Change and Continuity, Practice and Memory: Native American Persistence in Colonial New England

2009 ◽  
Vol 74 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-230 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen W. Silliman
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
New England ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Cultural Persistence ◽  
Colonial New England ◽  
Eastern Pequot

The archaeological study of Native Americans during colonial periods in North America has centered largely on assessing the nature of cultural change and continuity through material culture. Although a valuable approach, it has been hindered by focusing too much on the dichotomies of change and continuity, rather than on their interrelationship, by relying on uncritical cultural categories of artifacts and by not recognizing the role of practice and memory in identity and cultural persistence. Ongoing archaeological research on the Eastern Pequot reservation in Connecticut, which was created in 1683 and has been inhabited continuously since then by Eastern Pequot community members, permits a different view of the nature of change and continuity. Three reservation sites spanning the period between ca. 1740 and 1840 accentuate the scale and temporality of social memory and the relationships between practice and materiality. Although the reservation sites show change when compared to the "precontact baseline," they show remarkable continuity during the reservation period. The resulting interpretation provides not only more grounded and appropriately scaled renderings of past cultural practices but also critical engagements with analytical categories that carry significant political weight well outside of archaeological circles.

Algonquian Diasporas

Memory Lands ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine M. DeLucia
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
New England ◽  
Atlantic World ◽  
Indigenous Populations ◽  
Community Members ◽  
King Philip's War ◽  
Native Communities ◽  
History Of ◽  
Native American Tribes

This chapter examines how King Philip’s War gave rise to a significant but often ignored or misperceived history of bondage, enslavement, and diaspora that took Native Americans far from their northeast homelands, and subjected them to a range of brutal conditions across an Atlantic World. It focuses on Algonquians’ transits into captivity as a consequence of the war, and historicizes this process within longer trajectories of European subjugation of Indigenous populations for labor. The chapter examines how Algonquian individuals and families were forcibly placed into New England colonial as well as Native communities at the war’s conclusion, and how others were transported out of the region for sale across the Atlantic World. The case of King Philip’s wife and son is especially complex, and the chapter considers how traditions around their purported sale into slavery in Bermuda interact with challenging racial politics and archival traces. Modern-day “reconnection” events have linked St. David’s Island community members in Bermuda to Native American tribes in New England. The chapter also reflects on wider dimensions of this Algonquian diaspora, which likely brought Natives to the Caribbean, Azores, and Tangier in North Africa, and propelled Native migrants/refugees into Wabanaki homelands.

Shellfish Collection and Community Connections in Eighteenth-Century Native New England

2014 ◽  
Vol 79 (04) ◽  
pp. 712-729 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan Hunter ◽  
Stephen W. Silliman ◽  
David B. Landon
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Native American ◽  
New England ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Southern New England ◽  
Shellfish Gathering ◽  
Colonial New England ◽  
Specific Species ◽  
Cultural Connections ◽  
Eastern Pequot

Abstract In recent years, the archaeology of Native American sites in colonial contexts has increased our understanding of how indigenous communities persisted in challenging times. Greater attention to practices helps to create a more enriched picture, especially when set in the context of food and consumption. This article considers shellfish remains excavated from three households on the Eastern Pequot reservation, located several kilometers Inland from the Connecticut coast in southern New England, to explore the role that shellfish gathering played in eighteenth-century subsistence and social practices in Native New England. Household variability in the specific species and quantity consumed, as well as disposal methods, provide insight into internal community decision making. Moreover, eighteenth-century reservation demographics strongly accentuate the role of women in the provision of these foodstuffs and in maintaining cultural connections to the coast and other off-reservation communities. Practices of gathering and consuming shellfish thus provide vectors of change and continuity in Native American communities of colonial New England, showing how these practices represent not only connections to a deeper past, but also ongoing and even resurging practices to engage with a colonial present.

