The Annals of Iowa

Review of: "Seventh Generation Earth Ethics: Native Voices of Wisconsin," by Patty Loew

Nunnally, Patrick

96      THE ANNALS OF IOWA 
comes a much better read. The interweaving of local and national 
news with family stories helps readers understand the interplay be-
tween these larger and smaller worlds, and how lives went on, in spite 
of the massive changes occurring during those years. 
 Unfortunately, the reader (or at least this reader) comes away 
wanting unresolved issues resolved and wondering about how it all 
turned out. Probably because of the availability of family documents, 
it becomes mostly the story of DeLuca’s mother, Helen, and less the 
story of the larger family. In particular, I wanted to know in greater 
detail how things turned out for Adele. Did she ever divorce her prob-
lematic husband? What about her son, with all of his many physical 
challenges? What happened to him? Details are thin on the changes 
ahead for the rest of the family as well. DeLuca comments in the epi-
logue that her generation no longer lives on the farm, but how, when, 
and why did that transition occur?  
 These are not the only mysteries in the book, and some are quite 
sensitive. One presented itself with Adele’s letter of January 15, 1935. 
What she described would seem to be her seeking out and having an 
abortion in response to a pregnancy coming too soon after the birth of 
her disabled son. Is that, in fact, what she was describing? More dis-
cussion (any discussion) would help to shed light on a very important 
Great Depression story about the problems of obtaining effective con-
traception and the troubles families faced when trying to deal with a 
child’s disabilities. This is a place where readers should not be left 
wondering what happened. The same might be said of the family’s 
struggles with mental illness, with one son committing suicide and a 
second suffering to an extent requiring hospitalization at least once. 
Was Donny able to deal successfully with his illness and live a reason-
ably happy life in spite of the limits of effective treatment at mid-
century? This good book would be made better with just a little more 
attention to these and the other issues mentioned above.  
 
 
Seventh Generation Earth Ethics: Native Voices of Wisconsin, by Patty Loew. 
Madison: Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2014. ix, 230 pp. Illustra-
tions, notes, index. $22.95 hardcover. 
Reviewer Patrick Nunnally is coordinator of the River Life Program, part of 
the Institute for Advanced Study at the University of Minnesota. His Ph.D. 
dissertation (University of Iowa, 1990) was “Visions of Sustainable Place: 
Voice, Land, and Culture in Rural America.” 
This collection of twelve interviews with Native American leaders from 
Wisconsin delivers exactly what the title promises, distinctive voices 
Book Reviews and Notices      97 
that, collectively, portray a broad and deep ethic that is grounded in 
the earth, in community, and in relationships among people. Most of 
these men and women made their contributions in the twentieth century, 
a period of tremendous though uneven change across Wisconsin’s in-
digenous communities. Representing all of Wisconsin’s American Indi-
an communities, the people here speak to issues such as environmental 
protection, treaty rights, education, and the maintenance of culture.  
 The stories and voices heard through this book are important in 
their own right. All struggle in one way or another with the second-
class status allotted to Native Americans during this period, and all sur-
mount the particular challenges they face in distinctive ways. Hilary 
Waukau, from the Menominee Nation, began his career as an activist 
for treaty rights by working against “termination” of Menominee sov-
ereignty in the 1950s. By the 1990s, he was an international leader in 
global efforts to preserve indigenous rights. By contrast, Thomas Ste. 
Germaine served the Lac du Flambeau Ojibwe community as an at-
torney after a career that took him to law school after several stints in 
professional football.  
 Some particular events and themes recur. The “Walleye Wars,” a 
series of confrontations in the 1990s that arose from the exercise of 
treaty rights to fish northern Wisconsin lakes, were part of Waukau’s 
story, as well as formative in the career of Lac Courte Oreilles’ James 
Schlender. Treaty rights activism is central to the lives and careers of 
five of the twelve individuals profiled. Water is another important 
motif, whether in the artistic work of Truman Lowe or the life and 
work of Frances Van Zile, who is profiled as “Keeper of the Water.” 
 The book is written in a manner that makes it accessible to a wide 
audience, which it richly deserves. Scholars of environmental history, 
of the varied and complex histories of American Indian people, and of 
gender will find much of interest here. Nonscholars who have profes-
sional commitments in these areas will find these lives interesting as 
well, as will people interested more generally in the history of the 
Midwest. 
 That said, it should be noted that author Patty Loew does not pro-
vide much analysis or scholarly context herself for these stories. The 
lived experience of remarkable people takes center stage, and it is up 
to readers to add their own perspectives on issues such as the history 
of Indian boarding schools, for example. Readers without that breadth 
of contextual knowledge will still find much of value here, as will 
readers looking for regional perspectives. The histories told here of 
Wisconsin are replayed with variations in Iowa, Minnesota, and across 
the Midwest. 
98      THE ANNALS OF IOWA 
 Perhaps the book’s greatest contribution is its eloquent reminder 
that Indian people are still here, that despite all odds they were not all 
driven away by the seemingly unstoppable forces of colonization, 
western expansion, disease, and racism. The region’s indigenous people 
have always been, and remain, important parts of the region’s demo-
graphics, culture, and history. Their stories should be foundational to 
the human history of this place. 
 
