Cultural Continuity among the Piscataway Indians of Colonial Maryland

Abstract

S CHOLARS examining the impact of European culture on native Americans have focused on two sharply different aboriginal responses to the arrival of English settlers. Some tribes-the Pequots and Narragansetts, for example-fought desperately to halt the English advance and were all but annihilated by the force of English arms before I70o.1 Others, like the Praying Indians of Massachusetts, accepted the newcomers without a fight but succumbed to European disease, to missionaries determined to civilize them, or to settlers eager to drive them from their lands.2 Whether the natives' response was violent or peaceful, the history of Indian-English contact in early America-even when it concentrates on the Indians rather than on the English-is all too often a tale of decline, destruction, and death. The scholarly literature provides important insights into the consequences of culture contact, but it fails to relate the whole story of Indian-English interaction along the Eastern seaboard. Current studies indicate that the natives had only two options: either accept the English presence and embrace their cultural 'presents,' or rebel against the intruders and face military subjugation.3 But the natives' precontact history and culture, their proximity to the newcomers, and the numbers and goals of the English