The Worlds the Shawnees Made: Migration and Violence in Early America

In 1779 a tribe of Shawnees told the British, "We have always been the frontier," challenging the belief that American Indians derive their unique identities from ties to native lands. By tracking Shawnee people 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 mid-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.