Indians

The study of American Indians is usually approached from two quite different directions: the ethnological study of Indians before contact with Europeans, and the historical study of Indians after contact. But the his­toriography of American Indians has been revolutionized in recent years by a development and an event. The development is a new application of a method that combines archaeology, anthropology, and sometimes biology or sociology. That sort of study has traditionally been called ethnology, but when applied to the study of historic rather than primitive or prehistoric societies, it is called ethnohistory. The event is the publication of Francis Jennings’ The Invasion of America: Indians, Colonialism, and the Cant of Conquest (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975; Norton paperback, 1976). This work seeks to view colonial settlement from the point of view of the people living in the area which Europeans “invaded” in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Despite its some­what polemical tone and tendency to warp sources into a preconceived thesis, the book is fascinating and, in many respects, convincing. It cer­tainly casts the settlement era of New England history into a wholly new perspective. Serious investigators can develop a fair degree of sophistica­tion from the following historiographic essays, listed chronologically:

The most detailed studies of Indians in Connecticut are done by scholars hired by tribes seeking Federal recognition and by entities -- usually local governments -- attempting to prevent recognition. In the short run, these studies are closed to the public but become available over time. They are located at tribal headquarters, lawyers' offices, the Pequot Museum, and, of course, at the Bureau of Acknowledgement and Research of the Department of the Interior in Washington, D.C.

Robert F. Berkhofer, Jr. “The Political Context of a New Indian History.” Pacific Historical Review 40(1971): 357-82.

Wilcomb E. Washburn. “The Writing of Indian History: A Status Report.” Pacific Historical Review 40(1971).

Gary B. Nash. “Whither Indian History?” Journal of Ethnic Studies 4(1976):69-74.

Richard R. Johnson. “The Search for a Usable Indian.” Journal of American History 64(December, 1977):623-51.

James Axtell. “The Ethnohistory of Early America: A Review Essay.” William and Mary Quarterly. 3rd series 35(January, 1978)1:110-44.

Calvin Martin. “Ethno History: A Better Way to Write Indian History.” Western Historical Quarterly 9(January, 1978) 1:41-56.

Kenneth M. Morrison. “Native American History: The Issue of Values.”  Journal of Ethnic Studies 5(1980)1:80-89.

Alden T. Vaughan and Daniel K. Richter. “Crossing the Cultural Divide:  Indians and New Englanders, 1605-1763.” Proceedings of the American  Antiquarian Society 90(April, 1980) Part 1.

Very recently Howard Russell, author of a major study of New England agriculture, published Indian New England Before the Mayflower (Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 1980). Russell is neither anthropologist nor historian, and his bibliography omits some im­portant professional literature, especially dissertations. Nevertheless, the work is sound, encyclopaedic, and—if it is not a contradiction in terms— interesting. Of course, he does not concentrate on Connecticut, but Con­necticut references abound, and most of what is true of New England In­dians generally is true of Indians in Connecticut. Although scholars will need to move well beyond Russell’s work, teachers, students, and the gen­eral public will find it a fascinating and generally reliable guide to Indian life and society.

Early in this century the Smithsonian Institution’s Bureau of Ethnology published as Bulletin 30 a huge, monumental two-volume Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico, edited by Frederick W. Hodge. (1906; reprinted by Pageant Books in New York in 1959) From the moment of its publication, it was the basic work in the field. A few years ago a revision of that work was undertaken, and the fruits of that enterprise have now ripened. Handbook of North American Indians: Volume 15, Northeast, edited by Bruce N. Trigger (Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1978) has the following relevant articles:

Brasser, T.J. “Early Indian-European Contacts,” pp. 78-88.

Conkey, Laura E.; Boissevain, Ethel; and Goddard, Ives. “Indians of Southern

New England and Long Island: Late Period,” pp. 177-89.

Salwen, Bert. “Indians of Southern New England and Long Island: Early Period,” p. 160-76.

Snow, Dean R. “Late Prehistory of the East Coast,” pp. 58-69.

Washburn, Wilcomb E. “Seventeenth-Century Indian Wars,” pp. 89-100.

These articles represent the state of the art as of 1981 and must not be skipped by anyone working in an academic context.

There is no recent comprehensive study of either pre- or post-contact Connecticut Indians. This bibliography is concerned with history, so that only a few archaeological and anthropological studies will be listed below. However, the past ten years has seen the rise of the American Indian Archaeological Institute in Washington, Connecticut, under Edmund Swigart. The Institute employs professional scholars in various relevant fields, maintains a museum, carries on educational and publication pro­grams, and supports all sorts of field investigation. The AIAI publishes a periodical, Artifacts, several times a year, and reports new archaeological findings. Without attempting to list the many archaeological articles deal­ing with Connecticut Indians—or Connecticut-related Indians, for of course, the Indians predate Connecticut—we note below some of the most significant works dealing with prehistoric and precontact Indians.

The most useful work is the preliminary report of combined field and literary researches of the people at AIAI, Swigart’s The Prehistory of the In­dians of Western Connecticut: Part I, 900-1000 B.C. (Washington, Conn.: The Shepaug Valley Archaeological Society, 1974). Of interest to those who wish somewhat more specialized articles is An Introduction to the Ar­chaeology and History of the Connecticut Valley Indian, edited by William R. Young (Springfield: Springfield Museum of Science, 1969). Other works of interest arise out of the work of the Archaeological Society of Connec­ticut, and a publications list can be ordered from the Society at P.O. Box 260, Washington, CT 06793. See also the Bibliography Committee’s “A Preliminary Bibliography of the Archaeology of the New England In­dians,” Bulletin of the Massachusetts Archaeological Society 3(0ctober, 1941)1:3-10. This publication includes some 250 items, of which thirty-four are about Connecticut.

On the subject of Indians of the historic era—since white contact in the first quarter of the sixteenth century—students will have had difficulty finding reliable, accurate, professionally done works outside of the disser­tation literature that deals with Connecticut only in a larger Northeastern context. John W. DeForest’s History of the Indians of Connecticut from the Earliest Known Period to 1850 (1851; reissued by Archon Books in Hamden in 1964) remains standard for Connecticut—but only because it is the only work covering the whole subject. DeForest was an indefatigable re­searcher and a judicious writer, but he wrote in an era when the Army and American Indians were slaughtering each other all across the West­ern frontier, and the only Indians living in Connecticut were generally unlettered, impoverished, and socially outcast. Though DeForest viewed them sympathetically in the context of his time, he did not rise much above the prevailing prejudices. He vastly underestimated both the numbers and social complexity of Connecticut Indians, and his ethnocentrism is apparent throughout his work. The DeForest book should be used with extreme caution, and only in conjunction with works listed below.

The only other overall treatment is Mathias Spiess, The Indians of Con­necticut, Tercentenary pamphlet XIX (1933). Spiess was a knowledgeable amateur, but this thirty-six-page work is little more than a collection of short sketches about the tribes of Connecticut. Students who wish to go further may consult the bibliography provided by Mary Guillette Soulsby in her University of Connecticut master’s thesis, “Connecticut Indian Ethnohistory: A Look at Five Tribes.” (1981)