Making Marriage: Husbands, Wives, and the American State in Dakota and Ojibwe Country, Denial Catherine J.

These ideas clashed forcibly with the conceptions of kinship and social order that existed among the Upper Midwests long-established Dakota, Ojibwe, and mixed-heritage communities. In resisting the new gender and familial roles advocated by military personnel, Indian agents, and missionaries, the regions inhabitants frustrated American attempts to transform Indian country into a state. Indeed, many Americans were forced to compromise their own beliefs so that they could put down roots.

Through the stories of married--and divorcing--men and women in the region, Catherine J. Denial traces the uneven fortunes of American expansion in the early nineteenth century and the nation-shaping power of marital acts.