 
Equal Before the Law: How Iowa Led Americans to Marriage Equality, by 
Tom Witosky and Marc Hansen. Iowa and the Midwest Experience 
Series. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2015. xiii, 236 pp. Illustra-
tions, appendix, notes, index. $19.95 paperback. 
Reviewer John W. Johnson is professor of history at the University of North-
ern Iowa. His books include Affirmative Action (2009); Griswold v. Connecticut: 
Birth Control and the Constitutional Right of Privacy (2005); and The Struggle for 
Student Rights: Tinker v. Des Moines and the 1960s (1997). 
Equal Before the Law was published in June 2015, within days of the 
U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark same-sex marriage decision, Obergefell 
v. Hodges. The timing was fortuitous. Varnum v. Brien, the 2009 Iowa 
Supreme Court decision examined in Equal Before the Law, was an im-
portant link in the chain of state and federal legal precedents that led to 
the nationalization of same-sex marriage by the nation’s highest court. 
The story of the road to same-sex marriage in Iowa needed to be told. 
It is a saga populated with intriguing personalities, complicated by 
rapidly changing legal issues, shot through with partisan politics, and 
contested as a high-profile skirmish in the culture wars.  
 Various individuals could conceivably have written a book on the 
Varnum case. An activist in the LGBT community, for example, could 
have prepared an impassioned apologia for same-sex marriage. Or a 
litigant or lawyer in the Iowa case could have crafted a riveting day-by-
day account. Or a political scientist or constitutional historian might 
have produced a book replete with legal ruminations and lengthy 
footnotes. But none of these categories of writers were first off the line. 
Instead, Equal Before the Law is the work of two accomplished Iowa 
journalists.  
 Tom Witosky and Marc Hansen, both formerly of the Des Moines 
Register, begin their treatment of same-sex marriage in Iowa in the late 
1990s. Iowa was then one of the vast majority of American states with 
statutory bans on same-sex marriage. In addition, the country was 
under the sway of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which 
forbade states from according full faith and credit to a same-sex mar-


English

Seventh Generation Earth Ethics: Native Voices of Wisconsin

Review of: "Cold War in a Cold Land: Fighting Communism on the Northern Plains," by David W. Mills

Mayer, Michael S.

Book Reviews and Notices      457 
 Rubini chronologically details the personal life of Mildred (Millie) 
Augustine Wirt Benson while also highlighting relevant Iowa history 
until roughly 1940, when Benson relocated to Ohio. Readers get a 
glimpse into early twentieth-century small-town life in Ladora, Iowa, 
before witnessing the growth of the University of Iowa campus and its 
academic programs in the early 1920s. Rubini explores Benson’s devel-
opment as a journalist and writer from a young girl growing up in Iowa 
through her time at the University of Iowa, which helped prepare her 
to ghostwrite for the Stratemeyer Syndicate as well as write and publish 
under her own name. By the mid-1950s, Benson parted ways with the 
Stratemeyer Syndicate but continued to pursue a career as a journalist, 
combining her love of travel, flying, and mystery. 
 Rubini’s book is geared for younger readers, but the best part of the 
book is that Rubini slyly teaches children what scholarly historical 
research and writing looks like. She splendidly contextualizes changing 
gender roles, merges national and local history through such topics as 
the Great Depression, and explains the history of early to mid–twentieth-
century writing and publishing. Furthermore, she uses footnotes and a 
bibliography to showcase an interesting array of primary and secondary 
sources.  
 Even though it is intended primarily for young readers, the book 
still offers much for adults in its insight into book syndicates and in the 
life story of an under-discussed but important author in children’s lit-
erature. A few mysteries remain unresolved, however. Readers who are 
intrigued by passing mention of the “challenging” relationship between 
Benson and her daughter never learn more about the topic, including 
what became of Benson’s family after her death in 2002. Although Ben-
son seemingly played an integral role in interpreting the Nancy Drew 
character, Rubini does not analyze Benson’s development of Nancy 
Drew in comparison to the outlines created by the Stratemeyer Syndicate. 
Doing so would have added depth to Benson’s contributions to the 
legacy of the Nancy Drew character. Still, the secret case of the Nancy 
Drew ghostwriter is one worth exploring. 
 
