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Dissertation Information for John Patrick Bowes

NAME:
- John Patrick Bowes

DEGREE:
- Ph.D.

DISCIPLINE:
- History

SCHOOL:
- University of California, Los Angeles (USA) (2003)

ADVISORS:
- Melissa L. Meyer

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
- Stephen Anthony Aron
- Russell Thornton

MPACT Status: Fully Complete

Title: Opportunity and adversity: Indians and American expansion in the nineteenth century trans-Mississippi West

Abstract: In their migrations and relocations before and after the 1830 Indian Removal Act. Delawares. Shawnees, Kickapoos, Wyandots, Potawatomis, Sauks, and Mesquakies worked within familiar networks of commerce and kinship and relied more on individual or group initiative than on federal authorities. An unfamiliar environment awaited those that endured the journey, and as a result most Indian communities made significant adjustments to survive. Some of these adaptations, such as altered subsistence patterns, directly responded to their new surroundings. Others reflected ongoing processes--incessant treaty negotiations led to commodification of the land, while the growing influence of mixed-descent individuals coincided with increased conversions to Christianity and revisions of political structures, deepening communal divisions. Then in 1854 the Kansas-Nebraska Act triggered considerable and devastating changes for the Indian residents of eastern Kansas. Factions within communities hindered resistance to and in some cases facilitated attempts to take Indian lands even as divisions within the federal government effectively eliminated the boundaries of Indian reserves. With most of eastern Kansas in the hands of settlers, speculators, and railroads by the late 1860s, the government encouraged removal to the Indian Territory. Although most Indians headed south, bands of Mesquakies, Potawatomis and Sauks moved to Iowa and Wisconsin, and their decisions demonstrated a continued ability and willingness to function outside of the government's purview.

This examination of Indian relocation and settlement in the nineteenth century trans-Mississippi West is rooted in a variety of sources, including federal archives, missionary records, fur trade papers, treaty negotiations, Indian accounts, and personal manuscripts. It addresses the tangled web of relationships that illustrate the Indians' independence from and connection to the people and institutions that crossed the Mississippi at the same time. Relocation to and settlement in the western territories meant hardship, dispossession, disease, and death to the thousands of Indians who made the journey from the Old Northwest. However, their experience also provides a critical starting point for addressing how Indians both used individual initiative and capitalized on government limitations to maintain a measure of cultural and political autonomy.

MPACT Scores for John Patrick Bowes

A = 0
C = 0
A+C = 0
T = 0
G = 0
W = 0
TD = 0
TA = 0
calculated 2008-08-12 14:32:35

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Students under John Patrick Bowes

ADVISEES:
- None

COMMITTEESHIPS:
- None