Colonial American Indian History
Anderson, Karen. Chain Her By One Foot: The Subjugation of Native Women in SeventeenthCentury New France. New York: Routledge, 1991.
Discusses how Native American culture was disrupted by the arrival of Europeans,
particularly gender roles. Employs Foucault power theory to demonstrate how disease,
war, famine and trade promoted the subjugation of women among the Huron and
Montaignais Indians.
Axtell, James. The European and the Indian: Essays in the Ethnohistory of Colonial North
America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1981.
Ten essays that employ a wide range of interdisciplinary approaches to present both a
discussion and example of ethnohistory in Colonial America. Themes addressed include
methodology, image, kinship, language, and cultural adaptations.
_____. The Invasion Within: the Contest of Cultures in Colonial North America. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1985.
Ethnohistory examination of French and British efforts to civilize Native American
populations that emphasizes socio-cultural interaction and adaptation.
Berleth, Richard. Bloody Mohawk: The French and Indian War & American Revolution on New
York’s Frontier. Black Dome Press, 2009.
“Bloody Mohawk offers an enjoyable and readable run through the history of the
Mohawk River Valley, embroiling the French and British empires, the Iroquois
Federation and various American settlers ranging from Dutch fur-traders to German
farmers to New England's evangelicals. I love the way Berleth balances a mighty
landscape against equally compelling characters. Constant warfare made this strategic
waterway a scary place for much of the 18th century, a terror spread over a landscape of
rivers, lakes and portages long obscured by modern development. Berleth's keen sense of
geography makes readers want to get out their bicycles, canoes and walking boots to
explore the physical terrain he animates with historical figures that show the power of
dueling empires and organized Native Americans.” - Kathleen Hulser, Public Historian,
Senior Curator of History, New-York Historical Society
Bross, Kristina. Dry Bones and Indian Sermons: Praying Indians in Colonial America. Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press, 2004.
"In this important and provocative book, Kristina Bross argues that seventeenth-century
accounts of British missionary work among the Indians in colonial New England
constitute a 'Transatlantic debate' (p. 101), in which English writers on both sides of the
Atlantic Ocean used the of the Indian proselyte to construct their own spiritual and
national identities. . . . Bross's precise and sophisticated attention to the discursive
dimensions of this literature distinguishes her work from that of other scholars who have
recently turned to Puritan missionary writing to reconstruct the life of indigenous peoples
in colonial New England. . . . Her subtly nuanced close readings effectively demonstrate
the literary sophistication and historical significance of these works, and her analysis of
subjectivity within a 'Triangular' structure among Indians, colonists, and English Puritans
is an important contribution to postcolonial studies of early America."—Michael P.
Clark, University of California, Irvine, The Journal of American History, June 2005
Calloway, Colin G. The American Revolution in Indian Country: Crisis and Diversity in Native
Americans Communities. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Study of eight Indian communities during the Revolutionary War. Emphasizes Indian
agency in tracing their diplomacy, strategies, and conflicts.
_____. New Worlds for All: Indians, Europeans and the Remaking of Early America. Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins Press, 1997.
Examines the early interactions of Indians with English, French, and Dutch colonists.
Calloway demonstrates how Native American’s influenced mainstream Euro-American
culture.
Cronon, William. Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England.
New York: Hill and Wang, 1983.
Traces the impact of man on ecosystems, beginning with Indians and following through
to colonists. Cronon explains how religious and economic theory impacted the use of the
land.
Delage, Denys. Bitter Feast: Amerindians and Europeans in Northeastern North America, 160064. trans. by Jane Brierley. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1993.
Study of the collision between Native Americans and Europeans in the Northeast from
first contact through the withdrawal of the Dutch in 1664. The Hurons are the center
focus, though the Iroquois are also addressed in detail.
Dowd, Gregory Evans. A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian Struggle for Unity,
1745-1815. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991.
Traces intertribal relations and religious revitalizations during the last half of the
eighteenth century. Dowd explores commonalities and pan-Indianism among the
Delawares, Shawnees, Cherokees, and Creeks.
Drinnon, Richard. Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian Hating and Empire Building.
Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996.
Reveals the long-entrenched relationship between racism and expansion. Drinnon
demonstrates the American drive to “civilize” the “savages” in three regions: North
America, the Philippines, and Vietnam.
DuVal, Kathleen. The Native Ground: Indians and Colonists in the Heart of the Continent.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007.
