Book: A Discourse on the Aborigines of the Valley of the Ohio

Overview
William Henry Harrison's 1838 "A Discourse on the Aborigines of the Valley of the Ohio" is a historical and ethnographic address that surveys the native peoples who lived in the Ohio Valley before and during the early years of American expansion. It combines personal recollection, documentary citation, and archaeological observation to sketch the lifeways, institutions, and material remains of those communities. The tone mixes antiquarian curiosity with the practical concerns of a frontier statesman who had long dealings with Native nations.

Author and Context
Harrison was a veteran frontier officer and territorial governor whose career brought him into sustained contact with tribes such as the Shawnee, Miami, Delaware, and Wyandot. By 1838 he was a prominent national figure who drew on decades of experience negotiating treaties, leading military campaigns, and administering territory. The discourse was delivered within a milieu fascinated by antiquities and by debates over the "mound builders" and the origins of prehistoric earthworks dotting the Ohio landscape.

Content and Structure
The address moves between descriptive ethnography and antiquarian investigation. Harrison describes seasonal subsistence, housing, kinship patterns, and political leadership among the Ohio Valley tribes, and he recounts modes of warfare, diplomacy, and ceremonial life as he had observed them. Interwoven with these ethnographic sketches are discussions of the numerous earthen mounds and fortifications, where he reports on size, construction, and the artifacts turned up by plowing and excavation.

Key Themes
A central concern is the continuity and change of indigenous societies in the face of European settlement and American expansion. Harrison emphasizes both the ingenuity and the perceived decline of native institutions under contact and displacement. Another theme is the question of ancient authorship of the mounds: Harrison participates in contemporary debates, weighing evidence for whether the earthworks were the work of the ancestors of living tribes or of an earlier, distinct people.

Perspective and Bias
The discourse reflects the assumptions and vocabulary of early 19th-century American elites. Harrison writes with authority rooted in practical experience, yet his interpretations are shaped by paternalistic and expansionist attitudes common to his era. Indigenous societies are often portrayed through a lens that contrasts "savagery" and "civilization," and archaeological evidence is read in ways that sometimes support the political aims and cultural narratives of the United States.

Source Value and Limitations
As a primary-source account from a leading frontier figure, the discourse is valuable for its eyewitness details, specific anecdotes, and contemporary descriptions of places and material remains that have since been altered or lost. Its ethnographic contributions are tempered by selective reporting and an absence of indigenous voices; customs are filtered through Harrison's experiences and priorities. Modern readers and scholars treat it as evidence of historical attitudes and as a dataset to be interpreted alongside Native oral traditions and subsequent archaeological work.

Legacy and Reception
The address fed nineteenth-century interest in American antiquities and contributed to the mound-builder controversy that animated both scientific and popular debate. Later historians and archaeologists have used Harrison's observations while critiquing his conclusions and cultural assumptions. The discourse remains a useful but partial record of the Ohio Valley's indigenous past, valued for its immediacy and contextualized by a critical reading of its biases.