Prophets of the Great Spirit: Native American Revitalization Movements in Eastern North America by Alfred A. Cave

Book Reviews 139 have relocated to Ontario where they have been joined by their Japanese counterparts. Ontario now produces more automobiles than Michigan, and the supply chains of both jurisdictions are mutually interlaced. The flow of goods across that border is of staggering proportions in the auto sector alone. The book's cover photograph illustrating the volume's main theme shows a 1950's-era traffic jam on the Ambassador Bridge of cars lined up to get into Canada. A contemporary image would show lines of trucks filling the bridge and its aprons heading in both directions. In some respects as people we have grown apart even as certain aspects of our economies have become integrated well beyond borderland regions. A permeable border perhaps, but it is also permanent; it does separate, and what it separates, changes. H. V. Nelles L. R. Wilson Professor of Canadian History McMaster University Alfred A. Cave. Prophets of the Great Spirit: Native American Revitalisation Movements in Eastern North America. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006. Pp. 328. Bibliography. Index. Notes. Cloth, $27.95. In the 1760s the report of a series of prophetic visions that marked an important transformation in the religious life of the region's First Peoples raced through the villages and mission communities of western Pennsylvania. Whereas in former times the Great Spirit had stood aloof from human affairs, in the visions of men like Neolin, the Delaware prophet, the Great Spirit frowned upon the miseries that had followed European colonization and showed his people how to reclaim their lost power and self-respect. A number of fine books on prophecy in eastern North America by scholars such as R. David Edmunds, Gregory Evans Dowd, Joel Martin, and John Sugden have appeared over the past few years, and Alfred A. Cave's Prophets of the Great Spirit draws together such literature in a synthetic account of the long struggle by First Peoples to craft a sacred response to the awful consequences of the invasion of America. Cave follows the development of the prophetic vision through the biographies of holy men such as Neolin, Tenskwatawa, Handsome Lake, Kenekuk, and others. The sim?arities among regional manifestations of the prophetic theme are striking. Prophets 140 Michigan Historical Review articulated for the first time concepts of places like heaven and hell, identified sin as an important problem confronting their people, and prescribed a number of rituals and other practices, such as the repudiation of alcohol and witchcraft, for the expiation of their sins. But significant differences also separated a leader like Tenskwatawa, the Shawnee prophet, from Kenekuk, a Kickapoo, and Cave does a fine job of linking differences in prophetic visions to the particular context in which each prophet found himself. Tenskwatawa, for example, enjoyed the support of several hundred warriors, so he could advocate military resistance to the United States in ways that a man like Kenekuk, whose people were confined to small tracts of land at the sufferance of the United States government, could not. Still, their common concern for moral salvation and appreciation of the plight of all First Peoples placed such disparate figures in an unbroken line of postcolonial prophecy. Prophets of the Great Spirit provides a useful overview of a rich and varied historiography. Specialists conversant in the field will already be familiar with many of Cave's arguments, but for readers and students interested in the broader history of eastern North America, Cave illustrates important themes in the ongoing struggle of First Peoples to resist the United States' expansion westward. James Taylor Carson Queen's University Kingston, Ontario, Canada Dave Dempsey. William G. Milliken: Michigan's Passionate Moderate. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006. Pp. 291. Bibliography. Index. Notes. Photographs. Cloth, $29.95. It was in 1974 when I first came to Michigan and saw William Milliken on television. Though I knew very little about him, he seemed incredibly decent, considerate, and pragmatic. So, when I received my review copy of Dave Dempsey's recent book on the governor and noticed its subtitle Michigan's Passionate Moderate, Iwas not surprised. On the book jacket, Dempsey proposes to tell the story "of one of our most enduring political...

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