Seeing Red: Indigenous Land, American Expansion, and the Political Economy of Plunder in North America

by Michael John Witgen

Overview

Against long odds, the Anishinaabeg resisted removal, retaining thousands of acres of their homeland in what is now Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. Their success rested partly on their roles as sellers of natural resources and buyers of trade goods, which made them key players in the political economy of plunder that drove white settlement and U.S. development in the Old Northwest. But, as Michael Witgen demonstrates, the credit for Native persistence rested with the Anishinaabeg themselves. Outnumbering white settlers well into the nineteenth century, they leveraged their political savvy to advance a dual citizenship that enabled mixed-race tribal members to lay claim to a place in U.S. civil society. Telling the stories of mixed-race traders and missionaries, tribal leaders and territorial governors, Witgen challenges our assumptions about the inevitability of U.S. expansion.

Deeply researched and passionately written, Seeing Red will command attention from readers who are invested in the enduring issues of equality, equity, and national belonging at its core.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781469677774
Publisher:	Omohundro Institute and UNC Press
Publication date:	08/01/2023
Series:	Published by the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and the University of North Carolina Press
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	168,785
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Michael John Witgen (Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe) is professor in the Department of History and the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race at Columbia University.

What People are Saying About This

Walter Johnson

Witgen reframes the history of the United States around settler colonialism and fills out the picture with a granular understanding of both the practical mechanisms of 'the political economy of plunder' and the terrible human costs of American imperialism on the continent of North America.

Tiya Miles

Seeing Red is ablaze with astonishing stories, piercing insights, and riveting prose. Weaving together a fascinating tapestry of multiracial and multinational interaction, Witgen reveals how seemingly familiar events and processes were bound up in a 'political economy of plunder' that forced Indigenous peoples into exploitative colonial arrangements and expelled African Americans from the possibilities of citizenship. A powerful analysis of dispossession.

Christina Snyder

Brilliant and engrossing. Challenging the dominant narrative of American history, which assumes a rapid decline in Native power after the War of 1812, Witgen charts Indigenous persistence in the Old Northwest despite relentless pressure from both the United States and Canada. Witgen's compelling analysis of 'the political economy of plunder' transforms our view of settler colonialism.

From the Publisher

Brilliant and engrossing. Challenging the dominant narrative of American history, which assumes a rapid decline in Native power after the War of 1812, Witgen charts Indigenous persistence in the Old Northwest despite relentless pressure from both the United States and Canada. Witgen's compelling analysis of 'the political economy of plunder' transforms our view of settler colonialism."—Christina Snyder, Pennsylvania State University



Witgen reframes the history of the United States around settler colonialism and fills out the picture with a granular understanding of both the practical mechanisms of 'the political economy of plunder' and the terrible human costs of American imperialism on the continent of North America."—Walter Johnson, Harvard University



Seeing Red is ablaze with astonishing stories, piercing insights, and riveting prose. Weaving together a fascinating tapestry of multiracial and multinational interaction, Witgen reveals how seemingly familiar events and processes were bound up in a 'political economy of plunder' that forced Indigenous peoples into exploitative colonial arrangements and expelled African Americans from the possibilities of citizenship. A powerful analysis of dispossession."—Tiya Miles, Harvard University

Editorial Reviews

A searing account. . . . [Witgen's] incisive and deeply researched study lays bare the mechanisms of this historical land grab."—Publishers Weekly



An important analysis of Indigenous resistance to U.S. colonialism in the lands that would become Michigan and Wisconsin during the first half of the nineteenth century."—Civil War Book Review



An important work that draws together multiple threads that have all too often remained stubbornly disparate in the field of early American history. Witgen's "political economy of plunder" model achieves something simultaneously noteworthy and quite difficult. . . . Witgen makes the unthinkable imaginable, and even tangible, to his audience."—H-Early-America



A critical story of survivance. . . . This book joins a growing body of literature by Indigenous scholars and others working to rightly account for the Indigenous history of North America."—Early American Literature

From the Publisher

An important analysis of Indigenous resistance to U.S. colonialism in the lands that would become Michigan and Wisconsin during the first half of the nineteenth century.

Civil War Book Review

An important work that draws together multiple threads that have all too often remained stubbornly disparate in the field of early American history. Witgen's "political economy of plunder" model achieves something simultaneously noteworthy and quite difficult. . . . Witgen makes the unthinkable imaginable, and even tangible, to his audience.

H-Early-America

A critical story of survivance. . . . This book joins a growing body of literature by Indigenous scholars and others working to rightly account for the Indigenous history of North America.

Early American Literature

11/15/2021

Historian Witgen, a member of the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe, examines in this searing account the “massive transfer of wealth from Native peoples to white American settlers” that occurred in the Northwest Territory in the 19th century. Though this transfer occurred without significant military conflict, Witgen argues that the “involuntary or coercive process” of treaty-making “created a political economy of plunder” that benefited white settlers, traders, and territorial officials while divesting Native nations, particularly the Anishinaabeg, of their land. White proponents of the treaties, including Michigan governor and U.S. secretary of war Lewis Cass, argued that Indigenous people weren’t entitled to keep their land because they hadn’t converted it into private property. While many Anishinaabeg were able to avoid forced removal to Indian Territory, cash payments for the territory they ceded often ended up in the hands of merchants and other “white interlocutors” who had married Native women. Noting the irony that Michigan’s Osceola County was named for a Seminole warrior who resisted U.S. expansion into Florida, Witgen explains how “including the noble dead into the story of America’s creation... obfuscated the exclusion of living Indians from the social contract that the Republic extended to white citizen-settlers.” Though repetitive at times, Witgen’s incisive and deeply researched study lays bare the mechanisms of this historical land grab. Illus. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly