Colonial America
Page 66
Both stories have elements of truth, especially when we consider the diversity of experience among Native Americans in eastern North America during the eighteenth century. Some peoples were forced to make enormous compromises and virtually disappeared. Others preserved considerable autonomy from Europeans and retained vibrant and powerful societies. Their experiences spanned a wide spectrum.
At one end of the spectrum were peoples who lived within the boundaries of the British colonies, most of whom were eventually forced to submit to British legal and political authority and to give up much of their independence. The Indians of southern New England were one such group. Before King Philip's War, the Indians had made up nearly a quarter of the local population in southern New England, with approximately 18,000 Indians living alongside about 60,000 English settlers. By the end of the war, half of the Indians had died, been captured and sold into slavery, or fled to new homes in the north. Despite the fact that the survivors had mostly remained loyal to the English during the war, New England government authorities were now profoundly suspicious of them all and imposed tight restrictions on their movements. In Massachusetts, all Indians were ordered either to live in Christian families (as servants) or to resettle in one of four Christian Indian villages, Natick, Wamesit, Hassanamesit, and Punkapaug.3
The Indians were now expected to earn their livelihoods in the same manner as the English settlers, a task that proved extremely difficult. Although Indians in southern New England had always done some farming, they were unwilling to adopt English agricultural methods and forms of ownership that would erode their community-based society. Surrounded by land that had been cleared of forests, the men could not hunt. Instead they hired themselves out when they could as whalers or trackers, or signed on as soldiers during the many wars with France. Although they undoubtedly would have preferred to hunt, all of these jobs allowed them to utilize skills as hunters or warriors that were traditionally sources of respect for Native American men. Women made baskets, brooms, and pottery, which they sold to their Anglo-American neighbors. Often they were unable to maintain their independence. Burdened by debt and having few possessions of value besides their land, many Indians sold their land to white settlers simply to survive. Some became indentured servants, while others became itinerants and vagrants. Itineracy created unbalanced sex ratios, undermining family structures and fertility. By 1760 the ratio of female to male was approximately two to one not least because so many men had been killed in the wars with France.
Despite these obstacles, Indians and their descendents in southern New England continued to think of themselves as peoples separate and distinct from the English, adapting creatively to their new circumstances in order to survive. Forced to live in villages with strangers, they created new, ethnically mixed communities with their former rivals. Niantics, Narragansetts, Wampanoags, Nipmucks, and Pequots now defined themselves as the same people. Others adapted and survived by intermarrying with other people of color. African Americans, like Indians, had an unbalanced sex ratio, with men outnumbering women owing to the vagaries of the slave trade. Although New England colonial authorities discouraged both Indians and African Americans from marrying whites, they did not interfere with marriages between Indian women and African American men. The offspring of these blended multicultural families grew up understanding that they were of Indian or part-Indian descent, even though government officials now often classified them as “Negro” or “black.”4
Similar processes took place elsewhere in the British colonies. In Virginia, members of peoples who had once been part of the powerful Powhatan Confederacy, such the Chickahominy, Mattaponi, and Pamunkey, remained inside the boundaries of the colony, where they were expected to assimilate and live in the manner of the English settlers. A treaty signed in the aftermath of Bacon's Rebellion supposedly guaranteed them certain lands and rights similar to those enjoyed by the colonists. But, as in Massachusetts, their lands were slowly encroached upon by whites, confining them to a few small enclaves. The Virginia legislature created new barriers to their ability to become full members of Virginia society, prohibiting intermarriage with whites in 1691 and banning Indians from testifying in court in 1705. Young men were compelled to labor for their white neighbors instead of relying upon hunting for their livelihoods, with the result that tribes became dispersed and their languages were lost.
Just as in southern New England, Indians within Virginia adapted to these setbacks by adopting and intermarrying with outsiders. They took in people from other tribes as well as free African Americans and poor whites, creating new bonds of kinship to incorporate new members much as Native American clans had always done when their populations declined. Families formed through this process of racial intermingling continued to identify themselves as Indians or part-Indians until the twentieth century, preserving plant lore and indigenous techniques for hunting and fishing even while they lived in much the same manner as their poor white neighbors. A similar process was evident in Maryland.5
Although some Eastern Woodlands peoples had obviously been forced to make extraordinary compromises with the British by the 1700s, other peoples managed to retain a substantial degree of autonomy despite the pressures created by European colonization. Several factors contributed to their success. The first of these was their ability to pick up their belongings and migrate to a new location when their survival became threatened. Migration minimized unnecessary conflict with settler populations, helped to prevent further attacks by Native American enemies, and enabled people to find better hunting grounds when their own forests became depleted. A second factor was many Native American peoples' willingness to incorporate newcomers and reconstitute their communities. As people moved, they created new alliances, formed new villages and confederations, and redefined their tribal identities. And a final factor, perhaps the most important, was that peoples who occupied territory between competing imperial governments learned that they were better off playing one nation against the other than sticking firmly with a single European ally. A closer look at some of the other major groups who lived along the borders of the British colonial settlements by the early 1700s illustrates this range of possibilities.
