Dissertation Information for John Patrick BowesNAME:
DEGREE:
DISCIPLINE:
SCHOOL: ADVISORS: COMMITTEE MEMBERS: 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. |
MPACT Scores for John Patrick BowesA = 0 Advisors and Advisees Graphgenerating graph, please reload |
Students under John Patrick Bowes
ADVISEES:
- None
COMMITTEESHIPS:
- None