Scholars have long chronicled and analyzed the contest for the Ohio Valley and the dispossession of its Native peoples. Susan Sleeper-Smith is the first to provide an in-depth examination of Indian women and how directly their indigenous economy played into the conquest. Sleeper-Smith uses the 1791 raid of Kentucky militia general Charles Scott as a framing device for the book. Scott, a famous “Indian fighter,” was ordered by President George Washington and Secretary of War Henry Knox to lead a punitive expedition against the “Wabash” (Wea and Kickapoo) Indians near what is now Lafayette, Indiana. The raid was part of the American effort to force natives of the Ohio Valley to sell their lands to the United States. In addition to destroying Indian towns, Washington’s orders carried a more sinister directive: capture (in effect, kidnap) as many native women and children as possible.
Kidnapping the warriors’ wives and children was...