 
Cold War in a Cold Land: Fighting Communism on the Northern Plains, by 
David W. Mills. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2015. ix, 300 pp. 
Maps, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $29.95 hardcover. 
Reviewer Michael S. Mayer is professor of history at the University of Montana. 
He is the author of The Eisenhower Years (2009). 
According to David Mills, people in the northern Great Plains states 
(South Dakota, North Dakota, and Montana) “enthusiastically supported 
458      THE ANNALS OF IOWA 
the federal government’s effort to combat Soviet communism” (4) dur-
ing the Cold War in spite of the region’s isolationist sentiment during 
the period between the world wars. Those efforts included programs to 
combat communist subversion at home and to defend the United States 
from attack by the Soviet Union. The latter, in particular, affected the 
northern Great Plains states in the form of nuclear missile sites (which 
brought economic benefits) and the Ground Observer Corps. People in 
the northern Great Plains states also participated enthusiastically in re-
ligious activities infused with anticommunist messages and in patriotic 
programs such as the Freedom Train, the Citizens Food Committee, and 
the Crusade for Freedom. 
 Yet Mills does not find the permeating collective sense of fear among 
people in the northern plains states that other historians of the era have 
described. For example, “people in this region generally did not partici-
pate in civil defense measures, demonstrate against military construction 
projects, or demand anticommunist legislation from their state and local 
governments” (4). Communist hunting “was not pervasive” on the 
northern plains (57). Overall, Mills maintains that “citizens on the north-
ern Great Plains often did not see the Cold War as frightening or trau-
matic but as a source of [economic] opportunity” (237). The dichotomy is 
a false one; the two perspectives, of course, are not mutually exclusive. 
 Mills argues that regional authors have treated the northern Great 
Plains as a colonial economy, which he defines simplistically as “ex-
tracting more resources from an area than a controlling interest contrib-
utes” (6). At various points, Mills claims either to invalidate or to refine 
that interpretation. He emphasizes that federal spending exceeded tax-
ation on the northern Great Plains during the Cold War and asserts that 
the Cold War thus enabled the states of the northern Great Plains “to 
reverse the trend of colonialism” (236). He acknowledges, however, 
that such a pattern had begun at least as early as the Great Depression. 
 Factual errors damage the book’s credibility. The Dies Committee 
did not “cease to exist” during World War II (26). Richard Nixon never 
chaired the House Committee on Un-American Activities (35). The in-
famous “spy queen” was Elizabeth Bentley, not “Barkley” (66). 
 Further, the book displays a less than sure mastery of the period 
and a lack of reading in the general literature. Important works about 
the Red Scare and about the Cuban Missile Crisis are missing from 
Mills’s notes and bibliography. Mills’s limited and selective reading 
either accounts for the book’s pronounced bias or reflects the author’s 
preconceived notions. Mills tends to cast the role of liberals in the most 
favorable light possible. With respect to the Red Scare, he tends to ex-
cuse liberals and place responsibility exclusively on the political right. 
Book Reviews and Notices      459 
For example, he writes that Truman established the President’s Tempo-
rary Commission on Employee Loyalty only because he “had to” after 
the Republican sweep in the elections of 1946 (26) and that the Truman 
administration initiated the prosecutions of leading members of the 
Communist Party under the Smith Act in response to Republican 
charges that Truman was soft on communism (34). In fact, Truman 
needed no excuse to go after communists or to violate civil liberties in 
the process. Mills’s ideological blinders lead him to miss the signifi-
cance of important information he uncovers. For example, he quotes 
Lee Metcalf, a Democratic senator from Montana, to the effect that 
many members of the John Birch Society in that state were Democrats 
(56); Mills offers no elaboration or analysis. Similarly, Mills states that 
Republicans red-baited Mike Mansfield during his bid to unseat a con-
servative Republican senator, Zales Ecton, in 1952, but Mills ignores the 
fact that Mansfield engaged in some red-baiting of his own. Regarding 
other issues, Mills’s description of Eisenhower’s New Look defense pol-
icy on page 116 is a caricature; Eisenhower did not “leave little alterna-
tive to nuclear war in dealing with any military crisis.” A more sensible 
account on page 189 still overstates the case. The historical record does 
not bear out Mills’s unequivocal assertion that John F. Kennedy had no 
idea before he entered the White House that the missile gap was a myth 
(200). 
 The book’s prose is plodding, tedious, and sometimes ungrammat-
ical. Even aside from factual errors and poor writing, the book has an 
amateurish quality. For example, Mills reports that Senator Karl Mundt, 
despite his strained relationship with Dwight D. Eisenhower, asked the 
president to campaign for him in 1954, but Mills never tells readers 
whether Eisenhower did so (54). Mills writes that the phrase “in God 
we trust” was added to the Pledge of Allegiance “at the direction of 
President Eisenhower” (62); later on the same page he acknowledges 
that this was done by an act of Congress. In a more serious instance, 
Mills asserts that an unidentified professor at the University of Montana 
lost his job after being accused of communist sympathies (40). The foot-
note cites only a letter to Mundt and admits that no newspaper account 
confirmed this. 
 The book adds to the literature on the Cold War some specific in-
formation about the domestic Cold War on the northern Great Plains. 
Perhaps its most significant contribution is the discussion of the Ground 
Observer Corps. Catherine McNicol Stock’s marvelous study of the 
northern Great Plains during the Great Depression demonstrates that 
there is much to be learned by studying the region. Mills’s book unfor-
tunately falls far short of her example. 


Cold War in a Cold Land: Fighting Communism on the Northern Plains

Review of: "Natives of a Dry Place: Stories of Dakota before the Oil Boom," by Richard Edward

Nelson, Paula M.

Book Reviews and Notices      451 
where readers are reminded go to the book’s Amazon page “to leave a 
review please. Thank you again for your support!” (163). The back mat-
ter of the print-on-demand title also includes an excerpt from Rank’s 
work in progress and a page for “Other Books by Michael Rank,” which 
lists such titles as History’s Most Insane Rulers and Greek Gods and God-
desses Gone Wild. 
 Rank’s approach is educational, entrepreneurial, and commercial. 
He brings a journalist’s bent to bear, although he apparently conducted 
few if any original interviews. The metaphors with which he chooses to 
illustrate his thesis—comparing Iowa’s underdog status to former Iowa 
State running back Troy Davis as the introduction’s overriding metaphor 
—are curious, and yet they emphasize a whimsicality often eschewed in 
more hidebound historical scholarship. In the end, Rank appears both 
eager for, and solicitous of, readers; his ethos is earnest. Readers of the 
Annals of Iowa may wish to give How Iowa Conquered the World a try. 
 
 
Natives of a Dry Place: Stories of Dakota before the Oil Boom, by Richard 
Edwards. Pierre: South Dakota Historical Society Press, 2015. xvi, 198 pp. 
Illustrations, maps, bibliography, index. $16.95 paperback. 
Reviewer Paula M. Nelson is professor of history emeritus at the University of 
Wisconsin–Platteville. She is the author of After the West Was Won: Homesteaders 
and Town-Builders in Western South Dakota, 1900–1917 (1986) and The Prairie Win-
nows Out Its Own: The West River Country of South Dakota in the Years of Depression 
and Dust (1996). 
We do not talk much about virtues these days. The word seems old-
fashioned, descriptive of the old sexual morality, maybe, but not one for 
our modern world, so full of transgressive beliefs and behaviors. Along 
comes Richard Edwards, director of the Center for Great Plains Studies 
at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, to remind us how just how much 
virtues matter. He is self-conscious about it, informing readers as he 
concludes his memoir that he does not see the inculcation and practice 
of virtues as conservative. That label reminds him of all of the evils of 
the modern-day political right, which he jabs vigorously in a few dis-
cordant lines near the end of his fine book. The lesson most readers will 
learn here is that teaching and practicing virtues is an excellent way to 
support a functional society. The people whose stories Edwards tells 
are an object lesson in their value.  
 Richard Edwards’s grandparents homesteaded in Mountrail County, 
North Dakota, shortly after the turn of the twentieth century. His par-
ents moved into Stanley, the county seat, where he was born and lived 
until age 12, when the family moved to Massachusetts. Although he left 
452      THE ANNALS OF IOWA 
Stanley in 1956, Edwards returned on occasion to visit and maintained 
ties with relatives in North Dakota. To research the book, he did a num-
ber of oral history interviews, checked the local newspapers and histories, 
and plumbed his memory and the memories of others for stories of his 
home town. Natives of a Dry Place is the result, a memoir that tells the 
story of town and county residents in an interesting way. 
 After explaining how the oil boom of recent years has pulled at the 
fabric of society and changed the landscape in troubling ways, Edwards 
lays out the design of his book: he will tell stories of local people who 
represented the virtues that are so vital to their society. Edwards under-
stands that Stanley’s people “cultivated a distinctive way of thinking 
about the world and how an upstanding person ought to behave, a set of 
values or character traits or habits of mind,” that is, virtues (24). People 
in other places had them, too, Edwards says, especially on the northern 
Great Plains. Virtues he highlights include resoluteness, steadfastness, 
devotion to community, pluck, commitment, optimism, a spirit of ad-
venture, and modesty. Each virtue has its own story, each one highly 
engaging and readable. Resoluteness tells of the death of Tom Scrivner 
in 1923 and the men who tried to rescue him without thought of them-
selves from a deep, dry well left behind on the prairie when the original 
landowner moved away. Steadfastness is the story of his father, “a nec-
essary man” (45)—rural mail carrier, town fix-it man, pillar of the com-
munity. Pluck tells the story of Edwards’s much older sisters, who 
moved to Portland, Oregon, during World War II, to be welders in the 
shipyards. Each chapter has depth and complexity. Edwards’s father 
was not a good family man at first but he grew into it. Tom Scrivner 
may have been pushed into that well by angry young Finns, who re-
sented his dalliance with a young Finnish girl, whom he married when 
she became pregnant. No one in this book is perfect. Many human foi-
bles are on display, but virtue shines through. 
 Natives of a Dry Place is well written, heartfelt, and thought provok-
ing. Those who grew up in small towns in the Midwest or on the Great 
Plains may find much to relate to. Those who want to understand the 
values that shaped rural society in the past and that remain present to-
day, even in the face of demographic change, decline, or displacement, 
will learn much from this book.  
 
