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Indians and English: Facing Off in Early America PDF

311 Pages·2000·12.337 MB·English
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Indians and English Indians and English Facing Off in Early America Karen Ordahl Kupperman CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS ITHACA AND LONDON Copyright © 2000 by Cornell University All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. First published 2000 by Cornell University Press First printing, Cornell Paperbacks, 2000 Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kupperman, Karen Ordahl Indians and English : facing off in early America / Karen Ordahl Kupperman. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8014-3178-6 (cloth) — ISBN 0-8014-8282-8 (paper) i. Indians of North America—First contact with Europeans. 2. Indians of North America—Public opinion. 3. Indians of North America—History—Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775. 4. America—Discovery and exploration—English. 5. America— Foreign public opinion, British. 6. United States—History—Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775. I. Title. E59.F53K86 2000 973.2—dc2i 99-052767 Cornell University Press strives to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the fullest extent possible in the publishing of its books. Such materials include vegetable-based, low-VOC inks and acid-free papers that are recycled, totally chlorine-free, or partly composed of nonwood fibers. Books that bear the logo of the FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) use paper taken from forests that have been in­ spected and certified as meeting the highest standards for environmental and social responsibility. For further information, visit our website at www.comellpress .cornell.edu. Cloth printing 10987654321 Paperback printing 10987654321 >0' FSC FSC Trademark © 1996 Forest Stewardship Council A C SW-C0C-098 Contents List of Illustrations vii Preface ix Introduction i i Mirror Images 16 2 Reading Indian Bodies 41 3 Indian Polities 77 4 The Names of God no 5 Village Life 142 6 Incorporating the Other 174 7 Resisting the Other 212 Notes 241 Index 291 Illustrations New England Indians trade with Bartholomew Gosnold's party, 1602 8 Ole Worm's Cabinet of Curiosities 21 Pages from the Tradescant collection catalogue 24 Powhatan's mantle 26 Pomeiooc mother and daughter, painted by John White and engraved by Theodore de Bry 44 Wingina's wife 57 Ancient British man and Pictish woman 60 Sir Walter Ralegh and his son Wat 65 Roanoke Indian leader 66 Wingina 67 Secoton woman 68 Southern Algonquian man and identifying marks 70 Captain John Smith's Map of Ould Virginia 99 Samuel de Champlain's Map of Port Fortuné, Cape Cod 101 Kiwasa, statue of Algonquian deity 123 Algonquian priest 126 The Flyer, Algonquian shaman 127 Carolina Algonquian mortuary 136 The village of Secoton 145 The village of Pomeiooc 146 Algonquian man and woman eating 163 viii Illustrations Cooking in a pot over a fire 165 Canoe manufacture 167 Southern Algonquian fishing scene with weirs 169 Ralph Hamor's embassy to Powhatan 198 Pocahontas 201 Eiakintomino in London 202 Pocahontas being persuaded to board the English ship before her capture 209 Engraving of the great attack of 1622 in Virginia 225 Engraving of the English attack on the Pequot fort at Mystic, 1637 231 Preface This is a propitious moment to consider the confrontation between American and European peoples at the time when North America was being colonized. Scholarly work in many fields has produced new aware­ ness of how Europeans and Indians thought about their own societies and about human nature, as well as understanding of the structures of authority in those cultures. Scholars of early modern England have led us to see the veil of historical lore through which venturers viewed the world and how modes of self-presentation shaped relationships. Archaeologists, particularly in very recent decades, have made possible a more profound understanding of American life on the eve of coloniza­ tion, and have given us the basis for new comprehension of the early English documents. And native people's maintenance of their own oral tradition enhances our ability to interpret those documents. The dis­ cussions surrounding the 500th anniversary of Columbus's first voyage brought scholars from a wide variety of disciplines together and spurred continuing exchange. Indians and English: Facing Off in Early America, which began from the same set of preoccupations as my first book, Settling With the Indians: The Meeting of English and Indian Cultures in America, 1580-1640 (1980), takes up issues and approaches of which I was un­ aware twenty years ago. We now know a great deal more about the as­ sumptions of both Europeans and Americans, and specialists have shown us how to understand topics ranging from how to read the pos­ ture in a portrait to the spectrum of meanings in a label such as "sub­ tle" or "politique." Not only does Indians and English: Facing Off in Early America draw on the wealth of new scholarship on encounters, X Preface diasporas, and new and transformed early modern societies, it also at­ tempts to understand more fully the Indians' response to the new ele­ ments in their Eves and the changed circumstances within which they maneuvered. The Americans' own knowledge is embedded in the early English texts, especially those written by English observers who formed close relationships with their neighbors, and over the intervening cen­ turies many Indian people have recorded their oral traditions about the early period. The key to understanding this early tentative period is, as far as pos­ sible, to sweep away our knowledge of the eventual outcome of the train of events set in motion during it. Indians and English: Facing Off in Early America seeks to recover the uncertainty and fear in which all sides lived, as well as the genuine curiosity and sense of unimagined possibilities with which groups of people approached each other. This book, like its predecessor, is based on a firm commitment to intensive reading of the early documents, and to recognizing the reality of the human beings who created this history. Too often modern writers "prove" their arguments with telling quotes, and often the best quotes come from writers with little or no direct experience of Indian life. Those who stayed home could be much more definite in their judg­ ments than the confused and self-contradictory writings of those who struggled to make some sense of their manifold observations and expe­ riences. English who actually spent time with Americans and tried to understand what American associates told them about their history, re­ ligious beliefs, and cultural practices exhibited a range of responses— within a single brief book writers could be contemptuous and admir­ ing, hostile and friendly, self-confident and terrified—and it is the scope and complexity of these reactions that this book seeks to elucidate. Achieving such comprehension requires seeking to understand English culture of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries as well as the cultures of the eastern Algonquians. Both are foreign to us, and we can­ not understand the true import of the words the writers used to describe themselves and the Americans without immersing ourselves in recent work in English history. One goal of Settling With the Indians was to demonstrate the broad agreement among eyewitness English writers about the essential hu­ manity and high level of organization among the Indians at the time of colonization. Therefore that book provides missive documentation of English writing on the coastal North American Àlgonquians at the time when colonization began. Each claim the book makes about English views is documented by reference to every instance of the appearance

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