Native Americans and the Early Republic

Abstract

Americans and Early Edited by Frederick E. Hoxie, Ronald Hoffman, and Peter J. Albert. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1999. Pp. xi, 370. Illustrations. Cloth, $49.50; paper, $17.50.) Several great scholarly spirits hover over Americans and Early Republic, a collection of essays edited by Frederick E. Hoxie, Ronald Hoffman, and Peter J. Albert. Bernard W. Sheehan's Seeds of Extinction (1973), Robert F. Berkhofer's White Man's (1978), Roy Harvey Pearce's Savagism and Civilization (1967), and Anthony Wallace's Death and Rebirth of Seneca (1969) all loom large, at least in footnotes to these pieces. That this should be so is a bit surprising, not because any of these books do not still merit reading, but because most recent of them was published over twenty years ago; Wallace's book is now thirty years old. For James H. Merrell, author of collection's closing essay, this observation merely underscores fact that frustratingly few scholars have approached topic of Americans in post-Revolutionary era. As he puts it, had anyone suggested this volume or conference out of which it grew twenty years ago, it would probably have been called off for lack of interest and expertise (333). Merrell's frustration with this scholarly state of affairs is compounded because, in his view, the early national period is most important era in history of North America's peoples (336). This volume goes a long way toward filling that scholarly void, and in doing so, it makes a persuasive case that Merrell is right. Nine of essays assembled here are divided into three loose categories. first, Patterns of Interaction, includes essays by Reginald Horsman on The Policy of an `Empire of Liberty'; Richard White on The Fictions of Patriarchy; and Theda Perdue on Native Women in Early Republic. second grouping of essays, Native Communities and New Nation, features Daniel K. Richter's examination of Indians and Pennsylvanians between 1783 and 1794; R. David Edmunds's look at Black Hoof and the Loyal Shawnees; Daniel H. Usner Jr.'s consideration of Iroquois Livelihood and Jeffersonian Agrarianism; and Joel W. Martin's essay on Native American Religious Renewal, Resistance, and Accommodation. third and final section takes up Native American Images and includes two essays, one by French scholar Elise Marienstras on The Common Man's Indian and other by art historian Vivien Green Fryd on sculptural program of United States Capitol. These three sections are bracketed by Colin G. Calloway's Prologue, and Merrell's Afterword. Perhaps because of state of this field, a major thesis about Americans in these years has not yet emerged. Nor do these essays attempt any grand synthesis or paint any big picture. Instead, they range widely over subjects and methods, and what results is something kaleidoscopic. White's sweeping essay on ways Euro-Americans fictionalized Natives, an act that he believes provides a key to relations between Indians and whites in early republic (63), is matched by Richter's close, careful dissection of relations between Indians and Pennsylvanians during a specific eleven-year period. If there is no grand narrative to describe Native-American experience in early republic-at least not yet-then there are several smaller areas of consensus here. …