 
Myths of the Rune Stone: Viking Martyrs and the Birthplace of America, by 
David M. Krueger. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015. 
x, 213 pp. Maps, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $130.99 hard-
cover; $36.99 paperback.  


Natives of a Dry Place: Stories of Dakota before the Oil Boom

Back Matter, The Annals of Iowa, v. 75 no. 4 Summer 2016

Review of: "Empire by Collaboration: Indians, Colonists, and Governments in Colonial Illinois Country," by Robert Michael Morrissey

Warren, Stephen

262      THE ANNALS OF IOWA 
influence British imperial policy in the aftermath of the French defeat 
in the 1760s. Although the book’s final chapter carries the story for-
ward into the nineteenth century and Odawa persistence in Michigan, 
the strength of the book rests in the earlier chapters. Masters of Empire 
is a strong contribution to an already rich field of study. 
 
 
Empire by Collaboration: Indians, Colonists, and Governments in Colonial 
Illinois Country, by Robert Michael Morrissey. Philadelphia: University 
of Pennsylvania Press, 2015. x, 326 pp. Illustrations, maps, tables, notes, 
index. $45.00 hardcover. 
Reviewer Stephen Warren is associate professor of history at the University of 
Iowa. He is the author of The Worlds the Shawnees Made: Migrations and Violence in 
Early America (2014). 
Collaboration, continuity, entrepreneurialism, and partnership: these 
are the watchwords that guide Robert Morrissey’s important new book, 
Empire by Collaboration. The Illinois country has been studied by some 
of the most important historians of early America working today, 
including Richard White, Susan Sleeper-Smith, Tracy Leavelle, Brett 
Rushforth, and Kathleen DuVal. Morrissey showcases his command of 
this abundant historiography while, at the same time, offering the most 
comprehensive analysis of the Illinois country in the eighteenth century 
to date.  
 At least initially, Morrissey understands the Illinois country through 
the lens of the longue durée. That perspective on the past enables Mor-
rissey to describe the Illinois Confederacy as continuously adaptive. 
Previous histories ascribe declension and decline to the indigenous 
peoples of the Illinois River valley. On the eve of contact, the Illinois 
moved westward onto the Prairie Peninsula, where they became full 
participants in a new bison economy. The protein-rich bounty enabled 
them to concentrate their settlements into the thousands. In the last 
decades of the seventeenth century, Grand Village of the Kaskaskia be-
came a large multiethnic village, and the Illinois became a formidable 
military power.  
 Illinois women lost power as their people’s economy shifted to 
long-distance expeditions for bison and slaves. The shift from seasonal 
migrations and intensive agriculture to slaving and hunting concen-
trated power in the hands of Illinois men, who began to see polygamy 
and slavery as the means to process the vast amounts of bison they 
killed throughout the year. The Illinois soon became merchants and 
middle men in a vast trading system based on collaborative partner-
ships rather than imperial directives.  
Book Reviews and Notices      263 
 The bulk of Empire by Collaboration follows from 1698, when the 
Illinois abandoned the Grand Village of the Kaskaskia and migrated 
southward to the American Bottom region along the confluence of the 
Illinois and Mississippi Rivers. That new village, Kaskaskia, was as 
coalescent and inclusive as Grand Village. Its residents sent slaves, 
wheat, and furs to the new French colony in Louisiana and beyond, 
into the French Atlantic. At Kaskaskia, however, Frenchmen played an 
even more important role in the colony than they had at Grand Village.  
 Morrissey persuasively blends qualitative evidence and digital his-
tory methods in this segment of the book. For example, he uses the doc-
umentary record of the marriage between Marie Rouensa and Michel 
Accault along with social network analysis to illustrate the extent and 
depth of this interconnected community. This is a subtle argument in 
which the possibility for what Richard White once described as “cre-
ative misunderstandings” becomes less and less likely as godparent-
hood, intermarriage, and trade fully integrate Native and non-Native 
Kaskaskians into a shared, vernacular culture. As Morrissey writes, 
“The texture of contact in Illinois country was no dense weave.” Rather, 
“a number of distinct patches” were held together by “certain threads” 
(130). The French empire became particularly threadbare in the Illinois 
country, and the Creole community that lived there pragmatically re-
sisted metropolitan mandates.  
 Between 1754 and 1760, French officials reconstructed Fort des 
Chartres in an attempt to showcase military power in a place where 
local control was customary. Not surprisingly, the fort’s grandeur did 
not intimidate either the French or their Native allies. From 1746, 
when French authorities banned further imports of slaves to Illinois, to 
earlier disastrous campaigns against the Chickasaws in the 1730s, local 
residents became familiar with a regime that was often out of step 
with their own collaborative impulses.  
 In Morrissey’s telling, both French colonizers and their Illinois 
allies consciously chose to forge a colony built on compromises be-
tween the center and the periphery of empire. Successive generations 
of French administrators tried to engineer Frenchification in Illinois. 
Nevertheless, interracial marriages, Catholic sacraments, and a Creole 
economy remained. The slave trade continued after both French farm-
ers and Illinois warriors refused to end the practice. Jesuit priests con-
tinued to baptize the Illinois, comfortable with the uniquely syncretic 
religious beliefs developing in Illinois villages such as Kaskaskia and 
Cahokia. Such vernacular innovations became routine elements of the 
Illinois country.  
264      THE ANNALS OF IOWA 
 Some questions remain regarding the extent of both French and 
Illinois collaboration. Some scholars might disagree with Morrissey’s 
characterization of Jesuit acceptance of Illinois syncretism. Archaeolo-
gists might quibble with Morrissey’s grouping of the Danner Phase 
within the Fort Ancient cultural system. Nevertheless, few will doubt 
Morrissey’s meticulous research or his ability to craft a new argument 
amid such a crowded historical field.  
 
