Legitimacies, Indian Identities, and the Law: The Politics of Sex and the Creation of History in Colonial New England

1998 ◽  
Vol 23 (01) ◽  
pp. 55-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann Marie Plane
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
New England ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
Racial Identities ◽  
Early American ◽  
American Law ◽  
History Of ◽  
Legal Structures ◽  
Colonial New England

In an early-eighteenth-century legal contest on Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts, an Indian leader, Jacob Seeknout, appealed a ruling that undermined his political authority. Seeknout's lawyer, Benjamin Hawes, crafted an argument that intertwined the sexual legitimacy of Seeknout's ancestors with his political legitimacy; at the same time, Hawes also linked Indians' collective chastity as a “nation” to their sovereign status. This paper examines the economic, religious, criminal, and historical contexts of this argument, exploring the history of Indians' conjugal practices and their reinvention as the criminal acts of fornication. The case illustrates some of the diverse sources of early American law, links between these legal structures and colonialism, and the importance for scholars of attending to the local level in exploring the power of colonial law to shape new racial identities.

The Demographic History of Colonial New England

1972 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 165-183 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Scott Smith
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
Demographic History ◽  
Extended Period ◽  
High Fertility ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Early American ◽  
High Dependency ◽  
History Of ◽  
Colonial New England ◽  
High Level

The central fact of the demographic history of early North America is rapid growth. Both Canada and the white population of the English colonies experienced increases of 2½ percent per year during the eighteenth century. Seventeenth-century rates, beginning from a low base and more influenced by immigration, were even higher. In contrast, the expansion of population in early modern Europe rarely exceeded 1 percent per annum over an extended period. Since Franklin and Malthus, interpretations of early American demography have centered on the high fertility associated with near universal marriage for women at a low average age. The extremely youthful population, high dependency ratio, and one of the largest mean census family sizes ever recorded all follow from the high level of fertility.

The Legal Status of Women in Early America: A Reappraisal

1983 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 129-151 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marylynn Salmon
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
Women's Rights ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Early American ◽  
American Law ◽  
History Of ◽  
Revolutionary America ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Status Of Women

In 1930 Richard B. Morris published Studies in the History of American Law: With Special Reference to the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. The monograph included a chapter on the legal status of colonial women that became extremely influential within a short time of its appearance. Morris's influence continues half a century later. Several books published in 1980 cite him as one of their primary authorities on women's rights: Linda K. Kerber, Women of the Republic: Intellect & Ideology in Revolutionary America; Lyle Koehler, A Search for Power: The ‘Weaker Sex’ in Seventeenth-Century New England; and Mary Beth Norton, Liberty's Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Women, 1750–1800. Other influential books and articles also rely heavily on Morris, including A Little Commonwealth: Family Life in Plymouth Colony by John Demos, ‘The Illusion of Change: Women and the American Revolution,’ by Joan Hoff Wilson, and ‘The Lady and the Mill Girl: Changes in the Status of Women in the Age of Jackson, 1800–1840,’ by Gerda Lerner. In fact, almost every published sentence on women's rights in early American law is followed by a footnote citing chapter three of Studies in the History of American Law. In The Bonds of Womanhood (1977), Nancy F. Cott declared that Morris's chapter ‘has become the standard essay on colonial women under the common law.’

The Use of Vattel in the American Law of Nations

2012 ◽  
Vol 106 (3) ◽  
pp. 547-571 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Richardson
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
International Law ◽  
International Peace ◽  
Founding Fathers ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
American Law ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Law ◽  
History Of International Law

Although careful scholarly treatment of the history of international law is now thriving, within U.S. courts that history now begins with one eighteenth-century treatise published in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, in 1758 and published in translation for modern readers under the aegis of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in 1916. This treatise is Emer de Vattel’s Droit des gens ou principes de la loi naturelle, appliqués à la conduite et aux affaires des nations et des souverains. My aim in this article is to appraise the elevation of Vattel to vaunted originalist heights in U.S. law. The claim that Vattel’s theory of the law of nations completely represents how the Founding Fathers (Founders) understood the law of nations should be rejected as a matter of history.

First Impressions and First Arrivals

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas Hunter
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
Human Migration ◽  
Biblical Hermeneutics ◽  
King Philip's War ◽  
Cotton Mather ◽  
Indigenous Lands ◽  
History Of ◽  
Colonial New England ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter relates the first decades of colonial interpretation of Dighton Rock after its markings were first described in 1680, mainly by John Danforth and Cotton Mather. It places the interpretation of the rock in the context of dispossession of Indigenous lands following the rebellion known as King Philip’s War. Erasure of Indigenous peoples from the history of colonial New England is discussed. It introduces contemporary theories rooted in Biblical hermeneutics of human migration and the relationship of Indigenous people to the rest of humanity, including ideas that they were descendants of Tartars, Canaanites, or the Lost Tribes of Israel. The author’s concept of White Tribism is explained.

Consumption

2020 ◽  
pp. 295-299
Author(s):  
Richard J. Kahn
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
North America ◽  
New England ◽  
Southern States ◽  
History Of

This brief chapter begins with a letter dated December 20, 1831, from Samuel Emerson of Kennebunk, Maine, commending the manuscript, particularly the volume on consumption, and agreeing with the “necessity of copious and repeated bleedings.” Barker promises a history of consumptive diseases as they have appeared in Maine and some other parts of New England since 1768, to be preceded by a history of the disease back to Hippocrates by Thomas Young. He notes that earlier in the eighteenth century consumption made up only about one-tenth of the bills of mortality but by the close of the century, it appears to have made up one-fourth of all deaths. Several physicians in North America have made valuable observations on consumption, though chiefly in the middle and Southern states; Barker will provide results of his inquiries and observations as it has appeared in the northern and eastern parts of the Union. He remarks about some cures that have come about by what are called by some, “the efforts of nature.”

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.

Hawthorne's Ritual Typology of the American Revolution

Prospects ◽  
1978 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 483-498
Author(s):  
Peter Shaw
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
New England ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
Nathaniel Hawthorne ◽  
Red Cross ◽  
Massachusetts Bay ◽  
Chronological Order ◽  
History Of

In the course of his career Nathaniel Hawthorne twice wrote the history of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century New England. He told the story for children in Grandfather's Chair (1841) and for adults in five related tales published between 1831 and 1838. These tales do not appear in chronological order among Hawthorne's collections, nor were they so written. But they are assigned prominent positions in the two volumes of Twice-Told Tales and in The Snow-Image and Other Tales. They contain a ritual history of protorevolutionary events in New England extending from the beginning of the settlement in Massachusetts Bay to the eve of the American Revolution. The key stories in this series and the events they deal with are “The May-Pole of Merry Mount,” concerning Governor Endicott's destruction of Thomas Morton's maypole in 1629; “Endicott and the Red Cross,” on Endicott's desecration of the British flag in protest at the appointment of a royal governor in 1634; “The Gray Champion,” on the people's defiance of tyrannous Governor Andros on the eve of his expulsion in 1689; “My Kinsman, Major Molineux,” introduced as an incident relating to mistreatment and expulsions of governors between 1689 and 1730; and “Howe's Masquerade,” on the expulsion of military governor General Howe, predicted at a masquerade ball given by him during the siege of Boston in 1775.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document