“In The Native Ground, Kathleen DuVal argues that it was Indians rather than European
would-be colonizers who were more often able to determine the form and content of the
relations between the two groups. Along the banks of the Arkansas and Mississippi
rivers, far from Paris, Madrid, and London, European colonialism met neither
accommodation nor resistance but incorporation. Rather than being colonized, Indians
drew European empires into local patterns of land and resource allocation, sustenance,
goods exchange, gender relations, diplomacy, and warfare. Placing Indians at the center
of the story, DuVal shows both their diversity and our contemporary tendency to
exaggerate the influence of Europeans in places far from their centers of power.
Europeans were often more dependent on Indians than Indians were on them.” – From
the Press.
Faggins, Barbara A. African and Indians: An Afrocentric analysis of Contacts between Africans
and Indians in Colonial Virginia. New York: Routledge, 2001.
This unique text examines the union of Africans and American Indians in Virginia during
colonial times.
Gutierrez, Ramon. When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Away: Marriage, Sexuality, and
Power in New Mexico, 1500-1846. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1991.
Controversially explores three eras in Pueblo culture, beginning with the pre-European
contact Indians, the Spanish occupation, and the Mexican nation. All eras are bound
together by themes of power, sexuality, and nation building.
Hatley, Tom. Dividing Paths: Cherokees and South Carolinians through the Era of Revolution.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Examines Cherokee and South Carolina history to demonstrate their mutual cultural
impact on the regions geopolitics. Examining war, politics, and economics, Hately
constructs a single interwoven history from Charleston’s 1680 establishment until the
first US-Cherokee treaty in 1785.
Hudson, Charles M and Carmen Chaves Tesser. The Forgotten Centuries : Indians and
Europeans in the American South, 1521-1704. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1994.
Seventeen essays in four sections devoted to Spanish exploration, specific communities,
transformation of indigenous societies, and the constitution of new societies from a
patchwork of predecessors. Though at times a bit disconnected, the text offers a broad
approach to cultural transmission and change.
Jennings, Francis. The Invasion of America: Indians, Colonialism, and the Cant of Conquest.
Chapel Hill: Published for the Institute of Early American History and Culture by University of
North Carolina Press, 1975.
Traces Indian-Puritan conflict in the colonial era; the first half is a chronicle of white
expansion and conquering of Indians; the second half offers a case study in southwestern
New England. The text is particularly concerned with dispelling myths about early whiteIndian relations regarding trade and war.
Josephy, Alvin M., Jr. ed. America in 1492: The World of the Indian Peoples Before the Arrival
of Columbus. New York: Knopf, 1992.
A collection of essays by established scholars that describe Native American culture
before Columbus. The text tackles myths of the “noble savage” and the “debased
human,” and it illustrates diversity of culture among the various tribes. The text also
includes a helpful chapter referenced annotated bibliography.
Kupperman, Karen Ordahl. Indians and English: Facing Off in Early America. Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 2000.
“In this vividly written book, prize-winning author Karen Ordahl Kupperman refocuses
our understanding of encounters between English venturers and Algonquians all along
the East Coast of North America in the early years of contact and settlement. All parties
in these dramas were uncertain—hopeful and fearful—about the opportunity and
challenge presented by new realities. Indians and English both believed they could
control the developing relationship. Each group was curious about the other, and
interpreted through their own standards and traditions. At the same time both came from
societies in the process of unsettling change and hoped to derive important lessons by
studying a profoundly different culture.” – From the Press
Merrell, James. The Indians New World: Catawbas and Their Neighbors from European Contact
through the Era of Removal. Chapel Hill: Published for the Institute of Early American History
and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia, by the University of North Carolina Press, 1989.
Uses archeology, anthropology, and folklore to trace a Carolina Piedmont tribe from the
sixteenth century until mid nineteenth century focusing on the Indians’ adaptations as
they interacted with disease, diplomats, missionaries, and traders.
Oberg, Michael Leroy. Dominion and Civility: English Imperialism, Native America, and the
First American Frontiers, 1585-1685. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003.
“Michael Leroy Oberg considers the history of Anglo-Indian relations in transatlantic
context while viewing the frontier as a zone where neither party had the upper hand. He
tells how the English pursued three sets of policies in America—securing profit for their
sponsors, making lands safe from both European and native enemies, and "civilizing" the
Indians—and explains why the British settlers found it impossible to achieve all of these
goals.” – From the Press
_____. UNCAS: First of the Mohegans. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006.
"Oberg (SUNY, Geneseo) covers all aspects of intertribal and Colonist-Indian relation
and discusses military actions and horrible atrocities committed by both white and Native
Americans. . . . Thoroughly researched in archival and ethnological sources, this book
gives Uncas his due and clarifies trends in competing cultures. Summing up: Highly
recommended. General and academic collections."—Choice Magazine
O'Brien, Jean. Dispossession by Degrees: Indian Land and Identity in Natick, Massachusetts,
1650-1790. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Examines the progressive dispossession of New England Indians and how they retained
identity despite territorial pressures and subsequent cultural adaptation. Rather than
disappear, Indians resisted European expansion and co-opted English cultural practices
and institutions to rebuild their own communities.