 
Great Lakes Creoles: A French-Indian Community on the Northern Border-
lands, Prairie Du Chien, 1750–1860, by Lucy Eldersveld Murphy. Studies 
in North American Indian History. New York: Cambridge University 
Press, 2014. xvi, 313 pp. Maps, tables, graphs, illustrations, notes, index. 
$34.99 paperback. 
Reviewer Robert Michael Morrissey is assistant professor of history at the 
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of Empire by Col-
laboration: Indians, Colonists, and Governments in Colonial Illinois Country (2015). 
Founded as a fur trade center on the edge of the French and British 
empires, Prairie du Chien was one of the many multicultural commu-
nities that resulted from the meeting of French traders and Native 
peoples of the western Great Lakes in the eighteenth century. In this 
remarkable book, Lucy Eldersveld Murphy follows this community 
through its nineteenth-century transformations in the face of American 
settler colonialism. Murphy highlights the agency of the local Creole 
population as it negotiated new political subjectivity, cultural trans-
formations, and new social practices under the American government. 
The central premise of the book is that while Creole habitants were 
challenged in this process, many of them preserved land, autonomy, 
and a distinctive culture, resisting the fate of other incorporated popu-
lations—such as the Canadian Métis and Mestizos of the American 
Southwest—who were marginalized as racialized outsiders in the pro-
cess of settler colonialism.  
 In key ways, this book covers the same ground as another recent 
book, Bethel Saler’s prize-winning The Settlers’ Empire (2015), exploring 
the ways newly subject populations interacted with and responded to 
the American state-building project in present-day Wisconsin. What 
distinguishes Murphy’s book is its approach; as a community study, 
Great Lakes Creoles focuses on the ground and from the habitants’ own 
perspective. That allows Murphy not only to view large-scale histori-
cal transformations from a single place, but also to follow the experi-
ences of several well-documented key families. Beautifully written, the 
book is both enlightening and entertaining, marrying settler colonialist 


Empire by Collaboration: Indians, Colonists, and Governments in Colonial Illinois Country

Review of: "Great Lakes Creoles: A French-Indian Community on the Northern Borderlands, Prairie Du Chien, 1750–1860," by Lucy Eldersveld Murphy

Morrissey, Robert Michael

264      THE ANNALS OF IOWA 
 Some questions remain regarding the extent of both French and 
Illinois collaboration. Some scholars might disagree with Morrissey’s 
characterization of Jesuit acceptance of Illinois syncretism. Archaeolo-
gists might quibble with Morrissey’s grouping of the Danner Phase 
within the Fort Ancient cultural system. Nevertheless, few will doubt 
Morrissey’s meticulous research or his ability to craft a new argument 
amid such a crowded historical field.  
 
