Cultural Brokers and Intercultural Politics: New York-Iroquois Relations, 1664-1701

Abstract

American colonial history seems almost hopelessly fragmented. Competing analytical perspectives on diverse ethnic groups, regions, colonies, counties, and towns have produced shelves of imaginative studies, but a coherent whole remains elusive. Two of the most fruitful of the various interpretive strategies are the community study, which stresses the minutiae of everyday social interaction, and the American perspective, which sees the continent as a grand stage for the interaction of Indian, European, and African cultures. For all their apparent differences, the community study approach and the North American perspective are intrinsically complementary. The strengths and weaknesses of each -rich detail and narrow vision in the first approach, broad canvas and sweeping generalization in the second-balance those of the other. The operational problem is how to achieve a synthesis, how exactly to connect the local community to wider developments.' Anthropological theorists have been struggling with much the same dilemma in their efforts to integrate traditional ethnological analysis of small communities with a world-systems approach. One promising avenue of inquiry examines links between local political structures and regional and international sources of power, for in local hands frequently lay the fate of both the imperial powers of the modern