Seeing Red

Michael John Witgen (Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe) is professor in the Department of History and the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race at Columbia University.
For more information about Michael John Witgen, visit the Author Page.

"[A] searing account. . . . [Witgen's] incisive and deeply researched study lays bare the mechanisms of this historical land grab."—Publishers Weekly

"An important analysis of Indigenous resistance to U.S. colonialism in the lands that would become Michigan and Wisconsin during the first half of the nineteenth century."—Civil War Book Review

"An important work that draws together multiple threads that have all too often remained stubbornly disparate in the field of early American history. Witgen's "political economy of plunder" model achieves something simultaneously noteworthy and quite difficult. . . . Witgen makes the unthinkable imaginable, and even tangible, to his audience."—H-Early-America

“A critical story of survivance. . . . This book joins a growing body of literature by Indigenous scholars and others working to rightly account for the Indigenous history of North America.”—Early American Literature

“Seeing Red is a must read for those seeking to understand more fully the nature of this American nation and the ongoing power of its colonial enterprise.”—Indiana Magazine of History

“Witgen’s narrative in Seeing Red offers a nuanced exploration of the complex networks, alliances, and cultural dynamics that defined the Native peoples who inhabited the vast Great Lakes region . . . [and] intertwines personal stories, humanizing the experience of Indigenous history.”—William and Mary Quarterly