On June 2, 1763, the Ojibwe captured Michigan's Fort Michilimackinac from the British. Ojibwe warriors from villages on Mackinac Island and along the Cheboygan River had surprised the unsuspecting garrison while playing a game of baggatiway. On the heels of the capture, Odawa from nearby L'Arbre Croche arrived to rescue British prisoners, setting into motion a complicated series of negotiations among Ojibwe, Odawa, and Menominee and other Indians from Wisconsin. Because nearly all Native people in the Michilimackinac borderland had allied themselves with the British before the attack, they refused to join the Michilimackinac Ojibwe in their effort to oust the British from the upper country; the turmoil effectively halted the fur trade. Beyond Pontiac's Shadow examines the circumstances leading up to the attack and the course of events in the aftermath that resulted in the regarrisoning of the fort and the restoration of the fur trade. At the heart of this discussion is an analysis of French-Canadian and Indian communities at the Straits of Mackinac and throughout the pays d'en haut. An accessible guide to this important period in Michigan, American, and Canadian history, Beyond Pontiac's Shadow sheds invaluable light on a political and cultural crisis.

In 1823 William and Amanda Ferry opened a boarding school for M tis children on Mackinac Island, Michigan Territory, setting in motion an intense spiritual battle to win the souls and change the lives of the children, their parents, and all others living at Mackinac. Battle for the Soul demonstrates how a group of enthusiastic missionaries, empowered by an uncompromising religious motivation, served as agents of Americanization. The Ferrys' high hopes crumbled, however, as they watched their work bring about a revival of Catholicism and their students refuse to abandon the fur trade as a way of life. The story of the Mackinaw Mission is that of people who held differing world views negotiating to create a middle-ground, a society with room for all.
Widder's study is a welcome addition to the literature on American frontier missions. Using Richard White's middle ground paradigm, it focuses on the cultural interaction between French, British, American, and various native groups at the Mackinac mission in Michigan during the early 19th century. The author draws on materials from the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions archives, as well as other manuscript sources, to trace not only the missionaries' efforts to Christianize and Americanize the native peoples, but the religious, social, and cultural conflicts between Protestant missionaries and Catholic priests in the region. Much attention has been given to the missionaries to the Indians in other areas of the US, but little to this region.

Vintage photographs profusely illustrate this step back in time, reliving the stirring saga of America's premier land-grant institution, long before it became Michigan State University. Discover how forward-looking legislators, scholars, and administrators found an oak clearing in the midst of central Michigan swampland and there laid the groundwork for what would become one of the world's great universities. From the school's founding in 1855, and for the next seventy years that are discussed in this volume, the institution struggled to find itself and, in the process, helped to invent the notion of what it means to be a university for the people, a land-grant university.
Widder demonstrates how, from the beginning, presidents, teachers, researchers, and students worked to carve out a place for the school called M.A.C. They always insisted that M.A.C. would be an institution of grand vision; it would be an ag school, to be sure, but it should be more than that. In the early 1860s, for instance, students threatened to leave the campus when they learned that the teaching of literature and other liberal arts classes might be suspended. Throughout these early years, M.A.C. grew, weathered financial crises, and endured three wars, all the time transforming itself as a kind of grand experiment to meet the educational needs of a nation on the move. M.A.C. matured; its alumni and its faculty soon began to make notable contributions to the world's scientific and intellectual development and to pose solutions to pressing social, economic, and political problems. What a time it must have been.