 
Great Lakes Creoles: A French-Indian Community on the Northern Border-
lands, Prairie Du Chien, 1750–1860, by Lucy Eldersveld Murphy. Studies 
in North American Indian History. New York: Cambridge University 
Press, 2014. xvi, 313 pp. Maps, tables, graphs, illustrations, notes, index. 
$34.99 paperback. 
Reviewer Robert Michael Morrissey is assistant professor of history at the 
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of Empire by Col-
laboration: Indians, Colonists, and Governments in Colonial Illinois Country (2015). 
Founded as a fur trade center on the edge of the French and British 
empires, Prairie du Chien was one of the many multicultural commu-
nities that resulted from the meeting of French traders and Native 
peoples of the western Great Lakes in the eighteenth century. In this 
remarkable book, Lucy Eldersveld Murphy follows this community 
through its nineteenth-century transformations in the face of American 
settler colonialism. Murphy highlights the agency of the local Creole 
population as it negotiated new political subjectivity, cultural trans-
formations, and new social practices under the American government. 
The central premise of the book is that while Creole habitants were 
challenged in this process, many of them preserved land, autonomy, 
and a distinctive culture, resisting the fate of other incorporated popu-
lations—such as the Canadian Métis and Mestizos of the American 
Southwest—who were marginalized as racialized outsiders in the pro-
cess of settler colonialism.  
 In key ways, this book covers the same ground as another recent 
book, Bethel Saler’s prize-winning The Settlers’ Empire (2015), exploring 
the ways newly subject populations interacted with and responded to 
the American state-building project in present-day Wisconsin. What 
distinguishes Murphy’s book is its approach; as a community study, 
Great Lakes Creoles focuses on the ground and from the habitants’ own 
perspective. That allows Murphy not only to view large-scale histori-
cal transformations from a single place, but also to follow the experi-
ences of several well-documented key families. Beautifully written, the 
book is both enlightening and entertaining, marrying settler colonialist 
Book Reviews and Notices      265 
theory to a compelling narrative. The result is not only required read-
ing for scholars of early America and the West, but also seems a great 
candidate for college classroom use.  
 The book is organized both chronologically and thematically. Be-
ginning with an account of the roots of the Creole community in Prairie 
du Chien, Murphy shows how a syncretic Creole culture took root on 
the Mississippi River as French traders and Indian women established 
families in the 1750s. Largely autonomous, many of the town’s resi-
dents were nominally loyal to Britain during the American Revolution 
and faced the prospect of American state building with uncertainty. 
That said, a special “middle ground” dynamic shaped the early rela-
tions between the Creoles and their colonial conquerors when territo-
rial officials began to seriously contemplate incorporating the region 
into the American polity at the end of the War of 1812. As Murphy 
explains, the American newcomers needed the cooperation of the Cre-
oles in order to achieve the domination of the much larger indigenous 
population of the region as well as to make their democratic institu-
tions work. As a result of this dynamic, the Americans had to “imag-
ine the Creoles as white people,” as one observer put it, and treat them 
as insiders, not racialized outsiders. From this basic power dynamic 
stemmed opportunities for the Creoles. Murphy’s book follows the 
Creoles as they confronted colonialism in many dimensions, from 
government, to law, to economy, to social life. 
 For instance, although of course the Creoles were subject to an 
invading government, Murphy emphasizes how they shaped their new 
political lives, voting, petitioning, and protesting. She explores their 
encounter with the new legal system, emphasizing their agency as they 
interacted with the jury system often to defend community priorities. 
In the most interesting chapter, Murphy explores how Creoles faced a 
new social order, especially in the arenas of family and gender. Focus-
ing on the prominent “public mothers” of the Creole community, 
Murphy shows how they resisted new practices and preserved female 
ideals of community even as they adapted to new laws about mar-
riage and property. In another richly researched chapter, Murphy ex-
plores the economic lives of the Creoles, who preserved autonomy 
and distinctive foodways under the new regime. In all of these chap-
ters, Murphy shows how the increasing Anglo population limited 
Creole options but never resulted in the racialization of Creoles or 
their marginalization as outsiders.  
 The story of the Creoles’ negotiations with American state build-
ing is full of fascinating episodes and people, and Murphy argues her 
thesis clearly and effectively. At times Murphy’s strong effort to con-
266      THE ANNALS OF IOWA 
textualize nearly all habitants’ actions as a reflection of their resistance 
to settler colonialism or their distinctive Creole values overwhelms 
other subtler ways to understand the motives of actors in this story. In 
a similar vein, some may find certain depictions of the communitarian 
Creole world romanticized, lacking in complexity. Of course this is a 
quibble about emphasis, not about substance. Great Lakes Creoles is a 
wonderful book, the best study I have read about a community facing 
settler colonialism in the nineteenth-century Midwest. 
 
 
Illinois in the War of 1812, by Gillum Ferguson. Urbana: University of 
Illinois Press, 2012. xvi, 349 pp. Maps, illustrations, notes, bibliog-
raphy, index. $34.95 hardcover, $24.95 paperback. 
Reviewer Patrick J. Jung is a professor of history and anthropology at the 
Milwaukee School of Engineering. He is working on a book on the history of 
the War of 1812 in the upper Mississippi River valley, and his article on the 
military history of Fort Madison appears in this issue of the Annals of Iowa. 
The recent bicentennial of the War of 1812 resulted in a spate of books, 
articles, and historical conferences dedicated to reexamining the legacy 
of that often forgotten conflict. The region including the western Great 
Lakes and the upper Mississippi River valley in particular remains 
probably the most overlooked theater of the war, which makes Gillum 
Ferguson’s book a welcome addition to the growing body of scholarly 
literature. Nevertheless, this book is not without its defects, particularly 
its approach to the Indian side of the conflict. 
 Ferguson begins by examining Illinois Territory on the eve of the 
war and paints an excellent portrait of the various Anglo-American, 
French Canadian, and Indian communities in the territory. The early 
losses of Mackinac Island and Detroit to the British-Indian alliance 
made the region of southern Illinois, where the majority of the Anglo-
Americans and French Canadians resided, vulnerable during the first 
year of the conflict. Even more significant was the assault by the Pot-
awatomies against the garrison of Fort Dearborn as it attempted to 
make its way to Fort Wayne in August 1812. Ferguson handles this 
oft-told tale with great clarity and provides copious citations to the 
various primary sources, which present a variety of irreconcilable fac-
tual differences that must be considered. Equally strong are his as-
sessments of the many secondary works that describe the battle. In-
deed, Ferguson’s book provides an outstanding bibliography of the 
Fort Dearborn saga that will be of great value to future scholars who 
research this topic. 


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

Review of: "American Capitals: A Historical Geography," by Christian Montès

Mahoney, Timothy R.

