Ohio History Journal

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Book Reviews

Book Reviews

 

 

Between Indian and White Worlds:  The Cultural Broker. Edited by Margaret

Connell Szasz. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994. xii + 386p.; il-

lustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, index. $45.00.)

 

Frontier history has been redefined within the last fifteen years. Between Indian

and White Worlds: The Cultural Broker is a reflection both of emerging interests

and shifting perspectives within the field. In 1893, Frederick Jackson Turner de-

scribed the American frontier as the westward moving line at which Europeans en-

countered the continent's vast, untamed wilderness. Turner's frontier thesis was

widely accepted and, although modified somewhat after the historian's death in

1932, it remained the standard interpretation until only recently.

In 1981 frontier historians Howard Lamar and Leonard Thompson proposed that

instead of a line of encounter, the frontier was in reality a zone of interaction, a

cultural middle ground where peoples came together for a variety of economic,

diplomatic, military and personal activities. Other historians such as Francis

Jennings and Colin Calloway combined Lamar and Thompson's understanding

with an appreciation of the multicultural composition of the frontier and, in

Jennings case, the emergence of a New Left-inspired Native American history.

Most recently, Michael McConnell and Richard White have provided focused ac-

counts of the Ohio frontier showing it to be a region of widespread, reciprocal cul-

tural exchange, cultural interdependence, and mutual, pragmatic cultural adapta-

tion.

The role of cultural "brokers" or "intermediaries," persons accepted by both

European and native societies, was critical to this process of cultural exchange.

Always bilingual and usually related by birth or marriage to both Indians and

whites, cultural brokers were the specialized medium that facilitated contact be-

tween both groups throughout the frontier period. Simon Girty, the infamous

Tory renegade, was perhaps Ohio's most well-known cultural broker. Girty was

not alone, however, and his role was shared by many others including Girty's

British Indian Department colleagues Matthew Elliott and Alexander McKee,

William Wells, a white youth captured by the Indians who fought against St. Clair

in November 1791 and with Anthony Wayne in 1794, John Slover, another re-

turned captive who acted as guide and interpreter for William Crawford and later

narrated Henry Brackinridge's classic account of the American commander's death

at the hands of his Indian captors, and Abraham Kuhn, an Indian trader and

Loyalist who took his wife from among the Wyandots living at Upper Sandusky

and became known as "Chief Coon," a respected political advisor to the tribe.

The cultural broker's place within frontier society is the subject of this well-

chosen and informative collection of essays edited by Margaret Connell Szasz,

professor of American Indian history at the University of New Mexico. "Cultural

borders emerge wherever cultures encounter each other," writes Szasz. "For cul-

tural brokers, these borders become pathways that link peoples rather than barri-

ers that separate them." Because of their importance, cultural intermediaries have

been part of the frontier experience for nearly five centuries. "Often, they walked

through a network of interconnections where they alone brought some understand-

ing among disparate peoples" (pp. 1, 6).