The Worlds the Shawnees Made

Migration and Violence in Early America

By: Stephen Warren

Narrated by: Tom Weiner

Length: 10 hrs and 19 mins

Publisher's summary

In 1779, Shawnees from Chillicothe, a community in the Ohio country, told the British, "We have always been the frontier." Their statement challenges an oft-held belief that American Indians derive their unique identities from longstanding ties to native lands. By tracking Shawnee people and migrations from 1400 to 1754, Stephen Warren illustrates how Shawnees made a life for themselves at the crossroads of empires and competing tribes, embracing mobility and often moving willingly toward violent borderlands. By the middle of the eighteenth century, the Shawnees ranged over the eastern half of North America and used their knowledge to foster notions of pan-Indian identity that shaped relations between Native Americans and settlers in the revolutionary era and beyond.

Warren's deft analysis makes clear that Shawnees were not anomalous among native peoples east of the Mississippi. Through migration, they and their neighbors adapted to disease, warfare, and dislocation by interacting with colonizers as slavers, mercenaries, guides, and traders. These adaptations enabled them to preserve their cultural identities and resist coalescence without forsaking their linguistic and religious traditions.

Download the accompanying reference guide.

©2014 Stephen Warren (P)2014 AudioGO

Shawnee history deserves a better telling.

Dry and too-often repetitive. I enjoyed learning more about the Shawnee, but this text desperately needed an engaged editor.

Excellent Unique Perspective

All too often, books about the Shawnee place white colonizers at the center of the story, using the well-trod events of Euroamerican history to describe native people on the periphery. This book is truly focused on the Shawnee story and is exceptional in several respects: 1. The detailed treatment of research connecting the Fort Ancient to the Shawnee 2. Focus exclusively on events pre-dating the Northwest Indian War and 3. Inclusion of material from Shawnee people today. Only Sami Lakomaki’s book on the subject is comparable (that I’ve found so far) - and this contains a significant amount of information I have not found elsewhere. I highly recommend.

Shawnee history is complex

I very much enjoyed the material and narration. Very interesting information as I enjoy the history of the Old Northwest and the people. thank you for a good read....or should I say listen!

An intriguing ethnographic study

An intriguing ethnographic study of one of the more versatile and transient Native American Tribes.

Warren's 2013 "The Worlds the Shawnees Made" is an interesting, if somewhat dry for the novice, approach to the Shawnee peoples covering about 350 years. While many native tribes were tied to specific geographic areas, Warren's approach is to present the Shawnees not as a geographically settled people but very much as a migratory/transient people by covering three major migratory periods across nearly the entire width and breadth of Eastern North America. Warren's narrative finds the Shawnees, in various places and at various times, acting as allies with some tribes, warring with others, on friendly relations with some colonists/Europeans, and antagonistic towards others.

To the extent there's a "problem" with this history, it's that the reader doesn't get much of a sense of the "Shawnee" as a tribe or people. This is in large part because they were *SO* geographically dispersed and made up of so many smaller tribal populations (and they themselves frequently intermingled/married of other tribes). In much the same way that it's difficult to pin the Shawnee down to a geographic location, that fact also makes it difficult to pin them down as a distinct and ethno-cultural entity. While I'm sure this largely a product of my unfamiliarity with the subject matter but Warren's writing (while adequate), rarely moves beyond the scholarly -- somewhat limiting the appeal of this otherwise useful history to a general reader.

Great information well presented

The well researched subject is presented im a good way. The reading of the audio book is very good. The facts on the Shawnee are very well mingled with stories on this and other tribes that crossed their path both on friendship and war. Both the pre colonial and colonial periods are covered in detail, with loads of references to finds and period sources. The period 1800 could have been longer but is sufficient. A great book!

Enjoyable and informative. Ten stars

The author details the history very comprehensively, including even a description of similarities with an Ohio Valley arcaeological complex, and the connection to modern issues with the handling of native american remains.

I was especially interested in his cultural descriptions of the Shawnee concept of the soul as it differs with European ideas about the same. He emphesizes how this cultural difference effects the outlooks on life and death that the Shawnee have even into modern times.

The work the author has done in this book helpfully outlines the Shawnee's specific role in much of american history as helpful mediators and diplomats, and finishes the manuscript with a perspective on the difficulty that arises from literary advantage that pits the Shawnee oral history against the English and their Haudenosaunee allies dependance on written records.

Yawn

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Any additional comments?

Maybe a fine textbook or perhaps riveting to an ethnographically inclined effete.

Very interesting & informative

I learned a lot. It would help to know more geography or have a map to follow the migration of native Americans. Although the title says Shawnee it covers many different tribes from the areas east of the Mississippi.