Native Americans of New England

Abstract

Native Americans never vanished from New England. Even as colonialism disrupted—and continues to disrupt— Indigenous lives, Native Americans of New England resisted, adapted, and survived (xi, 63). Christoph Strobel makes this familiar but vital argument accessible to general audiences by chronicling the experiences of Native Americans living in and around the region from the Pleistocene epoch to the present. The book’s chronological and geographic scope set it apart from existing studies, which normally focus on shorter periods of time, particular areas, or select groups. Strobel synthesizes decades of scholarship from a range of disciplines and walks novices through the field’s major methodological challenges. Readers learn about lingering debates and unanswered questions, especially pertaining to the millennia before European contact. Although people are the primary subject, specialists may also appreciate the book as a study of New England regionalism. A “long-term perspective” is Strobel’s best weapon against the racist myth that Native Americans disappeared from New England soon after the English began planting colonies there (xi). Seventeenth-century colonists introduced the idea of the vanishing Indian to explain and justify how colonialism transformed the region. By the nineteenth century, sex and marriage between Native Americans, African Americans, and poor whites (actions Strobel deems essential to the “continued adaptation, persistence, acculturation, and sustained Native American presence” in New England) combined with proslavery