Red Brethren: The Brothertown and Stockbridge Indians and the Problem of Race in Early America

by David J. Silverman

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.

In the era of the American Revolution, the pressure of white settlements forced the Brothertowns and Stockbridges from New England to Oneida country in upstate New York. During the early nineteenth century, whites forced these Indians from Oneida country, too, until they finally wound up in Wisconsin. Tired of moving, in the 1830s and 1840s, the Brothertowns and Stockbridges became some of the first Indians to accept U.S. citizenship, which they called "becoming white," in the hope that this status would enable them to remain as Indians in Wisconsin. Even then, whites would not leave them alone.

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.

Genres: History

296 pages, Hardcover

First published October 14, 2010

About the author

David J. Silverman is Professor of History at George Washington University. He is the author of the award-winning This Land is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and Troubled History of Thanksgiving (Bloomsbury, 2019), as well as Thundersticks, Ninigret, Red Brethren, and Faith and Boundaries. His essays have appeared in the New York Times, The Atlantic, Washington Post, National Geographic, and the Daily Beast. He lives in Washington, D.C.

Reviews

[Richard Subber · Rating 5 out of 5]

Red Brethren is a scholarly deep dive into the experiences and mindsets of the First Americans who first tried to tolerate and later resisted the imperious impositions of the European colonists in North America.
The Indians left almost no record in their own writing, but Silverman exercises the customary technique of extrapolating Indian thoughts and attitudes from the written European record.
In the context of our current understanding that “race” is a social construct, and a destructive concept, it is a bit puzzling that Silverman uses various manifestations of “race” in his analysis.
Nevertheless, he makes it plain that we have so much to learn about what the indigenous peoples thought of the European invaders, and how that thinking changed over time.

Read more of my book reviews and poems here:
www.richardsubber.com

[Nathaniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

A conceptually fascinating but relatively pedantic history of the Brothertown and Stockbridge Indians, two tribes originally from the area that is now western Massachusetts/eastern New York who decided to convert to Christianity and live as white people told them to live. In spite of this, they were constantly mistreated by white settlers because they were Indians, first being pushed to western New York and then being pushed again to the lower Midwest and finally ending up on a reservation in upper Wisconsin, where their descendants remain to this day. In the proud tradition of Cornell University Press, it's a vital and engaging story showcasing a great deal of impressive historical research, but presented in a dry scholarly tone that makes it inaccessible to anyone who isn't really trying. The author is a professional historian who maintains a professional tone; one can occasionally spot a bit of politically correct axe-grinding threatening to peek through the veneer, but he does a good job of restraining himself throughout. Ultimately, this is a story about an obscure group that deserves to be told. Just don't expect the telling to live up to the story itself.