Though not a traditional biography, my dissertation examines the leadership and entrepreneurial qualities of Miami Chief Jean Baptiste Richardville, 1760--1841. Richardville possessed cultural and physical traits from both his European and Indian ancestors. His metis status allowed him to move swiftly between English, French, American (to a lesser extent), Miami, various Indian, and mixed-blood circles. Intelligent, he understood and used these gifts in both trade and diplomacy. For the metis chief, the line that separated the two spheres was thin. He was as much CEO as chief; the two supported each other in a symbiotic relationship. During his lifetime, various groups, including the Miami, the French, the Spanish, the British, and the Americans laid some claim to possessing the western Great Lakes. It was a region fertile for someone with Richardville's genetic and cultural background. He viewed the empires and frontiers surrounding him and the Miamis as an advantage, not an overwhelming burden. He used a multiplicity of strategies to protect the Miamis. Not only could he play one external group off of the other diplomatically, he and the Miamis could profit from the process. Richardville offered the Indians an alternative type of resistance to American demographic, political, and economic onslaught. His life demonstrates that warfare and nativism were not always the best means of resisting the wealthy and expansive United States of America. In this respect, Richardville is the antithesis of such notable Old Northwest figures as the Shawnee Prophet and his brother, Tecumseh. Far from being either a noble or ignoble savage, Richardville used trade, property rights, and diplomacy to protect the Miamis as effectively as possible until his death in the 1840s.
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