2 The Nations of the Northern Frontier
The most powerful of all the Eastern Woodlands peoples in the North were still the members of the Iroquois League: the Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, and Mohawk peoples. For much of the seventeenth century the Iroquois had managed to control a substantial share of the fur trade by making war on other groups, and sustained their population by using the mourning war tradition to replace their losses. For five decades they carried out attacks on their enemies, culminating in 1684 with their humiliating defeat of the French. As we have seen, however, there were limits to the Iroquois strategy of making war in order to survive, and after 1684 the French not only reinforced their colony but united the surrounding peoples in alliance against the Iroquois. By the end of the century the members of the Five Nations were exhausted. Their wars had become wider and more destructive than traditional warfare, and were damaging their society. Their population at the end of the century was in serious decline. Finally, the dwindling supply of game around the eastern Great Lakes region meant that the Iroquois would soon have little of value to trade for European goods. Their fear was that they would be of use to their English allies only as a buffer against the French.
Even in the face of these dire circumstances, however, the Iroquois were able to manipulate both the French and the British in ways that allowed them to increase their power and revitalize their society. As discussed in Chapter 9, in 1701 one group of Iroquois leaders entered into a pledge of neutrality with New France while another group simultaneously agreed to renew the so-called Covenant Chain with the British. By adopting a policy of effective neutrality they were able to play one European power against the other.6 One advantage of the arrangement was to give the Iroquois access to new economic resources. Their own supply of furs had been deplete
d, but neutrality enabled them to serve as middlemen in negotiating new trading relationships with French-allied Indians in the west who had abundant supplies. Sometimes this brokerage role was explicit, as in 1710 when they invited both British traders and Ottawa hunters to Onondaga to negotiate a trading alliance. At other times the Iroquois simply insisted on trade or gifts in exchange for allowing people from the west to cross Iroquois land on their way to trade at Albany. Meanwhile the Iroquois could now trade with both the British and the French themselves.
Neutrality was useful too in enabling the Iroquois to stay out of highly destructive wars with the French. Iroquois culture continued to prize military prowess in the eighteenth century, but after 1701 most Iroquois military campaigns were directed against distant tribes living in the Carolinas and Virginia instead of against close allies of the French. The Catawbas in particular were a favored target in part because they did not have a powerful empire to provide them with unlimited military support. Making war on the Catawbas allowed young Iroquois warriors to prove themselves in battle and to gain prestige and confidence, enabling the Iroquois to renew cultural cohesion without being suicidal.
Document 23
The Iroquois reject English missionaries, circa 1710, reprinted in Karen Ordahl Kupperman, ed., Major Problems in American Colonial History: Documents and Essays (Lexington, Mass., 1993), 489
This exchange between Iroquois leaders and the Governor of New York, the Indians complain about their relationship with the British. Questions to consider: Why did they reject the offer of missionaries? Why were they interested in having blacksmiths to instruct them in metal working? Does this exchange suggest that their interactions with the British were causing the Iroquois to abandon their culture, or does it suggest something else?
It appears by the answer of one of the Indian chiefs or Sachems to Governor Hunter, at a conference in this town [Albany], that the English do not pay so much attention to a work of so much consequence as the French do, and that they do not send such able men to instruct the Indians, as they ought to do. For after Governor Hunter had presented these Indians, by order of Queen Anne, with many clothes and other presents, of which they were fond, he intended to convince them still more of her Majesty's good-will and care for them, by adding that their good mother, the Queen, had not only generously provided them with fine clothes for their bodies, but likewise intended to adorn their souls by the preaching of the gospel; and that to this purpose some ministers should be sent to them to instruct them. The governor had scarce ended, when one of the oldest sachems got up and answered that in the name of all the Indians, he thanked their gracious good queen and mother for the fine clothes she had sent them; but that in regard to the ministers, they had already had some among them … who instead of preaching the holy gospel to them had taught them to drink to excess, to cheat, and to quarrel among themselves because in order to get furs they had brought brandy along with which they filled the Indians and deceived them. He then intreated the governor to take from them these preachers, and a number of other Europeans who resided amongst them, for, before they came among them the Indians had been an honest, sober, and innocent people, but now most of them had become rogues. He pointed out that they formerly had the fear of God, but that they hardly believed his existence at present; that if he (the governor) would do them any favor, he should send two or three blacksmiths amongst them, to teach them to forge iron, in which they were inexperienced.
Another mechanism which enabled the Iroquois to revitalize their culture was their practice of inviting various refugee groups to settle in Iroquois-controlled territory and then claiming jurisdiction over the refugees by virtue of their authority under the Covenant Chain. For example, the Iroquois had driven the Susquehannocks out of the Susquehanna Valley in Pennsylvania during the 1670s, whereupon the Susquehannocks resettled in Maryland. After their defeat at the hands of Bacon's militia in 1675, Governor Andros invited the Susquehannocks to resettle in New York and placed them under the protection of members of the Iroquois League. The Iroquois now extended that practice. In 1701, in treaty negotiations with Pennsylvania, the League claimed to have acquired jurisdiction by right of conquest over various peoples who had settled in the Susquehanna Valley during the 1690s, including some Susquehannocks (known as Conestogas) and Shawnees. By 1720, more groups had arrived, including Delawares, Nanticokes, and Conoys, over whom leaders of the Iroquois League made similar claims. These people, called “Props of the Longhouse,” were expected to provide military assistance to the Iroquois if needed, and to provide a buffer against hostile tribes coming north to invade Iroquois territory. In reality League influence over these peoples was not as great as it appeared, yet the Iroquois carefully cultivated the illusion that they were the leaders of an empire with many allies.
