Natives and Newcomers: The Cultural Origins of North America (review)

Natives and Newcomers: The Cultural Origins of North America. By James Axtell (New York, Oxford University Press, 2000) 418 pp. $24.95

Axtell is a master of the article-length essay. Few excel him in the ability to pose provocative historical questions. What would colonial America have been like in the absence of Native Americans? Why did such a large number of Europeans "become Indians," while so few Indians chose to become Europeans (190)? Who introduced scalping to the continent? Fewer still are capable of answering such questions so pithily. Although many of Axtell's essays have already appeared in book form, Natives and Newcomers brings together sixteen of them into a single, chronologically arranged volume. The organization suggests that Axtell has managed, perhaps despite himself, to construct a synthesis of early North American cultural encounters.

Natives and Newcomers begins with a vindication of ethnohistory, which is defined as a holistic, multidisciplinary approach to the study of cultures and cultural changes. However, the book ultimately amounts to a compelling moral history of the contact between Europeans and Native Americans. Within today's academy, censure falls invariably and reflexively on the European newcomers to North America. Axtell is considerably more self-conscious in his use of language than many professed activists in the field. But although he has long cautioned against one-sided invectives, he has also provided an account of colonial America that reflects badly on the newcomers. This is certainly a forgivable offense against the venerable ideal of historical objectivity; if the Europeans' moral ledger was already heavily slanted toward ethical failing, the good-natured welcome that they received from native North Americans only increased the debt. Subtly, but relentlessly, Axtell reminds us of the astounding fact that one group of people (Native Americans) did not take advantage of another people (Europeans) when they could have. We hardly need reminding that such treatment was usually not reciprocated.

Like Merrell and Richter, his fellow ethnohistorians, Axtell's restrained expressions of disapproval are the products of scrupulous historical research, rather than an a priori disposition to find fault in everything that the newcomers did.¹ Axtell does not decry missionary activity, European trade, Indian consumption of European goods, nor even the land hunger of ordinary white settlers. What troubles Axtell was the Europeans' tendency to treat their Native American counterparts as means to ends. Just as Europeans mined native languages "for individual words, not syntax, grammar, or special patterns of thought and meaning," so did they purchase a limited range of Indian goods (319). They saw their first native acquaintances as potential slaves and involuntary interpreters, and they viewed Indian religious conversions as an integral part of a larger effort to render native behavior "predictable" (146).

Those who have read Axtell's other books will find much in Natives and Newcomers that looks familiar. Even those unacquainted with Axtell's work will notice some repetition. On at least two occasions, for instance, Axtell recalls the words of a Montagnais hunter: "The beaver does everything perfectly well, it makes kettles, hatchets, swords, knives, bread. . . . in short it makes everything" (93, 107). But in this instance, as in others, the repetition is significant. This insightful anecdote captures what Axtell sees as the playful adaptability of Indian peoples, who were generally eager to adapt European artifacts to their traditional ends. By contrast, the newcomers were less inclined to adapt to native ways than to remake the North American continent in their own English, Spanish, and French images. With admirable clarity, good humor, and methodological rigor, Axtell has succeeded in telling the story of those often hopeful, yet ill-fated, early encounters between vastly different groups of people.