Book Reviews and Notices      83 
came a critical issue, and the fair finally allowed the artists themselves 
to vote on who would critique their work.  
 In 1932 Phil Stong’s novel State Fair became a bestseller. It traced 
the experiences of the Frake family—father, mother, son, and daughter 
—as they spent a week at the Iowa State Fair. Ignoring the rural des-
peration of the Great Depression, the novel painted a bucolic vision of 
farm life even as the two grown children entered into romantic liaisons 
on the fairgrounds and in downtown Des Moines. The movie, starring 
Will Rogers and Janet Gaynor as parents, became a box office hit that, 
according to Rasmussen, “rescued Fox studio from bankruptcy.” 
Rasmussen omits mention of the 1962 State Fair remake starring Pat 
Boone and Ann-Margaret that moved the whole episode to Texas. 
 A viewpoint of the fair visitors themselves is one the book often 
fails to explore. The minutes of fair board meetings are available; first-
hand accounts of the exhibits, food stands, or entertainments are not. 
What would the visitor to the 1880 fair see? What was behind the tent 
flaps the barkers were so vigorously extolling? Some of the most en-
gaging sections of Carnival are its descriptions of the grandstand shows 
and 4-H demonstrations. For those, Rasmussen gives us front-row seats. 
Nevertheless, anyone who reads Carnival in the Countryside will never 
walk down the main concourse with the Varied Industries Building to 
the right and the raucous midway to the left and not begin to wonder 
again how it all came to be. Ours is indeed a great state fair. Don’t 
miss it; don’t even be late. 
American Capitals: A Historical Geography, by Christian Montès. University 
of Chicago Geography Research Paper Number 247. Chicago: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 2014. 394 pp. Map, tables, charts, illustrations, 
appendixes, notes, bibliography, index. $65.00 hardcover. 
Reviewer Timothy R. Mahoney is professor of history at the University of 
Nebraska–Lincoln. He is the author of Provincial Lives: Middle-Class Experience 
in the Antebellum Middle West (1999); River Towns in the Great West: The Struc-
ture of Provincial Urbanization in the American Midwest, 1820–1870 (1990); and 
the forthcoming From Hometown to Battlefield in the Civil War Era: Middle Class 
Life in Midwest America. 
In this intriguing and demanding book, Christian Montès relentlessly 
employs social-scientific analysis and model building to try to under-
stand the character of American state capitals. Among Americans cities, 
state capitals are some of the most familiar and well known but hard 
to define and understand. The book begins with an informed com-
mentary on the usual explanations. The author questions the tradi-
tional explanation that the location and scale of state capitals reflect 
84      THE ANNALS OF IOWA 
the desire to decentralize power in American democracy and separate 
political power from economic power. Nor is he satisfied with noting 
that their character is shaped mostly by their symbolic power. As 
“temples of democracy” that symbolically present the state “ritual of 
governance,” and thus American federalism, state capitol buildings 
form the center of a public and monumental space that anchors state 
history, projects its future, and fosters state identity. Awareness of this 
symbolic role has affected their naming patterns, the architecture and 
physical locations of most capitol buildings—mostly classical-style 
buildings on hills or high ground—various efforts at city planning and 
beautification, and relations between state and municipal governments. 
As “places of condensation” where “individual and collective experi-
ences take place” (57), they connect citizens to both state and American 
identity. Yet after a general overview of the unstable, often corrupt, and 
speculative history that involved the regular moving of state capitals, 
Montès notes that “selecting a capital was part of building a state and 
reflected . . . multiple factors at work” (82); any “simple model seems 
therefore out of reach” (83). 
 Undaunted, he aggressively launches an impressive effort—rooted 
in the methods of historical geography—to construct a “global ex-
planatory model” for state capitals. He scientifically builds a database 
drawn from extensive research, most of it from secondary sources, 
from all 50 state capitals in the United States. The analysis for an “ini-
tial explanatory model” is supported by four impressive pages of charts 
that lay out the data, followed by three pages of pie charts that portray 
those data plotted according to eight factors—anti–large city, econ-
omy, religion, defense, entry point, centrality, politics, and provisional 
—accompanied by extensive short examples from the histories of vari-
ous state capitals. 
 The evidence indicates that although state capitals began as entry 
point cities in the East, as more capitals were established to the west 
their histories were shaped more by economic forces, boosterism, and 
urban competition, though, as the urban system became more fixed by 
the late nineteenth century, relocation efforts declined and state capitals 
became more permanent. Montès argues that the scientific model sug-
gests that politics, the spoils system, urban boosterism, and capitalist 
speculation prevailed, especially in the West. Morality and purity, re-
publican ideals, or the “small-town ideal” (105) played much less of a 
role. Hence, the history and development of state capitals reflect a 
complex balance of powers and factors that results in a new model 
with “centrality, intertwined with compromise” at its “heart” sur-
rounded by a variety of political and economic forces (157)—a state-
Book Reviews and Notices      85 
ment backed up by a flow chart. Noting that “case studies illustrate 
and modulate the model by applying it to specific times and places” 
(130), the author then takes readers on a wild ride through stories of 
border manipulations, “Neanderthal politics” (185), and the varying 
influences of the locational choices of railroads and industry that 
shaped their histories. The general result was a “developmental delay” 
(203) that relegated most state capitals to middling places in the urban 
hierarchy. They became quiet administrative towns and “forgotten cit-
ies” (205) and acquired a negative image in the mid–twentieth century.  
 Since the 1950s, revitalized and expanding state governments with 
increasing state employment, new constitutions, political systems that 
limited corruption, and more access to federal grants helped dispel 
that image. Service businesses and high-tech industries followed, giv-
ing the cities a more professional, white-collar look. Even so, tourism 
remains underdeveloped, and most state capitals today remain in the 
middle of the urban hierarchy. Montès groups them into three types: 
modern state capitals, “seemingly unchanged capitals” (247) (including 
Des Moines), and second-rank capitals. After all this model building, 
the author again “validates” the model with three brief, fairly general, 
case studies of Columbus, Ohio; Des Moines, Iowa; and Frankfort, 
Kentucky. The model shows that although each city is unique, their 
histories indicate that each was integrated into and thus compelled to 
navigate the shifting patterns of national political, economic, and so-
cial development. A quick review of the efforts of former state capitals 
to find a niche in heritage and “small-town” tourism or another source 
of economic growth near a metropolis, seems to confirm this view. 
Iowa City, for example, became the home of the state university and in 
the 1970s restored its old state capitol as a historic site. And yet, in 
spite of the importance of economics and politics in explaining state 
capitals, the fact that state capitals maintain such a special place in 
American life suggests to the author that the “cultural approach” still 
matters. Careful and diligent readers will come away with a new and 
enhanced understanding of state capitals.   
Inspiration and Innovation: Religion in the American West, by Todd M. Ker-
stetter. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2015. xi, 275 pp. Map, illustra-
tions, suggested reading lists, index. $81.95 hardcover, $26.95 paperback. 
Reviewer Douglas Firth Anderson is professor emeritus of history at North-
western College (Iowa) and coauthor of Orange City (2014). 
Religion and Iowa have been intertwined since before Iowa became a 
state. Being “west” was also a part of Iowa’s identity for a while, al-