Plane, Ann Marie. Colonial Intimacies: Indian Marriage in Early New England. Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 2002.
"Viewing the inhabitants of early New England—natives as well as newcomers—through
the lens of marriage, this extraordinary book opens up new vistas onto a time and place
we thought we knew, and knew well. Ann Marie Plane's imaginative use of intractable
sources gives colonization a human face; through her tales of love (and lust), of loss (and
gain), she gives voice to people long silent, bringing these obscure folk not only to light,
but also to life. Colonial Intimacies will change the way we think about New England and
early America, about the colonizer and the colonized, and about families from the
Puritans' day to our own."—James H. Merrell, Lucy Maynard Salmon Professor of
History, Vassar College
Richter, Daniel K. The Ordeal of the Longhouse: The Peoples of the Iroquois League in the Era
of European Colonization. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992.
Examines Iroquois from pre-contact until about 1730, exploring gender, clan, and
community patterns of obligation to emphases creative adaptations in politics and
diplomacy that preserved cultural autonomy. Effectively demonstrates how historians
should use oral tradition.
_____. Facing East from Indian Country : a Native History of Early America. Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 2001.
Examines colonization from the Indian perspective, beginning with the reconstruction of
communities and the impact of disease, and followed by an analysis regarding
Pocahontas, Mohawk Kateri Tekawitha, and Metacom. The text dabbles in discourse
analysis and illustrates how to infer Indian perspective from European records.
Saunt, Claudio. A New Order of Things: Property, Power, and the Transformation of the Creek
Indians, 1733-1816. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
“Claudio Saunt vividly depicts a dramatic transformation in the eighteenth century that
overturned the world of the powerful and numerous Creek Indians and forever changed
the Deep South. As the Creeks amassed a fortune in cattle and slaves, new property
fostered a new possessiveness, and government by coercion bred confrontation. A New
Order of Things is the first book to chronicle this decisive transformation in America's
early history, a transformation that left deep divisions between the wealthy and poor,
powerful and powerless.” – From the Press
Shannon, Timothy J. Indians and the Colonists at the Crossroads of Empire: The Albany
Congress of 1754. Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 2002.
“In the first book on the subject in more than forty-five years, Timothy J. Shannon
definitively rewrites the historical record on the Albany Congress. Challenging the
received wisdom that has equated the Congress and the plan of colonial union it produced
with the origins of American independence, Shannon demonstrates conclusively the
Congress's importance in the wider context of Britain's eighteenth-century Atlantic
empire. In the process, the author poses a formidable challenge to the Iroquois Influence
Thesis. The Six Nations, he writes, had nothing to do with the drafting of the Albany
Plan, which borrowed its model of constitutional union not from the Iroquois but from
the colonial delegates' British cousins.” – From the Press
Shoemaker, Nancy. A Strange Likeness: Becoming Red and White in Eighteenth-Century North
America. New York : Oxford University Press, 2004.
Examines cultural transmissions and entrenchment along racial lines through the medium
of eighteenth-century Indian councils and treaties. She demonstrates similar outlooks
about land, government, record-keeping, international alliances, gender, and the human
body, and also demonstrates the origin of popular stereotypes.
Silverman, David J. Red Brethren: The Brothertown and Stockbridge Indians and the Problem of
Race in Early America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2010.
“Red Brethren traces the evolution of Indian ideas about race under this relentless
pressure. In the early seventeenth century, indigenous people did not conceive of
themselves as Indian. They sharpened their sense of Indian identity as they realized that
Christianity would not bridge their many differences with whites, and as they fought to
keep blacks out of their communities. The stories of Brothertown and Stockbridge shed
light on the dynamism of Indians' own racial history and the place of Indians in the racial
history of early America.” – From the Press.
_____. Faith and Boundaries: Colonists, Christianity, and Community Among the Wampanoag
Indians of Martha’s Vineyard, 1600-1871. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
“This book examines how the Wamapanoag Indians' adoption of Christianity and other
selective borrowing from English culture contributed to Indian/English coexistence and
the long-term survival of Wamapanoag communities on the island of Martha's Vineyard,
even as the racial barrier between peoples grew more rigid. On an island marked by
centralized English authority, missionary commitment, and an Indian majority, the
Wampanoags' adaptation to English culture, especially Christianity, checked violence
while safeguarding their land, community, and ironically, even customs. Yet the
colonists' exploitation of Indian land and labor exposed the limits of Christian fellowship
and thus hardened racial division.” – From the Press
Stevens, Laura M. The Poor Indians: British Missionaries, Native Americans and Colonial
Sensibility. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006.