In 1727 Pennsylvanian authorities, frustrated by the need to negotiate with multiple tribes on the western borders of their settlements, proposed to renew the Covenant Chain by designating the Iroquois League as the representative of all the tribes in the region. By granting the League this kind of diplomatic recognition, Pennsylvania further strengthened its members' power and prestige. At the same time Pennsylvania became a valuable new ally and trading partner, allowing Iroquois peoples to broker new trading relationships with new groups of Indians with access to furs.
In one case, the Iroquois invited one of these tributary groups into the League. The Tuscaroras who lived in Carolina were an Iroquoian-speaking people with whom the Iroquois shared many cultural affinities. Several Tuscarora headmen approached the Five Nations in 1710 to seek peace with them, though before any treaty could be concluded, the Tuscaroras became involved in the Tuscarora War. After the war ended in 1713, as many as 2,000 Tuscaroras moved northwards to ask for shelter among the Five Nations. In 1722 the Iroquois invited the Tuscaroras to join the League, and around 1750 conferred on them the status of Sixth Nation, with representation on the grand council at Onondaga.
Map 20 Major Native American powers of the northern frontier, circa 1725.
The Iroquois were able to maneuver effectively in a colonial world in part because they occupied strategically important territory: on the border between two competing empires, they guarded the principal pathways to the west by way of the Mohawk River. In addition their numerical strength, amounting perhaps to 15,000 people, and their prowess in warfare gave them a reputation for being more powerful than they actually were.7 The reality was that by 1701 the Iroquois had been seriously weakened by war and disease, and they were far from unified. Yet for the next 50 years their ability to sustain the illusion of their power convinced both the British and the French colonial governments to supply them with arms and trade goods and to offer them diplomatic ties so as to ensure they did not give their full support to the other. In essence the Iroquois were able to use the mystique of their own power to regain the power they had lost, and to continue to play a decisive role in the development of North American politics and diplomacy.
Figure 30 Portrait of Sagayenkwaraton (baptized Brant), named Sa Ga Yeath Qua Pieth Tow, King of the Maquas (Mohawk). Painting, 1710. The cloak was a gift in London, while the white cloth shirt was a standard item among the trade goods made available by British traders. Note that the wearer has taken these items of European clothing and incorporated them into a distinctly indigenous style of dress and self-presentation. The National Archives of Canada.
A much smaller group of Iroquois peoples, mostly Mohawks, retained their independence by converting to Catholicism and joining the other Catholic, French-allied Indians in the reserves at Kahnawake and Kanesatake in New France. These Indians appeared on the surface to have become thoroughly French. They spoke French, wore French clothing, and worshiped in French Catholic churches guided by Jesuit priests. Yet they retained considerable political and cultural autonomy, since the government of New France relied on them for military support and was therefore careful not to make too many demands. Unlike the Indians who had stayed in New E
ngland after King Philip's War, for example, the reserve Iroquois had never had to agree to submit to the jurisdiction of French courts. Nor did they tolerate the kind of heavy-handed discipline that the Franciscans had imposed at their missions in Florida and New Mexico. The Catholic Iroquois maintained ties of kinship with the British-allied League Iroquois, and along with those kinship ties came a strong sense of shared cultural identity.
Still, life in the reserves was no utopia. The problem was that the French expected their Indian allies to go to war on their behalf. In general the reserve Iroquois refused to fight against other Iroquois, but they could not altogether ignore the demands of the French allies. Therefore in general they attacked British settlers in New England instead, inviting sometimes devastating reprisals from the British colonial governments. Maintaining their independence was a delicate balancing act.
Another highly successful Native American population group could be found in a string of villages stretching from present-day Vermont and New Hampshire north to New Brunswick. Made up of the Micmacs of Acadia (Nova Scotia) and New Brunswick and various Abenaki peoples in what is now Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire, these Algonquian-speaking peoples were all part of a loose-knit confederacy known as the Abenaki Confederacy.
The Micmacs who lived in the north relied mostly on hunting and fishing for their subsistence, which meant their villages were less permanent than those of the nations in southern New England. The Micmacs were staunch allies of the French, whose fishermen they had first encountered in the 1530s. Trading with the French for furs gave them access to hatchets, guns, textiles, and other useful items. Meanwhile their northern location, along with the relatively small size of the French population, insulated them from interference from French settlers. Their relationship enabled the Micmacs to enjoy the prosperity that came from trade with the French without losing the resources that had traditionally sustained their culture.