American Capitals: A Historical Geography

Review of: "The Crops Look Good: News from a Midwestern Family Farm," by Sara DeLuca

Riney-Kehrberg, Pamela

Book Reviews and Notices      95 
discussion of the local people who make movements happen. Two of 
the MOWM’s particularly powerful driving forces were their belief in 
the psychological importance of an all-black movement and the cen-
trality of respectability. To prove racists wrong, MOWM insisted on 
African Americans conducting themselves with dignity and refinement. 
The St. Louis MOWM also emphasized collaboration across class lines 
and affiliations. Lucander especially excels at exploring the network 
created by reformers who labored against racism during World War II. 
If judged by its eight-point program, MOWM cannot be judged success-
ful. But Lucander sees it as a success: “MOWM served as a conduit, 
introducing and refining techniques that would ultimately overthrow 
de jure racial segregation in the United States within the next two dec-
ades” (176). The organization also fostered leadership skills in its mem-
bers, and some of these “individuals would use their experiences of 
fighting racism in World War II to jump-start a lifetime of activism” 
(192). 
The Crops Look Good: News from a Midwestern Family Farm, by Sara 
DeLuca. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2015. ix, 254 pp. 
Map, illustrations, family tree, source notes, index. $17.95 paperback. 
Reviewer Pamela Riney-Kehrberg is professor of history at Iowa State Univer-
sity. She is the author of The Nature of Childhood: An Environmental History of 
Growing Up in America since 1865 (2014) and Childhood on the Farm: Work, Play, 
and Coming of Age in the Midwest (2005). 
Poet and writer Sara DeLuca grew up in Polk County, Wisconsin. The 
Crops Look Good: News from a Midwestern Family Farm is the story of her 
parents and grandparents, told through family letters, local news-
papers, and family lore, including oral histories. The family was large. 
As the parents’ nine children left home and made their way to farms, 
jobs, and marriages, they wrote to their mother about their new expe-
riences, and she, in turn, wrote to them about life at home on the farm. 
Woven through all of this are bits and pieces of local and national news. 
There’s a lot going on in this story, with cows being milked, school 
being taught, and babies being born. It’s a particular family’s story, 
but one that will seem familiar to those with roots in the nation’s rural 
midsection. 
 There is much that this book does right. It is well written and en-
gaging and successfully takes readers to an earlier era of family farm-
ing in the upper Midwest. One problem with the writing, however, is 
that the author has written in the present tense, which is a bit of a jolt 
in a family history. Once the reader adjusts to that, however, it be-
96      THE ANNALS OF IOWA 
comes a much better read. The interweaving of local and national 
news with family stories helps readers understand the interplay be-
tween these larger and smaller worlds, and how lives went on, in spite 
of the massive changes occurring during those years. 
 Unfortunately, the reader (or at least this reader) comes away 
wanting unresolved issues resolved and wondering about how it all 
turned out. Probably because of the availability of family documents, 
it becomes mostly the story of DeLuca’s mother, Helen, and less the 
story of the larger family. In particular, I wanted to know in greater 
detail how things turned out for Adele. Did she ever divorce her prob-
lematic husband? What about her son, with all of his many physical 
challenges? What happened to him? Details are thin on the changes 
ahead for the rest of the family as well. DeLuca comments in the epi-
logue that her generation no longer lives on the farm, but how, when, 
and why did that transition occur?  
 These are not the only mysteries in the book, and some are quite 
sensitive. One presented itself with Adele’s letter of January 15, 1935. 
What she described would seem to be her seeking out and having an 
abortion in response to a pregnancy coming too soon after the birth of 
her disabled son. Is that, in fact, what she was describing? More dis-
cussion (any discussion) would help to shed light on a very important 
Great Depression story about the problems of obtaining effective con-
traception and the troubles families faced when trying to deal with a 
child’s disabilities. This is a place where readers should not be left 
wondering what happened. The same might be said of the family’s 
struggles with mental illness, with one son committing suicide and a 
second suffering to an extent requiring hospitalization at least once. 
Was Donny able to deal successfully with his illness and live a reason-
ably happy life in spite of the limits of effective treatment at mid-
century? This good book would be made better with just a little more 
attention to these and the other issues mentioned above.  
 
 
Seventh Generation Earth Ethics: Native Voices of Wisconsin, by Patty Loew. 
Madison: Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2014. ix, 230 pp. Illustra-
tions, notes, index. $22.95 hardcover. 
Reviewer Patrick Nunnally is coordinator of the River Life Program, part of 
the Institute for Advanced Study at the University of Minnesota. His Ph.D. 
dissertation (University of Iowa, 1990) was “Visions of Sustainable Place: 
Voice, Land, and Culture in Rural America.” 
This collection of twelve interviews with Native American leaders from 
Wisconsin delivers exactly what the title promises, distinctive voices 


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Seventh Generation Earth Ethics: Native Voices of Wisconsin

Cold War in a Cold Land: Fighting Communism on the Northern Plains

Natives of a Dry Place: Stories of Dakota before the Oil Boom

Back Matter, The Annals of Iowa, v. 75 no. 4 Summer 2016

Empire by Collaboration: Indians, Colonists, and Governments in Colonial Illinois Country

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

American Capitals: A Historical Geography

The Crops Look Good: News from a Midwestern Family Farm

From Sob Sister to Society Editor: The Storied Career of Dorothy Ashby Pownall

Index to v.75 and Back Matter, The Annals of Iowa, v. 75 no.4 Fall 2016

7,461

11,101