Great Lakes Creoles: A French-Indian Community on the Northern Borderlands, Prairie du Chien, 1750–1860

Great Lakes Creoles is far more than a local study of Prairie du Chien as it transitioned from fur trade outpost to Wisconsin town. Although several works have addressed the marginalization of mixed-ancestry peoples in the American Southwest and in Canadian borderlands, Murphy is the first to examine the outcome of American expansion and settlement for the Francophone fur traders who settled in areas that eventually became the states of Wisconsin and Michigan. Her detailed case study of one of the most remote of these communities, Prairie du Chien, makes excellent use of territorial documents, court records, family histories, and genealogical information to demonstrate clearly that these Great Lakes Creoles, despite significant intermarriage with and descent from American Indian women, were able to avoid being defined as an ethnic out-group and instead were assimilated as white residents of the community by 1860. Murphy presents the stark contrast between the experience of these traders and their descendants and that of the formation of Hispanic identity in the American Southwest and the formation of Métis identity in Canada. She attributes this difference to the period following the War of 1812 when US hegemony arrived in the Great Lakes region and to the need for Creole cooperation to influence regional American Indian populations, which the young United States yet feared. As a result, the United States recognized Creole land claims that predated the union, allowing Great Lakes Creoles an increased likelihood of economic independence that contributed to the general perception of their “whiteness.” The need for the political cooperation of these residents led to their participation in governance as voters, jurors, and officeholders even though they sometimes brought the more consensual decision-making practices of American Indian communities to these institutions. Women, understood as important mediators across fur trade studies, reprise that role in Murphy’s work, transitioning traditional American Indian women’s roles in producing and redistributing food and clothing, showing hospitality, and healing to roles as public mothers caring for the sick and impoverished of the community in ways that paralleled expected and revered roles of nineteenth-century American women.While Great Lakes Creole populations were not marginalized enough to form their own sociocultural identity, their acceptance was not easy. Early forts brought soldiers to town who harassed Creole women, resulting in an 1822 ordinance that fined white persons “skulking or sneaking about after 10 o’clock at night” (72), and the early courts indicted those married according to the custom of the country, using insulting and humiliating language to enforce US marriage norms. These marriages also meant that lands held by American Indian wives were transferred under US law to the ownership of their husbands. Although some Creoles did lose their land as settlers came to town, many retained at least enough land to become middle-class farmers, much like their settler neighbors. Later land grants to “mixed bloods” in various treaties with regional tribes were generally sold to sustain the economic ability to maintain ancestral properties in Prairie du Chien and educate their children at schools where they could learn English.Murphy’s book is well written and painstakingly researched, and it includes many photos and maps that aid the reader in understanding the Great Lakes community and its people. Great Lakes Creoles is a fine example of how local studies can contribute strongly to our understanding of borderlands history. It is a must-read for scholars of the Great Lakes region and will serve as an excellent text in graduate coursework.

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