” In The Poor Indians, Laura Stevens delves deeply into the language and ideology
British missionaries used to gain support, and she examines their wider cultural
significance. Invoking pity and compassion for "the poor Indian"—a purely fictional
construct—British missionaries used the Black Legend of cruelties perpetrated by
Spanish conquistadors to contrast their own projects with those of Catholic missionaries,
whose methods were often brutal and deceitful. They also tapped into a remarkably
effective means of swaying British Christians by connecting the latter's feelings of
religious superiority with moral obligation. Describing mission work through metaphors
of commerce, missionaries asked their readers in England to invest, financially and
emotionally, in the cultivation of Indian souls. As they saved Indians from afar,
supporters renewed their own faith, strengthened the empire against the corrosive effects
of paganism, and invested in British Christianity with philanthropic fervor.” – From the
Press
Trelease, Allen W. Indian Affairs in Colonial New York: The Seventeenth Century. Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 2010.
“First published in 1960, Indian Affairs in Colonial New York remains the only onevolume study of Indian-European relations in seventeenth-century New York. In the first
half of this book, Allen W. Trelease describes the Dutch period that followed Henry
Hudson's 1609 voyage and details New Netherland's dealings with the Algonquian
peoples of the Hudson Valley and Long Island. The second half of the book, addressing
the English period after 1664, emphasizes the colonists' relations with the Iroquois. Still
widely cited and read, this pioneering work remains an authoritative study of its subject
and a valuable contribution to the historiography of both seventeenth-century colonial
New York and Indian-European relations in this formative period.” – From the press.
Trigger, Bruce. Children of the Aataentsic: A History of the Huron People to 1660. Montreal:
McGill- Queen's University Press, 1976.
A “definitive two-volume ethnohistory of the Huron people... [It] eschews the traditional
Indian- White relations format and introduces us to Indian people ‘who had worthy
ambitions of their own and who were, and are, able to conduct their own affairs and to
interact intelligently with Europeans.’” –James Ronda, Ethnohistory, Vol.24, No. 3.
(Summer, 1977), pp. 287-288.
Trigger, Bruce. Natives and Newcomers: Canada's "Heroic Age" Reconsidered. Kingston:
McGill- Queen's University Press, 1985.
Expands Canada’s “Heroic Age” beyond traditional boundaries by beginning before
Jacques Cartier and including a historiography guided by the intent to “challenge
traditional interpretations of the past.” Chapters address various issues from the myth of
the “noble savage” to in fluence of “plagues and preachers.”
Usner, Daniel H. Jr. Indians, Settlers and Slaves in a Frontier Exchange Economy: The Lower
Mississippi Valley Before 1783. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992.
Offers “a history of relations among Indians, Europeans, and Africans; and a history that
brings the story of all three to bear on an important current debate…. Participants in the
debate over the ‘transition to capitalism’ will here find the many peoples of the Lower
Mississippi shaping, and affected by, economic developments.” --Gregory Dowd, The
American Historical Review, Vol. 98, No. 1. (Feb., 1993), pp. 233-234.
Vaughan, Alden T. Transatlantic Encounters: American Indians in Britain, 1500-1776. New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
Transatlantic Encounters examines the diverse origins and experiences of approximately
175 American Indians and Inuits who traveled to the British Isles before the American
Revolution. Their homelands ranged from northern Canada to Brazil, their ages from
infant to nonagenarian, their statuses from slave (the largest category) to "emperor," their
occupations from warrior to missionary. Some American natives died soon after arrival,
but others remained as long as fourteen years and returned home; still others, their arrival
and death dates undocumented, may have endured long lives abroad. And always, Indians
and Inuits fascinated the British people, whether the Americans were captives or on
commercial display, interpreters-in-training, or voluntary voyagers to petition the
monarch and tour Britain's famous sites. British artists painted their portraits and eminent
writers invoked them in plays and essays. In the imperial crisis of 1776, Indian diplomats
who had been to London would staunchly support the British Empire.” – From the Press
White, Richard. The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes
Region, 1650-1815. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
Traces the exchange between Great Lakes region Indians and the European cultures they
met. This geographic and cultural location, which White terms “the middle ground,”
illustrates the strategic interactions of European and Indian cultures and demonstrates
how the two interacted for their mutual benefit in some common forum.
Most recent compilation by Meaghan Heisinger (2011)
Previously compiled by: Monica Butler (2007)
Annotated by: Matthew Garrett (2007)