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102 The Michigan Historical Review a societal creation—the work of numerous people who were not always working toward the same goal” (p 11). Nevertheless, the contradictory rhetoric, impulses, desires, means, and policy still “facilitated the dispossession and relocation of thousands of men, women, and children over the course of decades” (p. 11). Across seven chapters—that range from the violence of the early republic, the rhetoric of removal and federal policy, the Delawares’ response to Euro-American expansion, a localized study of the Sandusky River region of Ohio, an exploration of the 1833 Treaty of Chicago, and finally, an analysis of the Odawa and Ojibwe experience in Michigan— Land Too Good For Indians offers a compelling and engaging portrait of a far-flung region and a diverse array of experiences. Deeply researched and eloquently argued, Bowes, despite his protestation that his book cannot be all things to everybody, succeeds in doing much to re-imagine the lower Great Lakes. And, in doing so, he reveals a vibrant history of Indian removal that transcends both historiographical assumptions and periodization and shows how Indian removal was not an isolated event but an ongoing process that connects past and present. By the end of the book, Bowes reminds his readers that “The relationship between American Indian nations and the United States has never consisted of a one-sided conversation” (p. 234). And he reminds us that despite the continuance of settler colonialism, the Indigenous leaders and members of “sovereign nations are in a better position to make people listen to what they are saying” (p. 234). Justin Carroll Indiana University East Gregory Evans Dowd. Groundless: Rumors, Legends, and Hoaxes on the Early American Frontier. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015. Pp. 391. Illustrations. Index. Notes. Cloth: $34.95. That rumors filled conversations, letters, and newspapers in early America should surprise no one familiar with the period. Uncertainty defined much of the information that circulated among Native Americans, Europeans, and Africans during colonial encounters. In Groundless, Gregory Evans Dowd follows recurring rumors along “longitudes” running through time, while also pausing to explore specific “episodes” in depth (p. 14). In doing so, he demonstrates that “rumors Book Reviews 103 both shaped and reflected perceptions” of early America and subsequently influenced understandings of the past (p. 2). Dowd shows that the falsehoods and fabrications that people believed and repeated played on legitimate hopes and fears. As he writes, “Rumors only gain speed, they can only take flight, in a medium of plausibility” (p. 146). Indeed, the most widespread tales hinted at broader truths, even when the rumor itself was false. Spain grew rich off Aztec wealth during the conquest of Mexico; perhaps gold would be found in eastern North America. Smallpox and other diseases spread with the arrival of Europeans; perhaps those epidemics were the products of schemes to exterminate Native Americans. Carolina built a society based on chattel slavery; perhaps the English intended to enslave entire Indian nations in the South. Throughout early America, rumors grew out of real possibilities. Rumors also drove action. In 1838, at the height of Indian Removal, white Michiganders discovered the burned-out cabin and charred remains of three members of a frontier family. Rumor charged nearby Anishinaabe Indians with the crime. Indian agent Henry Schoolcraft “leveraged the accusations” to push for rapid expulsion of Indians from the state, even as evidence indicated the victims died from domestic violence, not Indian attack (p. 254). Meanwhile, the Anishinaabeg shared their own stories about murder, specifically that the United States intended to deport or exterminate them. In response, many Anishinaabeg crossed the border into British Canada, and the specter of their alliance with Britain forced the United States to back away from its intention to forcibly remove them. As time passed, rumor became legend and even history. During the American Revolution, colonists accused the British of buying American scalps from their Indian allies, even while knowing that Britons and Indians had no monopoly on scalping. South Carolina and Pennsylvania offered bounties for scalps, and American troops lifted the hair of their Indian enemies. In 1782, Pennsylvania militia committed the war’s worst atrocity, murdering and mutilating more than ninety noncombatants at...

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