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Gone to Croatan: Origins of North American Dropout Culture
Lost history viewed through cracks in the cartographies of control, including “tri-racial isolate” communities, buccaneers, “white Indians,” black Islamic movements, the Maroons of the Great Dismal Swamp, the Métis nation, scandalous eugenics theories, rural hippie communes, and many other aspects of North American autonomous cultures. A festschrift honoring late historian Hugo Leaming Bey of the Moorish Science Temple.
382 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1993
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
November 23, 2012
Gone to Croatan will remind you that the history of America, from the beginning, has also been a history of resistance, interdependence, and cooperation; full of people who dared to live and love in defiance of maps, boundaries, taboos, custom, religion, and class. From the Calico Indians to the Whiskey Rebellion to land pirates, nomads, labor organizers, and more, the stories in this book can fill even the most cynical reader with a sense of hope and possibility. This is the sort of history that can help shape the future.
January 15, 2015
A wonderful follow-up to A People's History of the US. This is an ethnography of Americans in the truest sense of the word; Americans as opposed to European colonists, but including their descendents, as well as those of Africans and post-colonial indigenous people.
It is a series of essays and poems from many different perspectives about North American rebels from many different tribes. It is about the striving for autonomy, land, and culture under the physical and psychological cartography of control.
"All we want to do is take the chains off. All we want to do is be free." - J. Cole (2014)
It is a series of essays and poems from many different perspectives about North American rebels from many different tribes. It is about the striving for autonomy, land, and culture under the physical and psychological cartography of control.
"All we want to do is take the chains off. All we want to do is be free." - J. Cole (2014)
September 30, 2023
This collection features essays on semi-autonomous people who live on the margins of US society and have been mostly forgotten by US history. It is the most Autonomedia book there is. If Autononedia only ever published one book, it might be this one.
January 9, 2009
An interesting if somewhat uneven collection of essays on the "dropout" history of America. The essays are narrowly focused on particular groups or movements (maroons, Ishmaels) and pre-suppose a general historical knowledge of anti-colonial or anti-dominant culture movements. For the later, I'd recommend Linebaugh and Rediker's The Many-Headed Hydra: The Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic..
August 20, 2010
Interesting look at the Hx of social experiments (either structured or organic) in America. Drop out culture, those that went West to get away rather than to arrive somewhere, pirates.
A reminder that American Hx isn't all about the Civil War, the Civil Rights Movement, or it's New Imperialism...scratch the surface and you'll be following the trail that leads away from Roanoke.
A reminder that American Hx isn't all about the Civil War, the Civil Rights Movement, or it's New Imperialism...scratch the surface and you'll be following the trail that leads away from Roanoke.
March 1, 2018
Interesting archival work but under-theorized. For more comprehensive treatment, see Linebaugh and Rediker's The Many Headed Hydra.
July 21, 2024
I will admit to some bias, sharing a name with the editor (my father).
Those who start this book expecting exact histories of these varying examples of "dropout culture" will find themselves disappointed. As much as anything else, Gone to Croatan is a perfect exposé of the fact that the narratives we tell about history rarely match what truly happened, & in a society of spectacle what happened doesn't matter nearly as much as what people think happened. In the study of history, especially that of liminal spaces (or perhaps the occasional TAZ), signifiers like Louis Riel in Darren Wershler's essay in this book are "reconstituted 'in a seemingly infinite number of ways,'" constantly reinterpreted & rewritten in waves of politics & personal whimsy.
If one cannot understand this fact, they will not enjoy this book. Detractors like Nathaniel Deutsch, who wrote an entire book axing Hugo Leaming's take on the Ben-Ishmael tribe, generally fall into this category. Those who take Leaming's claims of tri-racial descent as absolute typically fail to acknowledge the creation of race as a function of the systems of power. That being said, even Deutsch acknowledges the likelihood that some of the Ishmaels were indeed multi-racial, and perhaps even of English Traveller descent.
What Gone to Croatan does exceptionally well is poke & expand many holes in the fragile vernacular understanding of American history, and then establish a narrative which seeks to bring that which is usually viewed on the outskirts into the central view, dreaming of ways to fold &/or mend the tapestry over the holes & taking in the warped fabric left behind. And while some of the narratives included may not wholly add up to the detractors' satisfaction, others have proven completely true. The Ben-Ishmaels may not have been Muslim, but all recent scholarship suggests that those rumors and dreams of vast networks of runaway slave maroons in the Great Dismal Swamp are completely true.
To read this book is to immerse yourself in the alienation inherent to any imperial system. It doesn't attempt to demonize any group of people, but to understand how a colonial society makes slaves of us all. It reveals a scattering of hidden histories throughout our collective American narrative, from the Revolution, to the migrations of the Métis, the Haudenosaunee and their role in influencing the women's rights movement, & the occupation of Alcatraz (not even mentioned in a tour of the island a friend of mine took just this past year). It asks you not only to reimagine history, but geography, & topography, saying that "since neither toponyms nor topographs embody 'reality,' disappearance need not always be a catastrophe." Everything exists in a system of tradition and variation, which may go so far as loss.
