The Invasion Within: The Contest of Cultures in Colonial North America

by James Axtell

Colonial North America was not only a battleground for furs and land, but also for allegiances and even souls. In the three-sided struggle for empire, the English and French colonists were locked in heated competition for native allies and religious converts. Axtell sharply contrasts the English efforts to civilize the Indians with the French willingness to accept native lifestyles, and reveals why the struggle for control over the continent became a fascinating contest of cultures between shrewd opponents lasting nearly 150 years.

Genres: History, American History, Nonfiction, Cultural, Native American History

416 pages, Paperback

First published October 3, 1985

Reviews

[Jeffrey Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

Axtell did an adequate job in examining the relations of the French, English and numerous Indian tribes during the Colonial America period from the 1530s to 1770s. This is an extremely well documented book with a plethora of sources to cover the subject quite comprehensively. However, there is one voice that seems to be missing - that of the Indian people. Most of the sources are European or American, with limited sources from Native peoples.

My biggest complaint with Axtell's writing style is with the use of arcain words that are littered throughout the text, which makes the narrative harder to read. It's enough of a challenge to transition from Indian to French to English words; not have a firm grasp of the geography since he covers a distance ranging from the St. Lawrence River to the north, Virginia and North Carolina to the south, and Wisconsin to the west; and then throw in words that muddle up the narrative. It bogs down the pace, making for a slow read.

But despite the clumsy narrative, he makes up for it with the depth of coverage in both size and scope of his research. He doesn't stray far from his theme and one will do well to keep this in their reading list of Colonial America literature.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although Axtell can get a little wordy at times I greatly enjoyed the book! Most assume that the French and English came over and rapidly conquered the Native people, but that is not really the case. By nature, the Indians were an adaptive people who always changed with their environment so when the colonist came, the Natives found ways to adapt. Funnily enough, the Natives were actually better at winning people over to their way of life than the colonist were!

