New Directions in American Indian History

The Common Cause: Creating race and nation in the American Revolution by Robert G. Parkinson; The Oxford Handbook of American Indian History; and Andrew Lipman's first book and winner of the Bancroft Prize in American History, The Saltwater Frontier: Indians and the contest for the American coast not only continue to revive the idea that Native groups had, and still have, agency in history writing and American Indian Studies, but these books' writers have additionally contributed to the growing scholarship that removes the reservation as the centralized focus of Native culture and demonstrates that before and during colonization Natives have gathered and networked in urban environments. Lipman's Saltwater Frontier surveys Dutch, English and Native American power dynamics during the seventeenth century as they sought economic and political control of the North American Atlantic coast, from Hudson Bay to Cape Cod. Lipman addresses the Algonquian people's reaction to colonization and how these relationships built lasting consequences for Native culture, politics, economy and religiosity. He calls for a reexamination of colonization that focuses its lens on the competitiveness between settlers and Natives in the water, rather than just competition for land. He argues that historians' perspectives of colonization have heretofore focused on land-based theories; by shifting the historical lens onto the water, Lipman uncovers the sense of motion and "elastic realms" of the seventeenth century that debunk the myths of fixed borders and identities.

Often, historical literature purveys the idea that colonists and Natives met on land, but The Saltwater Frontier reimagines colonization and points of contact by capturing the anxieties, fears, cultures and languages of both the colonists (Dutch and English) and Natives as they fought for control of resources on the water and land. Lipman does this by dividing his book into six chapters that rise from the fascinating gender, political and social structures of the Algonquian peoples before and during colonial contact. The six main chapters of Lipman's book demonstrate that the ebb and flow of power relations between ethnic groups who utilize certain materials challenges long held assumptions that place-names concretize borders and people groups. For example, Lipman's fascinating description of the making and uses of Native and European watercraft in Chapter Two explains how identities and cultures became enmeshed, intertwined, and changed throughout settlement. European ship builders discovered that the small, Native-built canoes navigated more easily through the shallow coastal waters than their large ships, and Europeans then structured their vessels according to Native design. The same was done by Natives who adopted a mix between European-style housing and their traditionally built dwelling places.

The book then shifts its focus from the mobility of identity to "elastic realms," or shifting borders, by detailing the devastating brutality of encounters between the Dutch, English and Algonquians. The Pequot War, Kieft's War and Miantonomi's War are key events in Saltwater Frontier, along with Massasoit, Miantonomi, Squanto and Metacom as key figures. Lipman uses the wars fought for power and resources to explain the constantly shifting borders and politics between these events and peoples that narrate the economics of the shoreline.

Central to Lipman's argument is the struggle for the coastal territory that constructed an empire and transformed the coast from native dominance to English colonial dominance. Lipman demonstrates how village life led to an increase in the colonial population and led to growing utilization of the land's resources (such as fur and beaver pelts). Colonizers realized that they needed slaves because of the additional work associated with the fur trade. The book also analyzes the maritime spaces that facilitated the travel and trade of these slaves on European ships that carried them to foreign lands. Lipman centralizes the slave trade as the way in which Europeans gained...