Often small simple objects are overlooked by people for having little importance to our world. In “Fashioning Moccasins: Detroit, the Manufacturing Frontier, and the Empire if Consumption, 1701-1835,” Catherine Cangany, shows how footwear transformed North America’s Frontier. Cangany argues that through observing the small frontier town of Detroit you can see the western frontier’s change through the study of moccasins. Her argument is persuasive because she chronologically structures her article, effectively shows Detroit’s transformation, and gives a variety of examples allowing the reader to see the influence of moccasins through industry, culture, and politics. Cangany’s article is well-structured to help the reader follow her research. The beginning of her article consists of a …show more content…
This story was the first reference to Detroit and helped pull us into her article and become interested in what was occurring there. The story sets the reader in the middle to late eighteenth century rather than when the colonists first settled there. Cangany points out an item not often thought about in this time frame as being important, which is Montresor’s record of wearing moccasins. Cangany proves that this situation, while sounds unusual, was common among Euro-Americans and the popularity of wearing moccasins increased over the next century. She shows that in 1701 the popularity of moccasins was fairly small: “with Detroit's establishment in 1701, the town’s earliest colonists, including soldiers, fur traders, and farmers, appropriated native footwear” (75). These early colonists replaced their European shoes for moccasins due to their advantages for North American terrain: “Fur trader’s adoption of native dress as part of a job-related uniform” (76). What started, however, as a useful object to the early colonists’ job would transform by the early nineteenth