Masters of Empire: Great Lakes Indians and the Making of America

Michael McDonnell has composed a thorough and comprehensive study of the critical historical importance of the Straits and the Odawa Nation. The reader follows the timeline of early European contact and the implications of their dependence on the powerful Michillimackinac Odawa people. Each in turn, both the French and British were manipulated into conforming with their culture of trade and warfare. This book is an excellent companion to Charles Cleland's book, Rites of Conquest.

Dr. Michael McDonnell's Masters of Empire (Great Lakes Indians and the Making of America) is a must read by all American history enthusiasts, whether in academia, or not!His explanation of the importance of the Upper Great Lakes Woodland Indian Canoe Culture in the development of the North American continent is stunning. It is an extremely important fact unexplored by earlier historians. Michilimackinac, and Mackinac Island, at one time were the centers of the North American continent's commerce. Both before the arrival of Europeans, and soon after their arrival.Dr. Charles Cleland in his book, Rites of Conquest, discusses this same area's center for commerce involving "chert" (for stone tools) as beginning 8,000 years prior to the life of Jesus Christ. It was later replaced by the fur trade, and after that commercial fishing in the 17th-18th and 19th centuries. All of which, was under the control of local Woodland Indian Canoe Culture-the Anishinaabe!

The author is a professor in Australia, so it is hard to understand why he wrote this book in the first place. His repeated use of the French term "pays d'en haut" for the Great Lakes region, and his frequent use of the word "Odawa" instead of the commonly used "Ottawa," seem like an affectation, as if he were trying to be different for its own sake. However, the book has a good deal of information and many sources, well documented.

This book rocked my summer. This is based on a lot of scholarly research but the prose is very accessible, and the heavy emphasis on narrative makes it move along very briskly. McDonnell's argument is entirely convincing, and as a result I have a whole new way of thinking about the American Revolution. It was also incredibly interesting to read about a group of Native Americans (the Odawa) who usually aren't part of the master narrative of Native American history (usually more the Iroquois, the Sioux, etc.) and who in fact had a much different experience of the 17th and 18th centuries than did many other tribes because the whites actually depended on them and they had leverage -- at least until after the British defeat in the Revolutionary War. This book is a real eye-opener. It is revisionist history in the very best sense of the term.

This book was... okay? I read it over a very spread out amount of time, which is never good for reading books, but also in part speaks to how this book just didn't grab me. I was convinced by the end that McDonnell was right to identify how the Odawa had been left out of narratives, and I generally believed the power they held over the region. I just got caught up in the details and it made it hard to follow things that were happening. That might be part of the point, but it made for a really difficult read, and the months it took me to read it made it even more difficult. Overall, not a terrible read, and interesting to consider, but not my favorite thing.

This is a very important book for those wishing to understand the roles and influences of Great Lakes Native American tribes in U.S. and world history. The book is thoroughly researched, synthetic, beautifully written, and utterly persuasive in arguing that Native Americans were anything but pawns in relations between the British and French in the Colonial Era, and that the relationships that they developed played huge roles in the Seven Year War, the Revolutionary War, and subsequent events. Highly recommended.

Intricate, detailed, and very insightful review of the history of European interaction with the Ottawa and other Indian tribes operating in and around the central Great Lakes. By drawing in an Indian perspective, the author does an outstanding job of transforming a relatively monochrome picture of events and their meaning from a European point of view into a technicolor one that considers what was taking place on the Indian side, how events looked there, and what were the internal dynamics among the Indian tribes involved that influenced events in ways Europeans at the time (and since) understood little. Excellent book.

A wonderful trip into the real world of the Native Americans and their life and politics in the early days of the fight for control of the land in late 1700s. Well researched and well written. Most interesting too was how powerful countries attempted to negotiate with people of a culture they knew nothing about, felt superior to, and never really understood. Great read.

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