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

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erin.wood, July 18, 2007 (view all comments by erin.wood)
Sixteenth-eighteenth century North American history is told as Euro-American history or as the history of the Europeans coming to the ?New World,? planting their seeds and building a nation. However, this story is only one-sided and is told by looking west. The story forgets that this land once belonged to a thriving self-sufficient world of many Indian nations. Therefore, a ?visual reorientation? of this history is needed. By switching the perspective and facing east the story is then told as North America being the ?Old World? and Europe as being the ?New World,? which is filled with strange new people, ideas and material objects. In his book, Facing East from Indian Country, Daniel Richter allows readers to gain this perspective of switching old and new world and see how the Indians viewed the newcomers. The book traces the basic frameworks, readers have come to known such as contact, colonization and independence, but instead it is contact with the Europeans, then coexistence and finally a lost battle for independence.

Richter begins the story in the contact period with imaginative stories to allow the reader to visualize the Indian ?Imagining a Distant New World.? Richter argues in this first chapter early contact in the sixteenth century, especially with Hernando de Soto and Jacques Cartier, exacerbated problems like ?population movements, conquests and political cultural change? (39) that were already set in motion before the arrival of the Europeans. Their arrival led to more conflict among the natives as they tried to endure the diseases, and fight for alliances and the new material goods.

Second, he discusses how the Indians confronted ?the trio of economic, ecological and epidemiological forces, [which] remade Indian country.? (41) As for economic forces, he argues, the Indians accepted trade with the newcomers and while they did not use the material goods they received from the Europeans as they were intended to be used, these new items brought power and status as well as an easier life style for the Indians. Ecological forces included the destruction of beaver population and its ecological consequences, a new meaning of land ownership, single-crop plow agriculture, such as only corn in one field instead of the Mesoamerican Triad in a single field, destruction of hunting and fishing grounds, and domesticated animals and the destruction of Indian crops. Richter argues, therefore, that with the contrasting ways of using land, they could not share the same ecosystem. As for epidemiological forces, disease and starvation had the most profound effects on Indian country, but the Indians learned they either had to melt into one pot or become laborers for the English. Richter argues that confronting the trio forced the Indians to try and rebuild their Indian country more significant (68).

In the middle part of the book, Richter suggests the only way the Indians were going to survive was to cooperate and coexist on the same land as the Europeans. He presents the idea of them living parallel paths. He retells the stories of Pocahontas, King Philip and Kateri Tekakwitha as evidence of cooperation and coexistence. Furthermore, he uses two primary sources of Indian words to prove how they had a ?cultural coexistence? but it was based on Indian terms. The first is a confessional given by a Natick man named Monequassun, in the 1650s. His confessional was recorded and then read by Europeans on both sides of the ocean. The second is a speech given by a Mohawk orator to the colonial officials in New York in the aftermath of King Philip?s War. Richter suggests, both of these sources, if read carefully, are proof of the cooperation and coexistence the Indians offered.

In the final chapters of the book, Richter argues the parallel coexistence, which he compares to two poles of a ladder with shaky rungs between, eventually collapsed in 1763. It was in this year, the French and Indian war had come to an end and Treaty of Paris (1763) ended all hopes for a peaceful coexistence. At this time, with France and Spain gone from the imperial ring surrounding the natives, both the English and the Indians began their wars for Independence. However, it was a losing war for the natives and they were pushed farther from their homelands. Furthermore, Richter argues these wars for independence brought greater racial tension and nativism, which continued to build and erupted with the removal of the Indians in the 1830s to the western frontiers of the United States.

Readers must have an open-mind and creative imagination when reading Richter?s book. Richter?s prose and own imagination gives the reader the sense that sources of information do exist, when in fact they do not. However, the ?visual reorientation? will allow readers to gain a new perspective of early American history. Facing east, now the story is one of cooperation and coexistence as well as the struggle for independence and a new sense of racial identity for the Indians. It is the new history of America and her people.

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Product Details

ISBN:

9780674011175

Author:

Richter, Daniel K.

Publisher:

Harvard University Press

Location:

Cambridge, Mass.

Subject:

General

Subject:

History

Subject:

United states

Subject:

Indians of north america

Subject:

United States - General

Subject:

United States - Colonial Period

Subject:

Indians, treatment of

Subject:

United States / Colonial Period(1600-1775)

Subject:

United States Politics and government.

Subject:

Indians of North America -- History.

Subject:

US History-Colonial America

Copyright:

2001

Edition Description:

Trade paper

Series Volume:

2002-04

Publication Date:

April 2003

Binding:

TRADE PAPER

Grade Level:

General/trade

Language:

English

Illustrations:

15 halftones, 4 maps

Pages:

336

Dimensions:

9.25 x 6.125 in .81 lb