Native Americans, Conversion, and Christian Practice in Colonial New England, 1640—1730

2009 ◽  
Vol 102 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-124 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linford D. Fisher
Keyword(s):  
Native Americans ◽  
New England ◽  
Massachusetts Bay ◽  
Native Culture ◽  
Massachusetts Bay Colony ◽  
Colonial New England ◽  
The One ◽  
Christian Practices ◽  
Gospel Message ◽  
Over Time

Fortunately, the two travelers arrived before sunset. Earlier in the day, on 5 May 1674, John Eliot and Daniel Gookin had set out from Boston for Wamesit, the northernmost of the fourteen Indian “praying towns” within the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and the one most subjected to retaliatory attacks from raiding bands of Mohawks in the previous few years. Upon safe arrival, the Englishmen greeted their Pennacook friends and gathered as many as they could at the wigwam of Wannalancet, the head sachem of Wamesit, where Eliot, the aging missionary to the Indians, proceeded to talk about the meaning of the parable of the marriage of the king's son in Matthew 22:1—4. Wannalancet, according to Gookin, was a “sober and grave person, and of years, between fifty and sixty”; he had from the beginning been “loving and friendly to the English,” and in return they had tried to encourage him to embrace Christianity. Although the English missionaries would have desired him to readily accept the gospel message they preached, Wannalancet voluntarily incorporated Christian practices slowly, over time, without necessarily repudiating his native culture and traditional religious practices.1 For four years Wannalancet “had been willing to hear the word of God preached”; when Eliot or other missionaries made their periodic visits to Wamesit, Wannalancet made sure he was there. Over time, Wannalancet adopted the English practices of keeping the Sabbath, learning to go to any available meeting or instruction, fellowshipping, and refraining from various activities proscribed by the town's praying leaders. Despite all that, however, the English missionaries still complained that he “hath stood off” since he had “not yielded up himself personally.”2

Predicting Diabetes amongst Native American Elders

2011 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 27-43
Author(s):  
S. Upadhyaya ◽  
K. Farahmand ◽  
T. Baker-Demaray
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Operating Characteristic ◽  
Healthcare Professionals ◽  
Characteristic Curve ◽  
Healthcare Providers ◽  
Prevention Strategies ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Policy Makers

One in three Americans will be diabetic by 2050, and the rate of diabetes is disproportionately high among Native Americans, especially among Native elders age 55 and older. Early identification and prevention strategies have been regarded as the cornerstone of preventative medicine. The objective of the authors’ research was to identify factors related to diabetes and their interactions specifically among Native elders and develop a simple prediction model which can be used by healthcare professionals while interacting with Native elders in remote or rural areas. Data from a survey of 18,078 Native American elders was used in their study. After eliminating outliers using Pearson’s residuals and Cook’s distance, the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve was 0.7812 for men and 0.7230 for women. The results from the authors’ analysis provide additional perspective on how diabetes affects Native elders thus helping healthcare providers and policy makers when dealing with these community members.

Memory Lands

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine M. DeLucia
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
New England ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
Early America ◽  
King Philip's War ◽  
Indigenous Resistance ◽  
Intercultural Interactions ◽  
Colonial New England ◽  
Resistance Movement

This book reassesses the nature and meanings of King Philip’s War (1675-1678), a major Indigenous resistance movement and colonial conflict that pervasively reshaped the American Northeast and has reverberated among regional communities for centuries. It focuses on specific places that have been meaningful to Native American (Algonquian) peoples over long spans of time, as well as to colonial New England residents more recently, and how the waging and remembrance of violence at these locales has affected communities’ senses of past, place, and collective purpose. Its case studies reinterpret intercultural interactions and settler colonialism in early America, the importance of place and environment in the production of history, and the myriad ways in which memory has been mobilized to shape the present and future. It emphasizes that American history continues to be contested, in highly local and sometimes hard-to-perceive ways that require careful interdisciplinary methods to access, as well as in more prominent arenas.

Cherokee Towns and Calumet Ceremonialism in Eastern North America

2014 ◽  
Vol 79 (3) ◽  
pp. 425-443 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher B. Rodning
Keyword(s):  
North Carolina ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Native American ◽  
Great Plains ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Mississippi River ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Southern Appalachians ◽  
Eastern North America ◽  
Upper Midwest

Calumet ceremonialism was widely practiced by Native American and European colonial groups in the Great Plains and Southeast during the late seventeenth century and the early eighteenth century. Cultural practices associated with smoking calumet pipes have roots in the prehistoric past, but the spread of calumet ceremonialism across the Southeast was associated with the spread of European colonists and colonialism. Calumet ceremonialism served the needs for groups to have a means of creating balance, and of setting the stage for peaceful interaction and exchange, during a period marked by considerable instability and dramatic cultural change. The presence of a redstone elbow pipe bowl fragment from the Coweeta Creek site in southwestern North Carolina demonstrates the participation of Cherokee towns in calumet ceremonialism, despite the remote location of this site in the southern Appalachians, far from major European colonial settlements, and far from areas such as the Mississippi River Valley and the upper Midwest where such pipes are much more common.

