Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America

“History is an imaginative creation.”

This quote from US historian Carl Becker (1873-1945) inspires Richter’s method of recreating historical scenes to delve into the psyche of a population. Richter follows this method starting in Chapter 1 when he recasts such scenes as the landing of John Cabot’s crew and the abduction of an Indigenous child from an Indigenous perspective.

“These efforts to reach out to people of alien and dangerous ways are more striking than the fact that, in the end, enmity won out over friendship.”

One of Richter’s main points in his book is that the tragic history of relations between Euro-Americans and Indigenous people could easily have gone differently. Early Indigenous efforts to make sense of such European symbols as flags and crucifixes, and to make alliances with the Europeans, showed that Indigenous people were initially willing to accommodate European culture.

“The chiefs are generally the poorest among them […] for instead of their receiving anything […] these Indian chiefs are made to give to the populace.”

This quote from a Dutch colonist conveys some of the differences in the economic values of Indigenous people and Europeans. For Indigenous people, “status and authority went not with those who had the most, but to those in a position to give the most away” (52). Indigenous leaders used luxury items like copper and wampum not to show off but to signal that they were able to provide for their people; hoarding things was considered antisocial. Richter contrasts this with the acquisitive and possessive habits common in Europe’s individual-oriented society.

“Native communities treated land as a ‘resource,’ which could not in itself be owned any more than could the air or the sea.”

This was a key difference between Indigenous and Euro-American views of property ownership. Although Indigenous people also had the concept of private property, their attitude toward land was more communal and tribe-oriented. The European tendency was to treat land as a commodity owned by an individual.

“Our fathers had plenty of deer and skins, our plains were full of deer, as also our woods, and of turkeys, and our coves full of fish and fowl […] But these English having gotten our land, they with scythes cut down the grass, and with axes fell the trees; their cows and horses eat the grass, and their hogs spoil our clam banks, and we shall all be starved.”

This lament is spoken by a Narragansett chief in 1642, describing the ill effects of European farming habits and practices, so different from the Narragansett people’s already well-established style of farming and interacting with nature. Clashes like this one occurred across eastern North America as resource-intensive European farming methods disrupted Indigenous ways of life.

“The Indians […] affirm, that before the arrival of the Christians, and before the small pox broke out amongst them, they were ten times as numerous as they now are.”

The words of a Dutch colonist in the 1650s, as countless Indigenous people were dying of smallpox and other diseases. The pattern began in Jamestown in 1617, when “a great mortality” struck whites and Indigenous people alike, affecting the latter more strongly because they were more susceptible. The impact of European pathogens on Indigenous populations, little understood at the time, shaped the trajectory of early American history.

“Native people were anything but passive victims unable to change […] ‘It is exactly this triumph of the human spirit over adversity that is the great story.’”

Richter quotes a book by Nathan Huggins on the history of African Americans and applies it to Indigenous people. Both groups showed extraordinary adaptability and resilience in facing oppression.

“Our first work is expulsion of the savages to gain the free range of the country for increase of Cattle, swine, etc. It is infinitely better to have no heathen among us, who at best were but as thorns in our sides, than to be at peace and league with them.”

Virginia Governor Francis Wyatt explicitly proposed ethnic cleansing as war raged between settlers and the Indigenous successors to Powhatan in the 1620s. Richter uses this quote as a measure of the deterioration in Indigenous/English relations since the Pocahontas/John Rolfe marriage. The conflict continued with intense English casualties and ended with the English offering peace terms to the Powhatan Confederacy, but not before they cruelly jailed and assassinated the Powhatan chief Opechancanough.

“A myth is a story […] which explains a problem […] Very often the problem being ‘solved’ by a myth is a contradiction or paradox, something which is beyond the power of reason or rational logic to resolve.”

Richter offers this quote from religion scholar James Oliver Robinson to explain the acceptance of European religious ideas among some Indigenous people. “Myths,” like that of Kateri Tekakwitha, had enormous power to shape cultural narrative and affect the course of history.

“So Native religions were inclusivist, ready to incorporate new ideas and ceremonies, and generally tolerant of differences of opinion, as long as those differences did not result in perceived harm to other people.”

Indigenous views of religion contrasted sharply with the Judeo-Christian tradition of Europe, which was exclusive, preaching salvation by faith in God and Christ alone. The inclusivity of Indigenous spiritual traditions facilitated the acceptance of Christianity among many.

“Bacon’s Rebellion was occasioned purely by the governor and council refusing to let the people go out against the Indians who at that time annoyed the frontiers.”

Richter sees Bacon’s Rebellion as emblematic of the new Euro-American attitude toward Indigenous people, one that regarded them as a nuisance rather than an integral part of America with equal rights to the land. It also explains the protective stance that the British colonial governments tended to take toward Indigenous peoples in restraining the land-hungry colonists.

