Red brethren
Subtitle: the Brothertown and Stockbridge Indians and the problem of race in early America
By: David J. Silverman
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: 2010
Place of publication: Ithaca
Language: eng
Number of pages: 279
ISBN-13: 9780801444777
Description: New England Indians created the multitribal Brothertown and Stockbridge communities during the eighteenth century with the intent of using Christianity and civilized reforms to cope with white expansion. In Red Brethren, David J. Silverman considers the stories of these communities and argues that Indians in early America were racial thinkers in their own right and that indigenous people rallied together as Indians not only in the context of violent resistance but also in campaigns to adjust peacefully to white dominion. All too often, the Indians discovered that their many concessions to white demands earned them no relief.

Red Brethren traces the evolution of Indian ideas about race under this relentless pressure. In the early seventeenth century, indigenous people did not conceive of themselves as Indian. They sharpened their sense of Indian identity as they realized that Christianity would not bridge their many differences with whites, and as they fought to keep blacks out of their communities. The stories of Brothertown and Stockbridge shed light on the dynamism of Indians' own racial history and the place of Indians in the racial history of early America. --Book Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: All one Indian; title: Converging paths; title: Betrayals; title: Out from under the burdens; title: Exodus; title: Cursed; title: Red brethren; title: More than they know how to endure; title: Indians or citizens, white men or red?; title: Epilogue: "Extinction" or a "common ancestor."