The European and the Indian: Essays in the Ethnohistory of Colonial North America [Paperback]

James Axtell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 4, 1982

Deals with the encounters of Europeans and Indians in colonial North America. A blending of history and anthropology, the author draws on a wide variety of sources, including archaeological findings, linguistics, accounts of colonists, art, and published scholarship.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A fine book."--Richard Ellis, Fort Lewis College

"This important volume, coving the period 1600-1763, is the first in a trilogy which promises to provide a new and more sophisticated understanding of colonial ethno-history and Indian missions than we have ever had....Lively, informative, and convincing, this book explains how the Indians managed to sustain their ethnicity even when they adopted Christianity. Axtell is clearly one of our best ethnohistorians; this is a superb book."--Journal of American Academy of Religion

"An intelligent, often innovative, and elegantly written work by a serious scholar who is quite intimate with the primary historical sources as well as the anthropological literature on the early Eastern Woodland peoples."--American Antiquity

"Penetrating and lucid."--Francis Jennings, The Newberry Library Center for the History of the American Indian

About the Author

James Axtell is at College of William and Mary.

Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (February 4, 1982)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195029046
• ISBN-13: 978-0195029048
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #367,062 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars excellent, January 1, 2003

By 

Scholar "18th century student" (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The European and the Indian: Essays in the Ethnohistory of Colonial North America (Paperback)

"No study of acculturation in colonial America would be complete," writes James Axtell in The European and the Indian: Essays in the Ethnohistory of Colonial North America, "without giving equal consideration to the question of how English culture was altered by its contacts with Native America." (272) Indeed, Axtell devotes the final chapter of his book to this view and concludes that colonial American culture experienced adaptive changes (a temporary, pragmatic adoption of Indian ways) and reactive changes ("spurred by the ubiquitous presence of the Indians as military foes and cultural foils.") (272-3) Reactive changes, Axtell argues, were most common to the settlement experience of the British, whose goal was to supplant the native population; he concludes that "where the natives were not regarded as superfluous obstacles, as in French Canada, adaptive changes were much more pervasive." One of the most obvious ways in which some English settlers adapted to their new land and neighbors was by literally "going native," a process Axtell calls "transculturation." (275) He points to the many instances of European whites adopting Indian customs and culture, particularly those closest to the frontier: longhunters, traders, missionaries, white captives and backcountry settlers. Axtell points to the fact that so many of the white captives in Indian hands refused to return to their own societies when given the opportunity as evidence of the profound impact native culture had on at least some British migrants to the New World.
Axtell concedes that these "white Indians" removed themselves from British culture and therefore mitigated the influence their newly adopted ways had on those colonists back in the settlements. It was, however, "necessary for the colonists to borrow some of the Indians' time-tested skills techniques and technology for coping with the frontier environment." (284) "Indian means," Axtell contends, "were not borrowed in cultural context," but were taken piecemeal from the native way of life, selectively, for the benefit of the newcomers and their survival, as well as for the goal of cultural mastery. English settlers adapted to their new land by taking or borrowing numerous Indian techniques of agriculture, language, war, hunting, and to some extent, adopting medicinal practices which relied on native (and heretofore unknown) plants and flora. It is well known that British newcomers to America borrowed numerous native words, many of which have been permanently added to our vocabulary (potato, canoe). Axtell points out however, that the colonists adopted elements of Indian speech "in distinct ways which minimized their normative impact on colonial culture." Words were added to colonial speech ways only when equivalent English words did not exist, and Indian tribal and geographic names were commonly anglicized in spelling and pronunciation (289)
Although Axtell writes that "acculturation is a two way street," the English clearly had no intention of making this relationship one of equality. As an example, he notes that while early settlers needed to master use of native materials for building shelter upon arrival on American shores, "the wigwam had no lasting effect on colonial culture." (291). Nevertheless, the neighboring Indians did have a lasting and pervasive effect on colonial society in more subtle ways. Axtell advances the suggestion that "the realities of Anglo-Indian relations was the reordering of colonial priorities," which included the conversion of natives to Christianity, increased overseas trade, and the expansion of the British Empire in the American provinces. (304-305) All of these goals emphasized for imperialists in London and America the need for pacification of the Indians, which Axtell holds was the overriding priority of the colonists in British America once they became firmly established on these shores by the late 17th century.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The very Heart & Meat of the Early American Experience, December 18, 2011

By 

Herbert L Calhoun "paulocal" (Falls Church, VA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The European and the Indian: Essays in the Ethnohistory of Colonial North America (Paperback)

Here are a series of finely tuned expertly written essays that actually represent a casebook of ethno-history and ethno-historical methodology. It proves not only that this "common law" marriage between history and ethnography works, but also that in many respects, it seems almost indispensable to a full understanding of early American history itself. The essays focus on, and are largely held together by, the only thing that mattered on the early American frontiers: the social and cultural interactions and competition between white and red peoples. And here we mean mostly between French, English, (and to a much lesser extent, Spanish), and Eastern Native Americans.