We cannot necessarily undo the bonds of the past, but allowing ourselves to understand them with a greater sense of uncertainty, & a willingness to believe the multi-faceted variations of folk history, especially those on the outskirts, can help us imagine the future as well.
As an Indian scholar at Alcatraz concludes the penultimate chapter:
“Our dreams belong to us. Now the time has come to share them with each other and to see what we can do with them.”
Those who start this book expecting exact histories of these varying examples of "dropout culture" will find themselves disappointed. As much as anything else, Gone to Croatan is a perfect exposé of the fact that the narratives we tell about history rarely match what truly happened, & in a society of spectacle what happened doesn't matter nearly as much as what people think happened. In the study of history, especially that of liminal spaces (or perhaps the occasional TAZ), signifiers like Louis Riel in Darren Wershler's essay in this book are "reconstituted 'in a seemingly infinite number of ways,'" constantly reinterpreted & rewritten in waves of politics & personal whimsy.
If one cannot understand this fact, they will not enjoy this book. Detractors like Nathaniel Deutsch, who wrote an entire book axing Hugo Leaming's take on the Ben-Ishmael tribe, generally fall into this category. Those who take Leaming's claims of tri-racial descent as absolute typically fail to acknowledge the creation of race as a function of the systems of power. That being said, even Deutsch acknowledges the likelihood that some of the Ishmaels were indeed multi-racial, and perhaps even of English Traveller descent.
What Gone to Croatan does exceptionally well is poke & expand many holes in the fragile vernacular understanding of American history, and then establish a narrative which seeks to bring that which is usually viewed on the outskirts into the central view, dreaming of ways to fold &/or mend the tapestry over the holes & taking in the warped fabric left behind. And while some of the narratives included may not wholly add up to the detractors' satisfaction, others have proven completely true. The Ben-Ishmaels may not have been Muslim, but all recent scholarship suggests that those rumors and dreams of vast networks of runaway slave maroons in the Great Dismal Swamp are completely true.
To read this book is to immerse yourself in the alienation inherent to any imperial system. It doesn't attempt to demonize any group of people, but to understand how a colonial society makes slaves of us all. It reveals a scattering of hidden histories throughout our collective American narrative, from the Revolution, to the migrations of the Métis, the Haudenosaunee and their role in influencing the women's rights movement, & the occupation of Alcatraz (not even mentioned in a tour of the island a friend of mine took just this past year). It asks you not only to reimagine history, but geography, & topography, saying that "since neither toponyms nor topographs embody 'reality,' disappearance need not always be a catastrophe." Everything exists in a system of tradition and variation, which may go so far as loss.
We cannot necessarily undo the bonds of the past, but allowing ourselves to understand them with a greater sense of uncertainty, & a willingness to believe the multi-faceted variations of folk history, especially those on the outskirts, can help us imagine the future as well.
As an Indian scholar at Alcatraz concludes the penultimate chapter:
“Our dreams belong to us. Now the time has come to share them with each other and to see what we can do with them.”
December 21, 2022
Dang this book blew my mind. An excellent source that reminds us: it's always been live-and-let-live versus fascist authority trips. Tell your local "diversity police:" only the oppressor society ever cared what color people's skin is! Let's learn from the métis, the Ishmaelites, the Black Seminoles, and get together.
What am I talking about? Read this book!
What am I talking about? Read this book!
April 14, 2008
I really enjoyed reading this book a little bit at a time - picking it up and reading a chapter here and another there, and so I really appreciated the non-linear layout of it. I also really loved hearing the stories of all the different kinds of people banning together to resist the encroaching world of laws and restraints and work. I feel like the sort of ethnic/race history talked about in this book is sorely missing from a lot of radicals' critiques.
If you enjoyed hearing about tri-racial tribes, I recommend the chapter in Real Resistance to Slavery in North America that talks about the Maroons and Dismal Swamp.
4.3
If you enjoyed hearing about tri-racial tribes, I recommend the chapter in Real Resistance to Slavery in North America that talks about the Maroons and Dismal Swamp.
4.3
December 18, 2009
This was okay. I always loose focus in books that are collected short essays like this. Some of them were good, others were really boring or just plain poorly written. If you want to get a sense of the history of drop outs and resistant cultures in North America this is perhaps worth skimming for the references to more thorough works on those groups/topics.
March 5, 2008
The inertia of nomadic journey and autonomy are very valid feelings for american drop-outs. A practical example of Burroughs sentiment about horribly maimed souls of Nagasaki and Hiroshima returning to endanger national security (as American youth).
Want to read
January 1, 2010Precursors to hippies and drop-out culture in North America. Puritans who left to live among the Native Americans due to the oppressive puritanical culture; Spaniards who left the Conquistadors to live among the Mayans, etc.
Want to read
December 24, 2007I read one of the essays, about the Ishmaelites. It was so interesting that I want to read the rest of the book.
February 25, 2008
An homage to dropout culture in North America.
January 16, 2013
very impressive collection. jubilant, entertaining, slyly heroic, yet not inaccurate about the defeats but still slyly optimistic...
January 30, 2010
I loved this book
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews