Six Pioneer Accounts of Life on the Old North-West American Frontier, 1790–1850: A Critical Reading

Franklin E. Court, an emeritus professor of English at Northern Illinois University, aims to present a representative set of firsthand accounts of life in the region defined by the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. Court introduces this as a "literary history of America's Old North-West" (p. 1) and observes that available anthologies of such work are not representative of the output of writers in the region during the period of the early republic to 1850. Five of the six accounts recounted here are from White settlers in Illinois or Wisconsin in the first half of the nineteenth century. The other pertains to experience during the 1794 Whiskey Insurrection in western Pennsylvania.This literary history is introduced as a "critical reading" of these early texts. The reader, then, might reasonably anticipate a literary analysis of the works here assembled rather than a more conventional historical review, and in fact, reading these accounts from a strictly historical perspective may be inconsistent with the intent of the book. The challenge is that the book does not seem to present either in full measure. There is certainly literary context offered for each account, perhaps most notably in chapter 1 for Hugh Henry Brackenridge's story of the Whiskey Insurrection and in chapter 4 for Juliette Magill Kinzie's story of Fort Winnebago in the Wisconsin Territory of the 1830s, but the primary approach seems to be on a very straightforward retelling of the original accounts.As noted above, these six memoirs are all stories of early White settlement in Illinois and Wisconsin, save the one focused on the Whiskey Insurrection. The reader may question the author's decision to include this lengthy firsthand account of events in western Pennsylvania in 1794, given the significant difference of that narrative from the others that are ostensibly the focus of the book. The theme of sectionalism is suggested as a rationale for the inclusion of Pittsburgh attorney Brackenridge's description of his experiences during the Whiskey Insurrection. Indeed, Brackenridge's account illustrates the complex intersection of regional social, political, and economic interests and priorities reflected in this period of unrest so early in the life of the nation under the Constitution. A more consistent theme Court suggests for the book centers on the "indomitable perseverance" of early settlers noted by Christiana Holmes Tillson in her account of life in southwestern Illinois in the 1820s and finds assertions of the necessity of resilience and resourcefulness in the remaining narratives.Aside from the fact that account of the Whiskey Insurrection differs in substance from the others in the book, it also illustrates a bit of a quandary for the reader in weighing the perspectives and relative biases inherent in this kind of writing. It is not controversial to state that primary sources often have very significant historical value. Contemporaneous accounts offer valuable windows into the experiences and perspectives of people situated in a particular time and place. But one of the things that makes this collection hard to assess is its recitation of firsthand accounts without either unfiltered access to the words of the original writers nor a modern writer's independent review and interpretation of the originals. It is primarily a retelling, following the same organization and perspectives of the original writers, though sometimes seeming to mix the perspectives of the original writers with those of Court. The "critical reading" promised seems largely limited to intermittent comments, asides, or interpretation.The book may have worked better by offering the original texts with extensive annotations by the author. That would allow the modern reader the benefit of seeing the original text along with the critical and detailed modern perspective that time and historical context can provide. A case in point from the Brackenridge narrative, for example, is that at some points the author uses particularly pejorative language (e.g., "crackpot," "deranged," "unhinged psychopath") to refer to the leaders of the insurrection, and it is not clear to the reader whether these negative characterizations are Brackenridge's or Court's. That relative lack of clarity as to whose voice is being presented recurs throughout this volume.The limited interpretation of the other writings is reflected in the general lack of attention to historically significant themes that recur across the Illinois and Wisconsin stories. For example, the writers express cultural biases, expectations, and differences from other social or cultural groups, perhaps most notably with White settlers who came to Illinois from Southern states. Massachusetts-born Tillson, for example, referred rather disparagingly in her recollections to the "white folks" who made up the majority of her neighbors. The term, Court explains, referred to Southerners who were "poor, uneducated, underprivileged, landless, share cropping whites" (p. 60). These kinds of cultural conflicts or incongruities pop up in various ways in the accounts from each of the writers included in this volume, whether it refers to the attitudes and expectations of Yankees, English immigrants, or a college educated frontier lawyer in eighteenth-century Pennsylvania.Similarly, other important themes emerge but Court does not address them. For example, the sense of what it meant to early settlers to be offered new opportunities for achievement and self-determination in what was to them essentially a new world. Young widows elected to remain on isolated farms with their children because they believed that remaining would instill in their children "a spirit of independence" (p. 90). A temperance society in England purchased land in Wisconsin with the aim of creating a teetotaling community in the New World. In another example, an Englishman reflects nostalgia for his homeland but insists that his new country offers a chance to prosper in proportion to his labors, a reward he notes in comparison to England, "where labour . . . is trodden under foot by . . . taxation and oppression" (p. 232). Similarly, the original writers often note