The View from Polypotamia An Editorial Introduction

Abstract

Since the eighteenth century, white officials and scholars have regarded Indiana as a project, a blank slate that men could rationally organize in time and space. Like surveyors marking boundary lines, early state historians sought to divide the Hoosier state’s history into neat, self-contained epochs of development. These scholars identified large populations, like Native Americans and hill-country farmers, as part of the past, and suggested that lawmakers could rightfully exclude them from modern, mainstream society. We at the Indiana Magazine of History reject this view of history, which places economic progress above other human considerations and sees entire social and ethnic groups as obstructions. We instead regard our state as a social landscape alive with human stories and experiences. As historians we, and our readers, study the artifacts, documents, and articles that connect these studies to a more humane historical undertaking: comprehending how human beings respond over time to change.