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

In his book The Invasion Within: The Contest of Cultures in Colonial North America James Axtel presents an ethno-history of French, English, and Indian efforts to convert each other during the 120 years between the founding of Quebec and its fall to the British. Natives and Europeans could only understand each other based on their own cultural backgrounds. Natives saw European appearance as ugly but felt a great deal of respect for them due to their technology and, along with their ability to spread disease, the spiritual power that their technology implied. Europeans believed natives were guilty of the great sin of pride, and ironically, expected that Indians adopt their “superior” culture.
Axtel divides his book into three parts. In the first part, Black Robes and Gray Robes, he describes the methods that the Jesuits used to convert natives and the reasons for their relative success. The choice of the location for the original French settlement in Canada along the St. Lawrence River in 1608 was based on maximizing access to furs. Jesuit missionaries believed that natives would have to become sedentary farmers in order to be effectively catechized which put them at odds with fur trading companies, and colonial leaders, as this would endanger the fur trade. The first settlement remained little more than a Comptoir or storehouse for furs due to difficulty attracting settlers and ongoing attacks from the Iroquois. Louis the XIV helped to transform the colony into a viable franchise as he sent troops, encouraged immigration, and built forts. Ironically, in the long term the French desire for furs contributed to their success in converting natives as trade encouraged ongoing relationships that did not force natives to change all of their lifeways. Most French, including the Recollects, a branch of Franciscan friars, believed that the Natives had to be assimilated to French culture before they could be converted to Christianity. They built institutions such as seminaries and hospitals and encouraged native settlement near French settlements in their attempt to assimilate natives prior to conversion. For their part, the Jesuits were much more flexible. They believed that interactions with French settlers, les habitants, discouraged conversion. Believing that the natives did not have to become sedentary farmers prior to conversion, they worked to create traveling and sedentary missions among the natives. The interests of French trade, especially in brandy, often conflicted with Jesuit desire to spread Christianity due to the disastrous effects of alcohol on native families and villages.
The Jesuits’ conversion efforts focused on floating missions. Jesuit priests recognized and were well deposed to adapting to native ways. In their efforts to convert natives they worked to gain favor with native leaders and displace native sachams and focused on winning converts to native populations. In doing so they had to overcome barriers such as native disgust for their appearance (beards and robs) and their inability to participate fully in reciprocity. Their main advantages included their relative moral trustworthiness, courage in the face of pain, immunity to European diseases, and willingness to learn native languages. The Jesuits thought of their missionary efforts in terms of warfare and their first target was the native shamans. Their ability to deal more effectively with European diseases, predict eclipses, use technology, and read, as well as predict weather and the presence of game just as effectively as shamans helped in the Jesuits in their efforts to supplant the shamans. The Jesuits displayed their confidence by emphasizing that they left their beautiful land to spread their faith because they knew that paradise was better. They also explained religious concepts in native cultural terms such as ritual torture to help them understand concepts such as hell and by associate native spiritual traditions with sacraments. To convert natives they used images of the infant Christ and the Virgin Mary, and to maintain converts they built churches which were decorated as ornately as possible, emphasizing the value of the sacraments of baptism and marriage. Some female native converts took vows of chastity and established monasteries.
In the second part of his book,the Lively Liquor of the Gospel, Axtel describes the methods that the English used to spread Christianity and assimilate Native Americans to English culture and analyzes the reasons for their failure to win large numbers of converts.
The English believed that the natives were teachable and that they would easily notice the superiority of English society. In order for the natives to be converted to Christianity, they had to be made into real men by reducing them to civilization first. This meant overcoming what the English believed to be the natives greatest shortcomings: disorder, idleness, and lack of manners. The English worked to overcome native disorder by establishing praying towns which would be governed based on English laws and would ensure that they adopted a sedentary lifestyle. In the process, they misunderstood the place of sachams and thought that they could bribe them with gifts or even coerce conversion by encouraging converts to withhold tribute. Europeans hoped to replace native subsistence practices with ones that were more inline with English norms by encouraging women to adopt household work and industry and encouraging men to farm in the English manner by using pillows instead of hows and manuring their fields instead of moving to a new area when soil became less productive. This would mean a change in gender roles as women traditionally farmed in native villages, something natives equated with slavery, and men traditionally hunted, a pastime reserved for the aristocracy in Europe. Indians’ communal culture and the missionary message of charity undermined the attempt to make this change. Finally, natives' manners would have to change if they were to be placed under the yoke of civilization. This included changing their names, adopting a negative attitude towards sexual behavior prior to marriage, wearing English style clothing, and, for males, cutting their hair as a symbol that they had abandoned their pride. Despite efforts to change natives, Indians largely maintained many of their cultural traditions in praying towns.
The main institution that the English used to mold the natives to their liking was the school where they attempted to change every element of native children in order to civilize them in preparation for christianization. English attempts to build schools in praying towns with native teachers were just as unsuccessful as their attempts to educate natives in boarding schools near European settlements. In part, these institutions were spectacular failures due to native susceptibility to European diseases and the resistance of native parents to send their kids to boarding schools. Bad teaching, insistence on simply applying the English of education to Indians, bad management of school funds, and unwillingness to adapt pedagogical practices to their students were the main reasons these English schools failed. They were unwilling to take on Indian youth when they were young enough to be impressionable and natives were unwilling to give up their kids. When the English initial desire to protect the Indians from annihilation by turning them into Englishmen and the contempt in which they held their students was replaced with racial hatred which sealed the fate of these Indian schools.
