Polygamy: An Early American History by Sarah M. S. Pearsall

Abstract

Reviewed by: Polygamy: An Early American History by Sarah M. S. Pearsall Lindsay M. Keiter Polygamy: An Early American History. By Sarah M. S. Pearsall. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2019. 415 pages. Cloth, ebook. Sarah M. S. Pearsall's sweeping analysis of plural marriages, Polygamy: An Early American History, digs deep into conflicts over marital practices throughout the North American continent and the British Atlantic from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries. Polygamy, she shows, has long been misconstrued in the past and present as being about lust and sex. Like any form of marriage, polygamy was about power, both public and private, giving intimate decisions and behaviors political significance. She argues that in a variety of contexts, "plural unions marked status for men, and to a lesser degree [the] wives in them, and women's work palpably supported and augmented men's status" (140). She demonstrates how theological and intellectual conflicts over polygamy, well before the emergence of Mormonism, were central to debates about the structure and strength of both righteous households and enlightened nations. Her diverse examples of plural marriage practices in early America collectively demonstrate how the imposition of monogamy was—and is—a legacy of colonialism. This is a remarkable work of synthesis, encompassing an enormous geographic and chronological sweep. Pearsall makes creative use of a wide variety of sources to flesh out the stories of people whose voices were recorded in fragments, if at all, thereby centering the perspectives and experiences of the women and men deliberately marginalized in the historical record. Pearsall often compensates for the scarcity of direct testimony by creatively mining other sources, as when she devotes multiple pages to analyzing phrases about love and lust in Algonquin dictionaries to contextualize what polygamy may have meant for Makheabichtichiou, an Algonquian leader, and his three wives. As a whole, Pearsall's effort to question the "inherited and too often unquestioned structures of marriage, gender, and sexuality," as well as "notions of simple progress" (294), results in a beautifully and sensitively written book. The first three chapters explore conflicts between Indigenous people and European colonizers in the seventeenth century. Ironically, the effects of colonialism—labor reorganization and demographic disaster—made plural marriages more important as symbol and strategy for Indigenous political elites. Pearsall begins in New Spain, considering how plural marriage "was a symbol, a practice, and a rallying cry" (23) in both the 1597 Guale Rebellion in Florida and the 1680 Pueblo Revolt in New Mexico. In the 1630s, she then travels to the chillier climes of French Canada, where, to the delight of Jesuits, Makheabichtichiou—"'capitaine' of la Petite Nation" [End Page 418] (50)—enthusiastically embraced Christianity, renouncing the customs the Jesuits condemned, save one. The missionaries' hopes were blasted by Makheabichtichiou's refusal—or inability—to renounce two of his three wives. Though polygyny was a political choice that enhanced men's power, Pearsall argues that Makheabichtichiou's hands were tied when two of his wives refused to be baptized or to leave his household, revealing how "even a powerful leader was still constrained by larger structures of households, economies, and kinship" (71). Pearsall next moves eastward to consider how, amid the upheaval of King Philip's War, Mary Rowlandson's captivity narrative offers "a remarkable window onto Native practices of plural marriage and domestic life" (104). Rowlandson's captor Weetamoo (sachem of the Pocasset) was the third wife of the Narragansett sachem—a choice that "suggests a level of diplomatic desperation, as well as a possible willingness to sacrifice herself for her people" (105). Weetamoo was a critical ally of Metacom, also known as King Philip, and she was his sister-in-law twice over (Weetamoo's first husband was Metacom's brother, and Metacom married Weetamoo's sister). Within this context, polygamy emerges as a tactic of political alliance and survival in a society under enormous strain, and "Weetamoo's flashpoints of fury [toward Rowlandson] illuminate the cracks that threaten to split her world apart" (105). Thus, in these very different contexts, Pearsall argues convincingly that polygamy was not a static practice but was instead shaped by the demographic disaster and labor reorganization that resulted...