Becoming Brothertown: Native American Ethnogenesis and Endurance in the Modern World

7. Spatial Practices at Brothertown

162 7 Spatial Practices at Brothertown Brothers, We thank you for the good offers you have been pleased to make us of the privilege of Having Lands in your cuntry for us to live upon and we expect in the course of this fall or in the Spring and with your consent to make choise of a spot to build our fire place. —Brothertown Peacemakers, 1811 In an effort that ultimately led them to current-day Wisconsin, the Brothertown Indians sought out yet another new communal land base in the early nineteenth century. As outlined in chapter 3, they first looked to present-day Indiana, writing the letter quoted above to the leaders of a multitribal community then residing in the area (Jarvis 2010). Although not the intention of early leaders like Samson Occom and Joseph Johnson, mobility —the physical act of withdrawal from one spot to another—came to constitute a central theme in Brothertown history (Cipolla 2013a). To persevere in the ever-changing political and social landscape of the United States, the Brothertown Indians made and remade their “fire places” in several “spots” across northeastern North America. As they moved into new landscapes in New York, Wisconsin, and beyond, the Brothertown Indians continually negotiated their identities, their relations to one another, and their places in the modern world. In the previous chapters I examined the ways writing and commemoration —each tethered to issues of landscape and spatial practices in their own ways—speak to shifts in the intra- and intercommunal dynamics of Brothertown history. The textual, material, and spatial patterns revealed and discussed therein demonstrate the negotiated nature of colonial histories, with both insiders and outsiders playing parts. Here I narrow my focus to examine the intracommunal dynamics further. I consider the differences that mobility and continually starting anew made for the Brothertown community and spatial practices at brothertown 163 for the production of their history. As in previous chapters, I argue that with each new spot, with each new communal fire place, came new opportunities that critically shaped the ethnogenesis and endurance of the community. More specifically, I investigate nineteenth-century residential patterns in both Brothertown settlements. Systematic analyses of the detailed plot maps and record books associated with the settlements offer new insights into the emergence and transformation of the community. Not only is such a perspective rare in terms of Native histories of the nineteenth century, it also adds a unique point of comparison for the documents and cemeteries analyzed and discussed previously. The Place of Space in Brothertown Ethnogenesis The settlement patterns analyzed in this chapter resulted from practices that likely spanned a range of consciousness. Although they clearly had the potential to do so, I do not argue that spatial configurations of settlements simply resulted from intentionally discursive practices designed to create or bolster social boundaries. Similar to Michel de Certeau’s (1984:93) observations on pedestrians moving through the crowded streets of Manhattan, “whose bodies follow the thicks and thins of an urban ‘text’ they write without being able to read,” I see Brothertown settlement patterns as the longterm and aggregated outcomes of fairly short-term decisions on the part of individuals and families. Like the paths described by Certeau, decisions on where to live were influenced by the particular contexts in which they took place, but also reflexively shaped those contexts in ways unbeknownst to their practitioners (see chapter 2). Taking influence from practice theorists like Certeau, I approach Brothertown settlement patterns in terms of their long-term results. Although the individuals and families who created and shaped the patterns discussed in this chapter may have done so unconsciously or on levels of what Anthony Giddens (1984) calls “practical consciousness,” the resulting patterns still had pragmatic effects in the world. These patterns were part of the fabric of the everyday lives of Brothertown Indians and therefore informed their identities and their relations to one another. Analyzing Brothertown Land Records A rich collection of archival materials speaks directly to the history of land claims and ownership in the Brothertown settlements. Commissioned by chapter 7 164 New York State in the late eighteenth century, the first survey of Brothertown , New York, generated the oldest documents concerning lot division and settlement patterns in Brothertown. These are comprised of field notes and a survey map (New York Surveyor General 1795). The map shows the earliest lot divisions, and several record books discuss or...