As a political scientist who knew little about early American history, I am ashamed to admit that I did not know about the controversy involving who had actually introduced scalping to the American continent? I took the conventional understanding - that it had always been due to a Native American ritual brought up deep from the Indian past -- at face value. And as the first essay shows, in this one instance it turns out that the conventional wisdom holds up. However, what an interesting odyssey to discover the intertwined theories and historical trajectory leading up to the practice of scalping, that grew out of pre-Columbian religious practices - the origins of which got lost in translation. Scalping thus reemerged as a myth about how the white man had paid friendly Indians a bounty for the scalps of the more hostile ones. The myth of the white origins of scalping is so plausibly framed, that if I had heard it without reading this book, I would readily and surely have believed it.

To be converted, or be conquered, that is the question

The second essay is even more informative than the first and is the theoretical centerpiece of the book, as it focuses not on war, the normal staple of historians, but on the periods of peace, where learning, sharing, converting, and the whole host of other interactions more loosely referred to as enculturation is constantly taking place. And to bastardize a famous saying of Carl von Clausewitz we know that: War is just politics by other means. Here we literally see what that phrase means as we see what goes on in the underbrush preceding war between two conflicting cultures. Clearly the author got the architecture of the book right when he rested its premise on the fact that since cultures are normally normative affairs - - about the norms, ideas and ideals of survival -- then it follows that cultural competition is largely a contest for the hearts and minds of the other side. Such was very much the case on the American frontier. Thus this chapter is literally worth its weight in gold, as it gets down to the real meat of the cultural competition that made up the substrate of the interactions between early Europeans and Native Americans.

The purpose of the European invasion (It was not really a discovery) was clear from the outset. It was to take over the new land by any means necessary and use it to produce goods that could be traded back to Europe for a profit, period. Anything that got in the way of this purpose was either to be converted into European ways, or done away with completely. Thus, the options laid out for the Indians were: be converted or be conquered. There was no middle ground. Hardly out of the "Dark Ages" themselves and bringing with them their own flawed feudally-based social hierarchy, its institutions and principles; plus machines, guns and microbes, the Europeans considered themselves and everything they represented as superior to everything native, and thus they had no interest in two-way assimilation: It was the European way or the highway. And although the French did make a feeble attempt at two-way assimilation (some intermarried with Indians and joined their tribes as members, etc.), the English (with the exception of the so-called "white Indians," who were seen as traitors by the English) simply had no interest in any aspect of Indian culture and behavior. The English Settlers as a group, uniformly saw Indians as savages that needed to first be civilized and then Christianized.

As we now know all too well, these options got played out over the course of nearly four centuries with devastating results for all sides. During that period, vastly out-numbered, the European's first line of attack was religious conversion. The second was divide and conquer. On the second, rifts between the Indians were exploited strategically and put to good use, by pitting friendly against hostile Indians. Eventually the friendly Indians became dependent on "English goods" and thus were seduced into adopting English ways. But there were no rewards for their comradeship. The English still saw them in exclusively racist terms.

On the first line of attack, Missionaries were sent into Indian communities to try to civilized and then convert the Indians to Christianity, which arguably at the time was little more than the "spiritual arm" of European hegemony. And even though Indian religion was similar to but much richer and more general than (and thus arguably superior to) Christianity, the Europeans had no interest in seeing how Indian religion might have been able to enrich Christianity. They tried in uncompromising ways to impose "the yoke of Christ" on Indian behavior, in order to make it more predictable. At first the Indians were receptive, but soon turned sour on the transparent and heavy-handed ways and obviously mercenary intentions of European religion. But even so, unlike the Europeans, they did try to incorporate many aspects of European religion into their own. Some Indians tried for a time to "play-along" to "get along," and were surprised to discover that upon becoming a Christian, wearing English clothes, using English names and learning English did not change their status vis-à-vis the English one iota. English racism trumped civilization and dictated that they would remain savages no matter what they did and thus they were still entitled to nothing as far as the English Settlers were concerned. They were still segregated and denied citizenship. So most Indians said to hell with it.

The third essay in the book is of the tragic-comedy genre. It is the tale uncovered by the author's meticulous research of how a not so well-meaning English educator, one, Eleazar Wheelock, under the guise of helping educate Indians, actually stole their land and the funds to establish Dartmouth College, which to add insult to irony, still uses the Indian as its schools mascot?!