that their relative wealth is based in land and the improvements they have made, and thus entirely place-bound.Further, such themes include commentary and observations on the flora and fauna of the region in the early nineteenth century; the relative hazards of travel during this era; crops and the challenges, methods, and implements of agriculture; mutual support of family and neighbors, shared labor and tools; reflections on interaction with or observation of enslaved people and comments about the reality of slavery; the absence of and attempts to find markets for agricultural products of various kinds; and the relative isolation and toll exacted by disease and very limited access to medical assistance. Again, as an example, typhoid fever, cholera, scarlet fever, tuberculosis, and ague appear across multiple accounts as severe challenges that take the lives of children and adults alike. There is further a good deal of information about economic conditions and practices, such as the lack of currency, land acquisition, costs, and uses, even specific references to events such as the Panic of 1837 and the famine that swept Ireland, England, and Scotland in the 1840s. All such references are noted in passing and never addressed as part of an overarching interpretation of the meaning such things had to the original writers who experienced and described them.The frequent reference to interactions with the Indigenous people of the Northwest Territory merits more detailed attention. These early White settlers offer various comments and observations on Native Americans, and while there are a few references to the Black Hawk War of 1832, essentially all of the comments regarding interaction with Indigenous people are positive and even admiring. It's a somewhat remarkable set of sentiments from people who were actively driving these original inhabitants away and seem to have perceived no contradiction between their positive regard for these First People and their dispossession. Kinzie expressed sympathy for the experiences that provoked Native Americans to fight back under the Sauk leader Black Hawk in 1832, and similarly worried over the fate of the Winnebago people who signed a treaty surrendering all of the lands south and east of the Wisconsin River. Yet she also expressed a sense of superiority and paternalism in referring to Native Americans in 1830s Wisconsin as "our red children" who needed the benefits of "education and Christianity" (p. 144).In all, there are complex ideas about nature, race, class, culture, government, the use and meaning of land, and economics that play out repeatedly across the accounts retold in this volume. The challenge to the reader is spotting them and then following the thread of perspectives and ideas that appear in each account. Unfortunately, Court does little to assist the reader in seeing these themes as they rise and fall through the several narratives.Court does make frequent reference to the publication histories of the accounts included, offering helpful background regarding how they were initially published, how they were preserved, and how they may have been republished long after the original writing. Most notable are reports and commentary on the work of Dr. Milo Milton Quaife, who worked with the Lakeside Press and Wisconsin Historical Society to make most of these accounts available to a larger public in the United States.One other area of commentary that bears noting includes not simply the confusion of perspectives that sometimes occurs, but basic historical errors. For example, in retelling Brackenridge's account of the Whiskey Insurrection, Court notes that a figure in the story has "a friend from Washington" (p. 17), but in 1794, Washington was still being planned as a city and seat of government. The federal government was based at that time in Philadelphia, and Washington was still largely undeveloped riverfront property. Also questionable is a reference to Richard Johnson of Kentucky, who started a school for Native American children in the 1820s. Court identifies Johnson as vice president to Martin Van Buren from 1819 to 1829. Of course, Van Buren was president from 1837 to 1841 and a US senator in the 1820s. It is true that Johnson did serve as Van Buren's vice president, but in the 1820s, he was a United States senator from Kentucky.Errors sometimes occur, but a different concern is in the repeated use in some sequences of the term "squaw" in reference to Native American women. It is one thing when a problematic term is used in the original source. History is not well served by censoring or sanitizing the language used by a writer in a very different era. That does not, however, justify continuing to use a term that is widely understood to be patently offensive in the contemporary retelling and commentary of this earlier account. Again, it may be that Court is weaving back and forth between the original writing and contemporary retelling, but the term is inappropriate in modern usage and should be treated accordingly.All in all, with sincere appreciation of Court's worthy efforts to bring more of these kinds of original accounts to broader public attention, this is a book that is just not quite sure what it wants to be. It is not really an anthology of primary sources from the early period of White settlement of the Northwest Territory, and it is not really a close critical reading of these writings as historically significant documents. It's also worth noting that while they may not be in wide circulation, there are many meaningful primary sources on Illinois or Wisconsin history available that have been published or preserved in one form or another (the University of Illinois Library and the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library both contain large collections of materials that offer firsthand accounts of experience in the historical evolution of Illinois and the Midwest generally). For the average reader interested in an overview of some of these early accounts, Six Pioneer Accounts may be a helpful introduction to this literature. More critical and experienced readers of Illinois history may simply find this volume a modest contribution to our ongoing efforts to better understand the lives and experiences of those who came before us.