Indigenous London: Native Travelers at the Heart of Empire by Coll Thrush (review)

Like its cover image of three Cherokees traversing a London pedestrian crossing, this book is arresting and intriguing, and it successfully challenges ongoing assumptions about where and how Indigenous people are meant to appear. In many ways an outstanding sequel to Philip J. Deloria's Indians in Unexpected Places, Coll Thrush's Indigenous Londonplays on a common unwillingness to see Indigenous people at key sites of modernity. ¹Like Deloria, Thrush presents so many examples of just such occurrences that readers not only start to recognize the absurdity of modernity's tension with indigeneity but also find that Indigenous people themselves have never accepted it.

Thrush's eagerly anticipated book is similar in form to his earlier work, Native Seattle. ²After a cogent introduction, it offers chronologically ordered chapters on sets of Indigenous people inhabiting so-called non-Indigenous urban spaces. In Indigenous London, there are six main chapters, moving from the late sixteenth century to the present. Each chapter circles gently around a general theme: knowledge for the early modern period, disorder for the early eighteenth century, reason for the late eighteenth century, ritual for the early Victorian age, discipline for the late Victorian age, and memory for the contemporary era. A new addition in this book is a series of "interludes" (26) slotted between the chapters, each reflecting in verse form on one particular object from less-studied, and often painful, Indigenous moments in the history of London. The interludes are meant to emphasize the "affective" and "transhistorical" (26) aspects of Indigenous encounters with the city. Using the present tense, linguistic play, and an unconventional approach to archival testimony, they aim to remind the reader of "the human consequences of the larger story of Indigenous London" (26) and the ways in which its legacies continue in Indigenous and Londoner lives today.

Without a doubt, the most brilliant aspect of this book is its ability to interweave in each chapter a handful of fascinating microhistories about Indigenous visitors around a pertinent theme. Thrush hooks his readers with one tale, then introduces us to a few others, touches again upon the initial story around midway, before trotting through a few more examples and returning, finally, to the original hook by the chapter's close. The way he manages to delve deeply into issues via many instances rather than just one—always keeping readers wanting more rather than less—is masterful. An example is Thrush's second chapter, which opens with the sixteenth-century English scholar Thomas Hariot studiously attempting to turn the sounds of Ossomocomuck language into a written alphabet with the aid of two Roanoke men, Manteo and Wanchese. This event occurs not on Virginian shores, as might be expected, but in a grand house on the River Thames. The opening thus establishes the theme of entangled knowledges. Martin Frobisher's Inuit of 1576, George Weymouth's five Abenaki in 1605, and the presumed inspiration for Shakespeare's Indian characters then make appearances before Thrush lights again briefly on Manteo and Wanchese. We next push into the seventeenth century with two Algonquians and the famous Pocahontas before finishing with the return voyages of our original Roanoke men, who have brought home knowledge not only of colonial intent but also of a much wider world. Throughout, Thrush underscores the two-way process of knowledge encounters.

Another powerfully commendable aspect of this book is the space and significance it gives to Indigenous voices, not only those analyzed as subjects but also those of contemporary scholars, artists, community leaders, and descendants. Thrush's account demonstrates Indigenous "survivance" (14) through time, but it also acknowledges how much the author has relied on Indigenous research and interest to do so. It tries to show how "Indigenous people around the world, far from being passive victims or metaphorical foils, have in fact actively engaged with and helped create the world...