In the 17th-century, English missionary efforts amongst natives proved fairley successful due largely to the devastation diseases wrought on native population, but success was limited to New England. Efforts to catechize Native Americans focused on adults who were expected to, and often did, teach their kids. Though unwilling to tolerate natives who maintained their traditions, English missionaries did use metaphors based on native culture to explain religious concepts, but they did not waver in their characterization of native Pow Wows as agents of the devil. Native questions about death and hell become more troubling for missionaries as they learn more; however, missionaries were impressed with the sincerity of native prayers and their observance of the sabbath despite early resistance to give up a day of work. Despite the large number of converts John Eliot delayed the establishment of a native american church due to concern that this should not happen until natives had been fully converted and the lack of native clergy members. English efforts outside of New England in the 18th-century were largely a failure. Efforts to convert the Mohegans only resulted in them simply practicing their traditions in secret, rather than give them up. At the same time, wars between the French and English reinforced pre-existing French relationships with natives in Northern New England while efforts to convert the Iroquois failed because of suspicions about the English. MIssionary efforts near the end of the 18th-century were a complete failure because the natives believed that conversion would be followed by European settlement which they considered unacceptable.
In the third section of his book, America in Transition, Axtel focuses on Native perceptions of European missionaries as well as their disproportionate success in converting Europeans to their methods of living, where possible. Jesuit success can largely be attributed to the nature of catholicism and due to the character of Jesuits themselves. Catholicism's focus on good works was more meaningful to natives than doctrinal concerns of protestants and catholic ceremonies, including use of incense had much more in common with native religion than protestant sermonizing. The natives also found the reverence of Mary compatible with their faith. Jesuits' willingness to tolerate native traditions, their financial resources, their eagerness to learn native languages, however, were the main contributors to their success. Native resistance to conversion resulted from their apprehension about transferring spiritual power to foreigners, the fact that death often followed baptism, and natives’ focus on current concerns over concerns about the future. Natives were initially willing to listen to missionaries out of curiosity, but were open to conversion due to the cultural and demographic crisis that they were facing and the desire for rejuvenation that resulted from it. The French proved very successful at converting English protestants culturally and religiously. Natives had initially sought English captives as replacements for lost loved ones. These same captives quickly became important trade items once natives recognized the French Canadian willingness to pay high bounty for English captives. Up to a tenth of men and a third of women thus captured never returned and most of these were converted fully to French norms. Conversion started with catechism, followed by baptism, and culminated in marriage to a local French Canadian. Few converts went home. For skilled men, France offered increased economic prestige including higher wages. For both men and women, the love of a new spouse and the lack of family in the English colonies helped to anchor them in their new home. Some female converts even dedicated themselves to a life of celibacy as nuns.
Much to the chagrin of the French and the English, the natives were very successful at converting Europeans to their way of life. Some of the converts were French traders but most were English captives who were taken to replace lost clan members, especially after the French defeat in The Seven Years War. The English were dismayed by how dedicated converts became to natives as demonstrated by their resistance to returning to their English colonial homes, the sincere longing of many who did return felt for their native families to the point, among some, of even escaping back to their native families. Native conversion started during the journey to native villages as natives shared their meager supply of food with captives, carried children on their back, and contrary to expectations, respected captive women’s sexual virtue who did not report being raped when they recounted the journey later. Assimilation at the village started by running the gauntlet, followed by ritual bathing in cold rivers, dressing, and introducing captives to their new families where they greeted with affection and treated as the lost loved ones they were meant to replace and, within time, where they enjoined the same rights and privileges as the people they were substituting. Learning native languages, learning their gender-based subsistence skills, and learning to think like a native resulted in full indianization. European adoptees became so assimilated that they were even allowed to marry each other as they were considered to be completely indian.
One of the most striking elements of Axtell’s work is the irony that Europeans largely adopted the native way of life because they found in it more liberty and less drudgery than their life in the colonies. Europeans never realized the irony of their assumption that the great sin of Native Americans was pride and while Europeans were feeling so much pride in their own culture that they demanded that natives become like the Europeans.
One of the more compelling elements of Axtell's work is that he manages to write a work that brings to light natives’ attitudes towards Europeans despite the lack of original sources that were produced by the natives themselves. In fact, almost all of the sources that are used in the book were produced by Europeans, most of the people who are quoted were European, and when natives are quoted, their words were recorded by Europeans and should be viewed with some degree of skepticism about their reliability. One way he does this is my constantly pointing out how Europeans' attitudes were shaped by their background. In the case of the English this was their assumption of cultural superiority and for the French this included their focus on trade and their willingness to adapt Christianity to native cultures. A great example of how skillfully he uses the limited resources available is found at the beginning of a chapter on native conversion of Europeans. He quotes Cadwallader Colden’s observation that “no arguments, no intreaties, nore tears of their friends and relations could persuade men of [European Captives] to leave their new Indian Friends” but Native boys who were educated among Europeans “returned to their own Nations, and became as fond of the Indian Manner of Life as those that knew nothing of civilized Manner of living.” (pg. 301) Colden’s willingness to admit Indian success in converting Europeans, despite likely harboring an assumption of European superiority, demonstrates that his observation is likely a reliable source and Axtel demonstrates, through his use of this quote, his ability to recognize reliable sources and use them effectively.
Question Number 1: The final chapter of this book describes native’s success in assimilating Europeans, mostly English, to their way of life. The chapter states that thousands of Europeans were carried into Indian territory, but it makes no mention of diseases that these adopted Europeans carried with them. Natives avoided baptism by the French, initially, because they recognized a connection between the ceremony of baptism and catching a European disease. How did adoption of Europeans not also result in outbreaks of epidemic diseases among natives, or did this contact also result in outbreaks but was simply not mentioned in the chapter?
Question Number 2: For both the English and the French conversion meant adopting Christianity, but the French, who were far more successful also focused on trade and allowed natives to maintain those ways of life that did not conflict with Christianity in meaningful ways, whereas the English demanded that natives give up all of their cultural norms and convert to Christianity without concessions. For their part, the natives focused simply on trying to get as much out of the Europeans as they could in a constantly shifting series of alliances, but managed to convert large numbers of Europeans. What can western countries learn from these experiences as they struggle with integrating immigrants to their societies? Which one of these approaches is the most appropriate if western societies expect immigrants to assimilate to their cultures?

