The Indians' New World: The Catawba Experience

Abstract

August i6o8 John Smith and his band of explorers captured an Indian named Amoroleck during a skirmish along the Rappahannock River. Asked why his men-a hunting party from towns upstreamhad attacked the English, Amoroleck replied that they had heard the strangers "were a people come from under the world, to take their world from them."1 Smith's prisoner grasped a simple yet important truth that students of colonial America have overlooked: after I492 native Americans lived in a world every bit as new as that confronting transplanted Africans or Europeans. The failure to explore the Indians' new world helps explain why, despite many excellent studies of the native American past,2 colonial history often remains "a history of those men and women-English, European, and African-who transformed America from a geographical expression into a new nation."3 One reason Indians generally are left out may be the apparent inability to fit them into the new world theme, a theme that exerts a powerful hold on our historical imagination and runs throughout Mr. Merrell is a member of the Department of History, Vassar College. Acknowledgments: I would like to thank the participants in the colloquium at the Institute of Early American History and Culture for their comments on a draft of this article. I am also grateful to Linda K. Merrell for preparing the map. ' Edward Arber and A. G. Bradley, eds., Travels and Works of Captain John Smith. . ., II (Edinburgh, I 9 I0), 427. 2 Bernard W. Sheehan, "Indian-White Relations in Early America:

Artefatos e vozes ativas: cultura material como discurso social

“…Para nos afastarmos da atitude de que o uso dos documentos é um exercício literal apenas para a obtenção de informações intencionalmente criadas por aqueles que os registraram, necessitamos abordá-lo como um corpo de textos (da mesma forma como os antropólogos e folcloristas fazem com os contos, mitos, etc.) e estar atentos para o fato envolvendo a interação entre indígenas americanos e europeus faça excelente uso de documentos e evidências materiais de forma combinada, visando a examinar não apenas resistência, mas também construções intencionais de identidade cultural pelos indígenas (e.g., Bradley, 1987;Bragdon, 1988;Brenner, 1988;Crosby, 1988;Hamell, 1983Hamell, , 1987Merrell, 1988Merrell, , 1989. 18 Talvez o clamor para permanecer um pré-historiador diante da evidência textual derive do que parece ser uma preocupação subjacente de que, acrescentando os documentos a essa equação, se adote uma abordagem crítica não realmente necessária, uma vez que a evidência material é, de certo modo, mais direta que os textos e, portanto, mais confiável, necessitando menos análises críticas.…”

Studies in South Carolina Archaeology: Essays in Honor of Robert L. Stephenson. Albert C. GoodyearIII and Glen T. Hanson, editors. Anthropological Studies 9. South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology, Occasional Papers, The University of South Carolina, Columbia, 1989. xx + 275 pp., figures, tables, references, index. ’30.00 (paper).

“…Through time "Kadapau" (Catawba), the name of the northernmost town mentioned by Lawson, became the name commonly used for all the people of the valley, and this core of people together with the dispossessed 186 people of other tribes began to be known to the British colonies as the Catawba Nation. Thus, during the early 1700s the Catawba Nation became more than the descendants of the inhabitants of the Catawba River Valley and the older chiefdom of Cofitacheque; it became a nation comprised of a variety of aboriginal people from all over the southeastern portion of North America Historian James H. Merrell has recently discussed the "Catawba Experience" in the 18th century and has pointed out that (Merrell 1984a: 548) In addition to the core of people mentioned by Lawson -the Kadapaus, Wisacks, Sugerees, and Esaws -a list of peoples who came to reside in the Catawba Nation during the 18th century includes (Baker 1975;Merrell 1984a) the Waterees, Congarees, Santees, Saponis, Cussoes, Cheraws, Peedees, Yamassees, Coosas, Enos, Occaneeches, Keyauwees, Chowans, and Nachees! Moreover, in another paper entitled "The Racial Education of the Catawba Indians," Merrell (1984b) has demonstrated that relationships between blacks and the people who made up the Nation were more cordial in the early part of the 18th century than at any time thereafter.…”