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Travel Planning Book Store > Travel Planning books beginning with M
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Manitou and Providence: Indians, Europeans, and the Making of New England, 1500-1643 |
Author: Neal Salisbury
Published: 1984-03-15 |
List price: $34.95
Our price: $34.95
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Customer comments on this selection.
 outstanding work of history
this views the movement of english to new england with both breadth and depth. truly excellent.
 Pilgrims and Indians
Manitou and Providence: Indians, Europeans, and the making of New England 1500-1643
by Neal Salisbury
Oxford, published 1982
Cornell University Professor Neal Salisbury's work centers on the innate conflicts and social differences between the English settlers to New England and the native populations they encountered. The arrival of the settlers brought disease and cultural upheaval both of which served to destabilize the equilibrium between the existing tribes. The white setters were quick to employ their advantages and systematically deprive the Indians of their land and way of life. By their actions, the whites lost the religious and moral imperative which had impelled them to immigrate to America and instead recreated a microcosm of the unequal society they had left.
Each chapter in the work is titled with a contrast between the Indians and the English Settlers such as "Winners and Losers", "Hosts and Visitors", and "Farmers and Hunters". This sets the tone for the narrative which compares and contrasts the natives with the new arrivals. The author also attempts to present the complex relationships between tribes before the colonial period and how those relationships changed.
Decimated by diseases brought over by early explorers, native tribes were unable to mount an effective resistance to the immigrants. Declining population was more of a threat to the native culture than was the threat posed by the new immigrants. In addition, the uneven effects of the illnesses were to destabilize the existing relationships between different tribes and shift the balance of power. While the Pokanokets suffered greatly, the Narragansetts lost a smaller portion of their population.
Tribal cultures had previously interacted within well-defined boundaries of respect and behavior. While no tribe would `own' land it was understood that another tribe would have to provide tribute prior to using land that was traditional used by another tribe. Sailsbury suggests that it was this cultural difference which caused the Indians to `sell' away land to the English settlers.
For the Settlers, New England was primarily seen as an opportunity to create a new society away from the direct control of the Bishops and closer to Protestant ideals. Instead, the desire for land and control had created a new class system in the America. Nobles and Commoners were replaced with Christians (whites) and Heathens (natives). The rapacious settlers soon convinced themselves that they were doing God's work on Earth by their punishment of the Indians. Thus, "Despite the intentions and beliefs of many participants, then, the effect of colonization had not been to halt or reverse the processes forming in preindustrial England but to carry them across the Atlantic". (pg237)
Manitou and Providence is an appealing, but heavy-handed, book. The Author is willing to lay almost crime or bad intention at the feet of the English settlers while creating an idyllic view of the native tribes. Too often, this interpretation overshadows the excellent narrative and informative facts presented. The picture of interaction between the tribes as well and the fascinating discussion of the rise and fall of `wampum' in Indian culture are absorbing. Readers of any level can enjoy this book as long as they are willing listen to the facts and make their own judgments. Extensive sources, mostly secondary, are listed in the endnotes but there is no bibliography.
 Early New England encounters
Salisbury's book is very well written analysis of Indian - European encounters in early New England. Especially Indian actions are researched in admirable details. For anyone, who wants to know utmost of Indian policy in this region in the 16th and early 17th century, this is the essential reading. But I think, that book has one important weak point. Salisbury omits Puritan mind. He offers only socio-economic analysis of reasons for Puritan migration. But he neglects, that their actions toward Indians in the early faze of colonization were highly influenced by their world view - i. e. by their religion. From this point of view, good addition to this book is for example Peter Carroll's Puritanism and Wilderness (1969).
stimulating account of early European-Native contacts
A well-written chronicle of contacts and interactions between Europeans (concentrating of course on the English Puritans) and the Indians of New England. Somewhat revisionist, and thankfully so. These contacts didn't have to yield the result they did; the disappearance of the Native American wasn't a foregone conclusion from the moment Miles Standish alighted on Plymouth Rock - the Puritans wanted to get rid of the Indians, and with disease and war, this was accomplished.
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