Paper short abstract:

U.S. encroachment into Indigenous national territories in the Upper Mississippi and Headwaters region began at the water in the early nineteenth century. Rather than land hunger, the U.S. first sought to implement an imperial mission to control the riverine and marshland flows of goods and peoples.

Paper long abstract:

In the early nineteenth century, the Upper Mississippi and Headwaters were defined by political and hydraulic fluidity. Though the watershed was claimed by the United States, the region was staunchly controlled by several Indigenous nations and polities, such as the Dakota, Ojibwe, Ho-Chunk, and Menominee peoples, with mercantile support from the British Empire. Likewise, the region was also defined by a certain degree of aqueous ambiguity. During seasonal floods, the edges in a watershed blurred and overlapped, thus facilitating or hindering travel as portages became lakes and wetlands. By reviewing four military-scientific expeditions commissioned on behalf of the United States, this poster offers two arguments. First, the poster affirms the prior work in water history by demonstrating how water is an ever-changing and powerful force in history. Rivers are not a constant flow of water, but shift from flow, to lake, to wetland, and back again. Moreover, seasonal cycles, as with the Upper Mississippi’s high, low, and frozen waters, circumscribed historic human action. In other words, Euro-Americans were confronted with an aqueous landscape on the Upper Mississippi that challenged U.S. encroachment and facilitated Indigenous sovereignty, subsistence, and movement. The poster's second argument is that U.S. expansionism adapted to the Upper Mississippi and Headwaters, prioritizing imperium over the flows of peoples and goods on the water as a primary goal for the region at first. Though Euro-Americans still retained land dispossession as a broader goal, U.S. encroachment began at the water.