Virtual Author Series featuring John William Nelson

The Fort Ticonderoga Author Series features presentations by authors of books related to Colonial and Revolutionary War history.

In Muddy Ground: Native Peoples, Chicago’s Portage, and the Transformation of a Continent, author John William Nelson charts the many peoples that traversed and sought power along Chicago’s portage paths from the seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries, including Indigenous Illinois traders, French explorers, Jesuit missionaries, Meskwaki warriors, British officers, Anishinaabe headmen, and American settlers. Nelson compellingly demonstrates that even deep within the interior, power relations fluctuated based on the control of waterways and local environmental knowledge. 

John William Nelson is an Assistant Professor of early North American history at Texas Tech University. 

Your participation in these online programs through the Center for Digital History supports Fort Ticonderoga’s mission to preserve, educate, and provoke an active discussion about the past and its importance to present and future generations.