Daniel K. Richter, Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2001)
In this book, Daniel Richter will retell the history of early America "facing east", that is, from the Native American point of view. He will challenge the Eurocentric "master narrative" of "discovery" and progress westward across North America that may included Indian contributors but never reconsiders the narrative from their angle. He will speak of the Indian discovery of Europe, the trade connections they established with the foreign powers, and their internal deliberations on the best way to live with these newcomers. In so doing Richter hopes to show that Indians and whites had to learn racial categories and hatred; that the American Revolution was intertwined with the "removal" of the Indians; and that "the racialized world the revolutionaries created was not the only one that might have been" (253). It is an ambitious project.
The problem -- for Richter no less than anyone trying to describe Native American experiences -- is sources. They are few, and they are almost exclusively written by Europeans, which of course calls into question the authenticity of their descriptions. But Richter presents several ways of rereading already existing documents that will enable us truly to face east and hear the story of early America anew.
He does this in six chapters. One sets the stage for the narrative in the 16th century by attempting a retelling of Cartier's and deSoto's expeditions from the Indian's perspective, arguing that changes in Indian society at this time were driven much more by the agricultural revolution and the little ice age than European interaction, although patterns of "conflict and distrust" appear. Two examines ways in which Indian culture changed in the 17th century as a result of European contact -- economically, ecologically, and epidemiologically -- emphasizing that Indians incorporated European goods and settlers on their own terms initially. Three retells the stories of Pocahontas, Kateri Takakwitha, and Metacom in hopes of revealing how Indians "tried to incorporate Europeans into an Indian world on indigenous terms" (69). Four looks at two kinds of sources -- conversion narratives from Puritan praying towns and records of offical negotiations with Indians -- to argue the same. Five describes how native groups tried to negotiate with British, French, and Spanish empires in order to maintain their relative independence, noting that the 18th century wars were as much about Indians getting the empires to fight on their behalf as the other way 'round. Six laments the rise of absolute antipathy between whites and Indians that developed after 1763 as the ring of imperial powers gave way to a frontier between British-Americans and Indians. And the epilogue uses the words of an Indian named William Apess to suggest that Indian-European contact did not have to follow the path it did.
It was a joy to read this book. Richter's writing is exquisite, and his narrative flows easily and smoothly. And he does make some useful contributions to early American studies. His recasting of Pocahontes, Kateri Takakwitha, and Metacom ("King Philip") alone suggests powerfully what might be done with traditional American stories. Also important is the "World of Goods" that Richter insists must include Native American actors: it was trade in material goods that first changed Indian society, made coexistence possible, and ultimately rendered Indians unable to prosper in the New World. But as Professor Hoffer suggested in class today, chapter four -- where we "hear" Indians speaking for the first time in conversion narratives and treaty rituals -- is the book's fulcrum. At this point, anything could happen. The Indians were trying to carve out a space in the expanding European-American world. That they were unable to do so is the story of the rest of the book.
Facing East has its shortcomings too. It promises to be a history of Early America, but as Peter Wood has pointed out, the west is left out of the picture entirely, so it is really a history of early eastern America. While Richter is clearly in his element when discussing northern Indian groups, especially the Iroquois, southern Indians and Indian-Spanish interaction receive relatively little attention.
As for Richter's thesis, I am persuaded that in the Indian mind, coexistence was a real and relatively desired possibility. He provides plenty of evidence to this end. But as to whether the pattern of hatred and removal was inevitable -- it seems that this question ultimately depended on the Europeans. And the Europeans -- I mean, the British-Americans -- seem to have been dead-set on domination.
But that is a question for another book -- did any Europeans imagine a different future than the one that played out?
