Native–White Intermarriage and Family in 19th‐century North America

Abstract

Although intimate relationships between Indian peoples and European newcomers to North America ensued from the earliest colonial encounters, they have long been overlooked, especially by comparison to the study of sex between Whites and African Americans. But recently, historians have begun to examine Native-White intermarriage and family, especially in the crucial years between the American Revolution and Reconstruction. Westward expansion produced not only dispossession and removal but also f lourishing communities of mixed-blood peoples, from the Great Lakes to the Pacific Northwest and from the northern Plains to the southern Rocky Mountains. This essay explores five key historiographical interventions made by contemporary scholarsfocusing on geography, demography, violence, genealogy, and sovereigntywhile suggesting new avenues for academic inquiry.Intimate relationships between Native peoples and European newcomers in North America ensued from the earliest colonial encounters. 1 For instance, the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés fathered a child with Tecuichpotzin, a daughter of the Aztec emperor Moctezuma, the very man whom Cortés had deposed. In 17th-century New France, the explorer Samuel de Champlain promoted intermarriage as a means of forging political and economic ties with local indigenous peoples, saying famously that "our young men will marry your daughters, and henceforth we shall be one people." 2 And just eight years after the founding of Jamestown, Thomas Rolfe was born there in 1615 to Pocohontas and her English husband, John Rolfe. 3 Despite the frequency of such unions, sex between Native Americans and White people has received considerably less attention than sex between Whites and African Americansa topic that has been well developed by both historians of slavery and biographers of Thomas Jefferson. 4 But scholars have now begun to address this lacuna, especially for the crucial years between the American Revolution and Reconstruction. The sustained westward expansion of the 19th-century produced not only dispossession and removal but also f lourishing communities of mixed-blood peoples from the Great Lakes to the Pacific Northwest and from the northern Plains to the southern Rocky Mountains. 5 The essay that follows explores recent work in this area and offers brief and preliminary thoughts on new directions that this exciting subfield might take. AntecedentsWhile there were a variety of contexts in which Indians and peoples of European descent interacted in North America, the fur trade was one of the most important and enduring. 6 If the Spanish and particularly the French embraced interracial relationships more enthusiastically than the English, by the early 19th-century, trappers and traders of multiple nationalities had adopted "the custom of the country" throughout the continental interior, marrying Native women and fathering children of mixed ancestry. While these pairings were broadly typical of those found along other extractive frontiers, such unions also held

Beyond binaries: mixed-blood Indigenous inequalities

“…Women were treated much like property would be within this Act, and provisions outlined the fact that status women marrying non-status men would lose their status, and non-status women who married status men would gain status (Indian Act 1886; Native Women’s Association of Canada, 2018). Intermarriage between Indigenous Peoples and settlers was not an uncommon occurrence across the land, particularly during the fur trade era when relations between these groups were stronger; the motivations for such unions varied from violent economic pursuits to a desire to expand kinship ties (Graybill, 2016; Van Kirk, 2002). Upon marrying a non-status man, however, these women were forced away from their cultural ties as they were required to relinquish their status (Naumann, 2008).…”