This is My Body: Communion and Cannibalism in Colonial New England and New France

2016 ◽  
Vol 89 (4) ◽  
pp. 556-586
Author(s):  
Carla Cevasco
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
New England ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
New France ◽  
Colonial New England

Analyzing the material culture of English, French, and Native communion ceremonies, and debates over communion and cannibalism, this article argues that peoples in the borderlands between colonial New England and New France refused to recognize their cultural similarities, a cross-cultural failure of communication with violent consequences.

Stubborn Indianness: Cultural Persistence, Cultural Change

1998 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 507-512
Author(s):  
RUSSELL DUNCAN
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Northwest Coast ◽  
Census Count ◽  
Indian History ◽  
Young America ◽  
Cultural Persistence ◽  
Contemporary United States ◽  
Lincoln University

Leland Donald, Aboriginal Slavery on the Northwest Coast of North America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997, US$40). Pp. 379. ISBN 0 520 20616 9.George W. Dorsey, The Pawnee Mythology (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997, £20.95). Pp. 546. ISBN 0 8032 6603 0.Frederic W. Gleach, Powhatan's World and Colonial Virginia: A Conflict of Cultures (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997, £52.50). Pp. 241. ISBN 0 8032 2166 5.Richard G. Hardorff (ed.), Lakota Recollections of the Custer Fight: New Sources of Indian-Military History (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997, £9.50). Pp. 211. ISBN 0 8032 7293 6.Michael E. Harkin, The Heiltsuks: Dialogues of Culture and History on the Northwest Coast (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997, £38). Pp. 195. ISBN 0 8032 2379 X.Jean M. O'Brien, Dispossession by Degrees: Indian Land and Identity in Natick, Massachusetts, 1650–1790 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997, £35, US$49.95). Pp. 224. ISBN 0 521 56172 8.Allen W. Trelease, Indian Affairs in Colonial New York: The Seventeenth Century (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997, £15.95). Pp. 379. ISBN 0 8032 9431 X.In the contemporary United States there are 556 American Indian groups in 400 nations. Given that survival story, the tired myths of the disappearing redman or wandering savage which have distorted our understandings of Indian history are being revised. The reasons for our nearly four-century-long gullibility are manifold. The religion of winners and losers, saints and sinners, combined effectively with the scientific racism inherent sine qua non in the secular beliefs of winners and losers expressed through Linnaean and Darwinian conceptions of order and evolution. After colonizers cast their imperial gaze through lenses made of the elastic ideology of “City Upon a Hill,” “Manifest Destiny,” “Young America,” and “White Man's Burden,” most Euro-Americans rationalized a history and present in survival of the fittest terms. By 1900, the near-holocaust of an estimated ten million Indians left only 200,000 survivors invisible in an overall population of 76 million. The 1990 census count of two million Native Americans affirms resilience not extinction.

The Archaeology of Magic

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Riley Augé
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
New England ◽  
Rhode Island ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
Early American ◽  
Salem Witch Trials ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Court Proceedings ◽  
Colonial New England ◽  
Gendered Patterns

In The Archaeology of Magic, C. Riley Augé explores how early American colonists used magic to protect themselves from harm in their unfamiliar and challenging new world. Analyzing evidence from the different domestic spheres of women and men within Puritan society, Augé provides a trailblazing archaeological study of magical practice and its relationship to gender in the Anglo-American culture of colonial New England. Investigating homestead sites dating from 1620 to 1725 in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Maine, Augé explains how to recognize objects and architectural details that colonists intended as defenses and boundaries against evil supernatural forces. She supports this archaeological work by examining references to magic in letters, diaries, sermons, medical texts, and documentation of court proceedings including the Salem witch trials. She also draws on folklore from the era to reveal that colonists simultaneously practiced magic and maintained their Puritan convictions. Augé exposes the fears and anxieties that motivated individuals to try to manipulate the supernatural realm, and she identifies gendered patterns in the ways they employed magic. She argues that it is essential for archaeologists to incorporate historical records and oral traditions in order to accurately interpret the worldviews and material culture of people who lived in the past.

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