A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745–1815

Author: Gregory Evans Dowd

Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press (1993)

In the early 1800s, when once-powerful North American Indian peoples were being driven west across the Mississippi, a Shawnee prophet collapsed into a deep sleep. When he awoke, he told friends and family of his ascension to Indian heaven, where his grandfather had given him a warning: "Beware of the religion of the white man: every Indian who embraces it is obliged to take the road to the white man's heaven; and yet no red man is permitted to enter there, but will have to wander about forever without a resting place."

The events leading to this vision are the subject of A Spirited Resistance, the poignant story of the Indian movement to challenge Anglo-American expansionism. Departing from the traditional confines of the history of American Indians, Gregory Evans Dowd carefully draws on ethnographic sources to recapture the beliefs, thoughts, and actions of four principal Indian nations―Delaware, Shawnee, Cherokee, and Creek. The result is a sensitive portrayal of the militant Indians―often led by prophets―who came to conceive of themselves as a united people, and launched an intertribal campaign to resist the Anglo-American forces.