Firsting and lasting: writing Indians out of existence in New England

Abstract

Firsting and Lasting: Writing Indians Out of Existence in New England. By Jean M. O'Brien. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010. 269 pages. $25.00 (paperback). Jean O'Brien offers an insightful and thoroughly researched examination of how ordinary non-Indians in New England from the early to late nineteenth century contributed to the processes of Euro-American colonialism that, in this particular case, erased Native Americans from both the past and present (xii). To O'Brien, the proliferation of New England town histories written by local authors and amateur historians during the nineteenth century, as well as the at-large national authence who consumed these publications, constituted a deliberate ideological project to divest New England of its indigenous history and Native presence, with severe consequences for Indians who continued to inhabit the region during this period (xxiii). In particular, O'Brien argues the system of transforming what happened [a long and continuing process of colonialism and Indian survival] into that which is said to have happened [Indian extinction] justified the violence and dispossession perpetrated by EuroAmericans against indigenous in the pursuit of establishing Anglo civilization and social order in North America (xxi). Consequently, these New England authors constructed a hegemonic discourse of the past that not only discarded the continent's original inhabitants and their histories, but also asserted the superiority of American identity and modernity. However, as O'Brien concludes, Native resisted such colonialism by embracing change in order to make their way in a changing world, as they had done for centuries, most notably evidenced by nineteenth-century Pequot activist William Apess (145). Specifically, O'Brien thematically charts the evolution of this hegemonic ideological project throughout her monograph, with a concluding chapter on how New England Indians resisted such colonialism. Beginning with Firsting, O'Brien demonstrates how New England writers replaced Native indigeneity, or the identification of Indians as the original occupants of New England lands, with an Anglo indigeneity that emphasized a mythos that Native willingly, peacefully, and legally conceded all their lands to Euro-Americans (51). Therefore, these authors reinvented the Puritans, their ancestors, and other Anglo-immigrants as the rightful and first settlers of New England, completely purging the region's history of an Indian past and presence. Subsequently, O'Brien details the process of Replacing that New England writers and their consumers conceived of to justify this displacement of indigenous peoples. By positing Indians as the antithesis to modernity and civilization, as evidenced by New England monuments, place-names, artistic commemorations, archaeological excavations, and material culture from the nineteenth century, local historians naturalized the notion of rightful English replacement of Indian peoples in both the past and present (103). Ultimately, New England authors and authences engaged in Lasting, or the creation of a literary motif of Indian extinction that purified New England history and society of an indigenous existence. In doing so, these writers denied the contemporary reality that Native populaces embraced modernity, instead Grafting a narrative of Indians' racial degeneracy (i.e. the loss of Indian full-bloods) and declension, all of which was meant to convey the triumph of Anglo-American civilization and modernity at the expense of indigenous peoples. Yet in conclusion, O'Brien evinces the many ways New England Indians defied this historical revisionism and literary colonialism, from engaging in wage labor and the capitalist marketplace, to the political activism epitomized by William Apess, who contested the hegemonic narrative of Indian extinction in New England by trumpeting Indians as equal citizens and [the] right of Indian nations to exist as sovereign entities (188-189). …