirited Resistance tells of a creative people, whose insights,
magic, and ritual add a much-needed dimension to our understanding of
the American Indian.