Altogether, this is an eye-opening book that will vastly enrich the reader's understanding of the early interactions between European and Native cultures during the nation's founding. Five Stars

5.0 out of 5 stars A Celebration of Freedom, December 26, 2011

By 

Richard Reese (Eugene, Oregon) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The European and the Indian: Essays in the Ethnohistory of Colonial North America (Paperback)

About 400 years ago, several boatloads of rigidly righteous racist Puritans washed up on the shore, much to the detriment of the Indians of New England. The two cultures could not have been more different. Every schoolchild knows the sacred colonial myths, but what really happened is far more obscure, and far more interesting. In search of a more accurate story, historian James Axtell plowed through mountains of old papers and summed up what he learned in his book The European and the Indian.

In 1600, Europe was near the peak of the Inquisition. At that time, it was perfectly appropriate to torture and burn thousands and thousands of people who were accused of doing ridiculous and impossible things. The Puritans were an offshoot of the new Protestant movement, which was obsessed with sin and evil, and terrified of sex and sensuality. The natural world was the realm of Satan. The Puritans were raised in a hell broth of mass hysteria. They believed that the ideal life was one of back-breaking work. They were rigorously trained to be obedient to their superiors, and their way of life was "almost slavery."

The Indians blew their minds. Native men spent their days hunting, fishing, and socializing, living like upper class English lords. They wore their hair long, which was a shocking display of pride and independence (pride was the greatest sin of all). They had contempt for all authority. Their low-tech agriculture produced as much food as colonial farmers, using just primitive hand tools and far less labor -- the women tended the fields! They were impossible to predict and control, because they would suddenly pack up and move to an unknown location, as if they were noble aristocrats who could do whatever they wished. The Indians were absolutely free people, and the Puritans were neurotic heavily-armed control freaks.

It was easy to control colonists who lived in established villages and towns, because the authorities could keep a careful eye on them, and promptly punish those who stepped out of line. But some colonists drifted off into the wilderness, and lived far from church and law, where they were dangerously at risk of slipping into heathenish ignorance and barbarism. These disgusting renegades were lazy and immoral people who lived in crude log cabins, dressed in animal skins, and lived by hunting. There were small settlements in the Maine wilderness where Europeans lived in complete freedom, in a state of nature, as wild as the deer -- a delicious idea to contemplate. Imagine that.

One thing in the old papers astounded Axtell. Over and over the colonists wrote about the need to "reduce" the savage barbarians to civility, to "reduce" them to docility. The word "reduce" was used many times, with just two exceptions (the exceptions were written in the eighteenth century, long after the settlement period). "Reduce" is a word that has a clear, unambiguous meaning. The colonial writers used it accurately, if you believe that freedom is good, as I do.

The number one stated purpose of settlement was to bring the gospel to the Indians and save them. Because European society was so vastly superior, Indians would certainly fall over each other in the rush to be converted. But this fantasy crashed head-on into reality. Missionaries frequently alienated the Indians with their intolerant ethnocentricism. And Christian settlers were too often greedy, brutal, dishonest hypocrites. The foreign religion competed poorly with the traditional spirituality of the Indians, which worked perfectly well for them.

The schools established for Indian children were miserable, and most students fled at the first opportunity. The few Indians who managed to jump through all of the hoops, and successfully become educated Christians, discovered that they had no place in white society, because they were members of an inferior race. Coerced conversion was a complete failure. Later, the settlers discovered that the Indians could successfully be converted with "Powder & Ball." Dead Indians were easy to control, and offered no resistance to the seizure of their lands.

I was especially fascinated by Axtell's discussion of the "white Indians" -- colonists who voluntarily lived with the natives, and merged into native families and communities. European diseases and bullets killed many Indians. To replace them, the Indians adopted whites that they captured, mostly women and children. Also, a number of whites deliberately ran away and were accepted into Indian tribes. This happened so often that laws were passed to ban settlers from escaping to freedom -- violators could be beaten, imprisoned, or hung for treason.

In 1782, Hector de Crèvecoeur was astounded to discover that "thousands" of Europeans had become Indians, but no Indians had become Europeans. Other sources confirm that this was not a wild exaggeration. Most white Indians preferred living with the natives, and made no effort to escape. When relatives came to get them, and begged them to come home, they usually declined to return. And those who did return often got disgusted and soon came back to their tribe.

The Indians were moral and honest people, unlike the Puritans. They were more Christian than the Christians, and they won the hearts of their former enemies with kindness and generosity. They lovingly accepted the whites into their families as brothers and sisters. They treated women with absolute dignity and respect. Indian children enjoyed abundant love and attention, the complete opposite of the Puritan mode of severe discipline. Some of the white Indians later became great chiefs.

A life of hunting and fishing was far more enjoyable than a life of plowing and reaping. The Puritan colonists endured a life similar to slavery, fettered with cultural balls and chains. White Indians discovered that freedom was divine -- far more valuable than the cheap thrills of life in an oppressive society. It's no fun being reduced to docility and civility, and they gladly walked away to a better life.

Richard Adrian Reese
Author of What Is Sustainable