“Let it be buried in oblivion, for if any mischief should befall them we should not be free of it, seeing we are one body.”

From a diplomatic statement made by the Mohawk tribe to English colonists, referring specifically to some “mischief and harm” done by fellow Mohawks. It reflects fear of reprisal by the English and expresses the community spirit that bound the tribe together.

“The Dutch say we are brothers and that we are joined together with chains, but that lasts only as long as we have beavers […] After that we are no longer thought of.”

The Dutch settlers of New Netherland were friendly toward Indigenous people, but only so long as they had something worth trading for, as proven by brutal wars that the colony waged upon other “less fortunate” tribes of the Lower Hudson Valley (144). The quote suggests the self-interest, on the part of whites, that often lay at the heart of Indigenous-European relations.

“[W]hat began as a trade for the skins of deer was transformed almost immediately into a trade for the skins of Indians.”

This quote captures the reality of how quickly a desire for material goods turned into violence in the form of enslaved labor. The Spanish are known to have traded Indigenous people, including those who had become Christians, as enslaved laborers, sometimes in the context of war captivity.

“[T]o preserve the balance between us and the French is the great ruling principle of the modern Indian politics.”

Indigenous people came to learn that direct military confrontation with a European power, as well as over-dependence on any one European power, was disastrous to their survival. Thus, they strove to maintain a precarious balance between advantageous connections with the English, French, and Spanish.

“The King is the common father of all his people, White and Red.”

This quote from the Virginia Governor Francis Fauquier encapsulates the “Great Father” motif so common among white leaders in their relations with Indigenous peoples, particularly the protective stance the British monarch often took in carving out a definite place for them in the empire. Both Indigenous peoples and British colonists “found political stability in a transatlantic imperial framework” (171).

“A modern Indian cannot subsist without Europeans and would handle a flint ax or any other rude utensil used by his ancestors very awkwardly […] what was only conveniency at first is now become necessity.”

These words of a colonial official illustrate the extent to which Indigenous people became involved in the consumer revolution coming to North America from Europe in the early 18th century. Indigenous people relied for their daily living on European goods, which increasingly replaced their homemade items.

“Socially and culturally, Indian and European histories lived parallel lives in the colonial world.”

Euro-American and Indigenous destinies were intertwined in colonial times, especially due to the power and organizing influence of the various European powers. This coexistence was disrupted later by growing racial animosity after the Seven Years’ War and the American Revolution.

“What then is the American, this new man? [...] He is neither an European, or the descendent of an European, hence that strange mixture of blood, which you will find in no other country.”

A well-known quote from the French-American writer Hector St. John de Crévecoeur, written toward the end of the Revolutionary War and describing the diverse strands—Indigenous, African, various European—that went into making the national identity of Americans. Note that Crévecoeur differentiates the American genetic identity from that of Europe. Note also that he conceives of Americans as something novel on the world stage—a new man—both genetically and politically.

“There were, then, at least two wars for independence—one Indian and one White. And both traced their origins to 1763.”

Richter asserts that, from the 1760s on, many Indigenous people desired to drive the Euro-Americans from the continent, and vice versa. Both sides saw this objective as an essential condition of “national independence and racial identity” (190), a point of view that evolved in the 1760s because of the deepening racial divide accompanying the French and Indian War.

“This land where ye dwell I have made for you and not for others.”

This quote is part of a religious revelation recounted in 1763 by the prophet Pontiac in which God castigated the Indigenous people of North America for allowing the whites among them and asserted that North America belonged to its Indigenous people alone. The quote signals a growing sense of racial solidarity among Indigenous groups who had previously seen one another as separate peoples.

“Who is there to mourn for Logan? Not one.”

John Logan was a Cayuga leader who sought revenge against whites after the slaughter of his family in 1774. Upon offering peace terms to end Lord Dunmore’s War, Logan issued a statement that movingly conveyed the tragedy of white cruelty toward Indigenous people. Published by Thomas Jefferson as Logan’s Lament, it was studied for its pathos by generations of American schoolchildren.

“I admit that there are good White men, [yet they] bear no proportion to the bad; the bad must be the strongest, for they rule. They do what they please. They enslave those who are not of their color, although created by the same Great Spirit who created us. They would make slaves of us if they could, but as they cannot do it, they kill us […] I know the long knives; they are not to be trusted.”

Part of a speech made by the Delaware leader Buckongeahelas to a group of his people, shortly before the wholesale slaughter of Indigenous people in Pennsylvania by the Paxton Boys in 1782. The deep distrust of whites expressed here reflects the widening racial divide of the late 18th century.