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Reviewed by:
  • Beyond Conquest: Native Peoples and the Struggle for History in New England
  • Robert J. Miller
Amy E. Den Ouden. Beyond Conquest: Native Peoples and the Struggle for History in New England. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005. 304 pp. Paper, $19.95.

History never embraces more than a small part of reality.

François de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

Assistant Professor Amy E. Den Ouden of the University of Massachusetts–Boston has written an excellent book that is worthy of widespread attention. She has created a first-class piece of scholarly research and writing that makes a [End Page 587] major contribution to the field of American Indian studies and especially to the study of colonial and Indian relations in New England.

Den Ouden argues persuasively that the Connecticut colonists and political leaders effectively used and manipulated history by purposeful misinterpretation and recording of events to diminish the property, cultural, governmental, and human rights of the Eastern Pequot, Mashantucket Pequot, Mohegan, and Niantic nations. And, as her title implies, this all occurred after or "beyond" any actual military conquest of these Native people. By extrapolating artificial and false histories from the military conquest of the Pequots in 1637 and by using the legal principles that resulted from that conquest, the colonists went "beyond conquest" and in a continuing struggle over history—how it's written and what it means—diminished many rights of the Native people that had not already been legally impacted by a military conquest.

Den Ouden states the purpose of the colony's misuse of history:"Connecticut's … emergence of a colonial Indian policy … would divert attention from the problem of illegal encroachment on reservation lands and focus instead on the presumed cultural and political illegitimacy of reservation communities and particular Native identities" (3). She argues that most of this misuse of history and the "struggle for history" allowed colonists to justify to the world and their own consciences their ongoing theft of Indian property and sovereign rights. Connecticut colonists undertook this appropriation of Indian lands and the misuse of history notwithstanding the 1680 Connecticut law (which mirrors laws enacted by all the colonies) that lands allotted to or set apart for Indians

shall be recorded to them and the same shall remayn to them and their heirs for ever; and it shall not be in the power of any such Indian or Indians to make any alienation therof; and whatsoever Englishmen shall purchase any such lands … the bargain shall be voyd and null. (4)

This legal principle was adopted by all thirteen American colonies and by the United States in 1790 and is still the law today (25 U.S. Code §177).

Notwithstanding this law, the Connecticut colonists purposely misused their history and that of the Native people to justify encroachments on Indian lands. Various colonists and Connecticut officials engaged in this practice from the earliest days, as exemplified in John Eliot's 1643 book New England's First Fruits, in which he recorded the "neighborly efforts" Connecticut made to civilize, convert, and associate with Indians and in which he claims the settlers did not take even one acre of Indian land (51). In addition, in Daniel Gookin's 1674 book Historical Collection of the Indians in New England, Gookin either deluded himself or just plain lied because he considered the "colonial presence in New England as benevolent, preordained and necessary" (47). Whether done purposefully or through cultural blindness, it is clear why these colonists could not [End Page 588] state the truth; otherwise, they would have to reject their own culture, religion, government, and actions. That's one problem with history, of course; it is often used either accidentally or purposefully to justify a position or viewpoint.

The colonists also masked and perpetuated their violent conquest and colonization by denouncing, as Gookin did, tribal histories as figments and fables. The conquerors' history was the only one that mattered. This false history

asserted notions of cultural difference and Indian cultural "illegitimacy." In an important sense, then, culture—and more precisely, an idea of irrevocable cultural otherness and inferiority—serves to obfuscate histories of struggle and deny the validity of resistance. (18)

Another example of this...

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