Traders and Natives in the Northeast

Brothers Among Nations examines interactions among Native American communities and the European inhabitants of the eastern seaboard of the United States during the precarious early stages of colonization. The author focuses upon informal exchanges, principally diplomacy and commerce, which both linked the communities together and divided them in equal measure.

The characters of Issac Allerton and William Claiborne dominate the book; wide-ranging merchants with ties to more than one European colonizing power and links to several indigenous communities. Framing the book along the trajectory of their lives grants the author the freedom to explore multiple communities—both European and native alike—along the northeastern corridor of North America. The perspective brought by such an optic is innovative and refreshing.

Issac Allerton and William Claiborne from Virginia became prominent and wealthy through trading with native peoples and with different groups of northeastern settlements. Allerton, originally a Plymouth colonist, established additional residence in the Dutch settlement in Manhattan, trading between Plymouth Plantation and the Dutch settlement. When civil war at home between Royalists and Parliamentarians prevented the English colony from receiving needed supplies, Allerton successfully located goods the Plymouth colonists needed through the Dutch settlement. An international merchant with equally strong ties to the Dutch and English colonies, Allerton simply followed the most lucrative sources of trade. Seeing an opportunity in the new Swedish colony along the Delaware in 1638, Allerton played up his English contacts, knowing that the Dutch objected strongly to the Swedish presence (and eventually succeeded in ousting the Swedes). Moving freely among the European and native settlements, Allerton also carried diplomatic messages, enabling communication, if not always resolution, in a region where no formal strategies for contact existed. While Van Zandt refers to Allerton as a "boundary crossing individual" (p. 177) she shows a trader adept at opportunistically switching political allegiances in the pursuit of expanded trade networks.

Virginia-based William Claiborne presents one of the book's puzzling contradictions. Early on he established a fortified trading post on Kent Island in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay, right at the juncture of two separate native fur trading routes, and he rapidly enriched himself through his dealings, primarily through an extremely lucrative trade with the Susquehannocks. However, when the Crown granted Lord Calvert possession of the territory of Maryland, Calvert evicted Claiborne from the lucrative trade post, which now lay in the middle of his new possessions. Claiborne later claimed that the value of his possessions, cattle, and land on the island reached over 10,000 British pounds. However, Calvert unwisely refused to acknowledge Claiborne's claim or recompense him for his losses. In retaliation Claiborne enlisted Susquehannock allies to attack the Maryland plantation. With a potential major trading partners being openly urged to fight rather than trade, the Maryland colony was unable to obtain anything close to the revenue from the trade that Claiborne had received. Despite enlisting Susquehannocks to interfere with Maryland's trade and settlements, Claiborne in later years had the gall to petition the king to recompense him for the total value of his losses from Kent Island on the grounds that he had fought against Indians (albeit later in his life). Unsurprisingly, the petition failed, but demonstrates the ways in which internecine fighting among English colonists over trade could have unfortunate consequences for all disputants.

One chapter, although interesting, appears oddly misplaced in this collection: namely, Dutch authorities' unusual decisions in serious criminal prosecutions against black defendants in New Netherlands. The information conveyed in the chapter is revelatory, illustrating how well Dutch officials understood the need to maintain the loyalty of the black community. When the garrote twice failed to hang a black convicted of murder, Dutch officials surprisingly pardoned the offender.. The chapter appears out of place since the author largely stays away from the handling of criminal cases in other jurisdictions.

Van Zandt asserts that the Lenapes and Susquehannocks joined the Munsee attack on...