[Richard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Invasion has many elements one would like to see in a scholarly book.  First, it is based upon dozens of primary and secondary sources which are clearly footnoted throughout the text.

Second, Axtell integrates the information from the sources into well organized chapters on various aspects of the French and English efforts at converting the Native American nations to Christianity from the first arrival of the Europeans to the so called New World in the early 17th century until the middle of the 18th century.  Comparisons and contrasts between the approaches of the Catholic French Jesuits and the Protestant English missionaries are made clearly at different times throughout the text and in the Epilogue. He also offers analyses by other historians and himself as to why the French had relatively more success in what eventually became Canada than the English did in what became the United States. 

Third, the prose is serviceable.  While the author’s liberal use of quotes from many primary sources provides interesting context, there are times when there is too much of this for my own taste.  This plus the fact that some of his descriptions are so thorough and nuanced makes Invasion slow going at times.  I found it to be a proverbial victim of its own success: there can be so much detail as to make the narrative tedious.

In the Preface Axtell informs the reader that it will be an ‘...ethnohistory of the English, French, and Indian efforts to convert each other.’  However, the Native Americans got nowhere near the same attention as the Europeans did. More specifically, there were 5 chapters on the French, 6 on the English, and only 1 on the NA.  Admittedly, there are fewer sources of information about the NA's than the other two. But Axtell did not refer to these very often.

Additionally, it was only in the Epilogue that the author noted that ‘...much harm was done (to the NA’s) in the name of philanthropy.’ He then went on to opine in some detail that some benefits came as a result of their conversion to Christianity.  This struck me as a rationalization for the physical and cultural genocide which was inflicted on them.  As the book was published in 1985 this lack of perspective might be a reflection of the fact that Native American Studies was barely in its infancy as a scholarly field. But it was troubling nonetheless.

For this reason as well as its tendency to be tedious at times I will give Invasion 3 stars.  I recommend it for those with a particular interest in the missionary aspects of  the first 150 years of European colonialism in North America.  But readers should be aware of its limitations. 

[Dan Gorman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some of this material will be familiar if one has read Neal Salisbury's "Manitou and Providence," Linford Fisher's "The Indian Great Awakening," or colonial America surveys by Alan Taylor and J.H. Elliott, but Axtell does an impressive job of comparing First Nation, French, and English experiences in seventeenth-century North America. The French prioritized converting the indigenous peoples to Catholicism, whereas the English prioritized commerce and sought to displace or eradicate indigenous peoples. Meanwhile, First Peoples selectively chose what parts of European culture to embrace and retained their own traditions despite outward conversion or military defeat. A few Europeans even abandoned settlement life to embrace Native lifestyles. The interweaving of religion, economics, and geopolitics is skillful, and Axtell is a compelling writer.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was obviously crafted with painstaking amounts of research, and you have to respect that. However, I don’t think it should be read through cover-to-cover the way I did. It would probably serve best as a reference, to look up and read small portions at a time. While we’re indirectly on the topic of pacing, many of the chapters in the middle were far too long and the chronology jumped around, which made it difficult sometimes to know when the events being described took place.

Easily the most interesting chapters are the last three: The English Apostates, The White Indians, and Education and Empire. If you were on a time budget, I would say that you could read just those, plus the introductory chapter, The Skewed Triangle.

[R.J. Gilmour · Rating 5 out of 5]

Axtell's book is one of the definitive texts for the history of contact in colonial America.

[Brenda · Rating 4 out of 5]

James Axtell claims to have taken twelve years to write this book. He began with the idea of the New England colonists’ education at the hands of their Indian neighbors and expanded this thesis to incorporate the competing cultures of not only the Indian, but the French and English as well. According to the author, this survey of the social and cultural interactions between these three groups is best accomplished by ethnohistory which he claims is “an imaginative but disciplined blend of anthropological and historical methods concepts, and materials” (v). Axtell’s main thrust relies heavily on the “. .. simple way ethnohistory can begin to give equal treatment to its cultural subjects [which:] is to allow them to judge each other through the value-laden language each used to characterize the others” (xi). Axtell does a fair job in his assessment of the moral and cultural complexities of colonial life with the focus on conversion (who actually converts who is the question) but he includes few sources that are actually Amerindian voices. Without these voices he does not begin to reach “middle ground”.

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent explication of the clash & resulting conflict of cultures in early North American history between the Native Americans, English, and French. Includes some exceptions, especially examples of missionaries who tried to a certain extent to reconcile and accommodate themselves within the Native American world, usually to no avail. Reminds me of the excellent film on the same subject, "Black Robe."