Anglo-Native Virginia: Trade, Conversion, and Indian Slavery in the Old Dominion, 1646–1722 by Kristalyn Marie Shefveland (review)

kristalyn marie shefveland has written a succinct history of Anglo-Native relations in Virginia, focusing on the tributary system, trading routes, Indian slave trade, and, to a lesser extent, conversion in the Coastal Plain and Piedmont regions during the midcolonial period. While the Virginia colony and the Powhatan Indians are the central focus of the book, the story includes "foreign" tribes such as the powerful Iroquois League of New York and the Occaneechi, Catawba, and Tuscarora Indians of the Carolinas, which demonstrate the complexity of Anglo-Native relations with tributary and nontributary Indians within a broad geopolitical scope.

With the signing of the treaty of 1646 after the English defeat of the Pamunkey Indians in the 1644 uprising, led by Opechancanough, a new chapter in Anglo-Native relations began with the rise of the Indian tributary system, bookended by the Albany Treaty of 1722. This period saw an increase in trade of furs, skins, and Indian slaves, which tributary Indians bartered with the English for guns, powder, and shot. Competition was fierce as colonists such as Abraham Wood, William Byrd, and Alexander Spotswood struggled to maintain alliances with tributary Indians while keeping foreign or enemy Indians at bay so as to establish and maintain a monopoly on Virginia trading routes.

Bacon's rebellion in 1676 aimed to end the tributary system as Nathaniel Bacon sought to break the Occaneechi stronghold over the trading route, which would increase his access to the Indian slave market. Once the rebellion was put down by Governor William Berkeley, the tributary system was restored with the 1677 Treaty of Middle Plantation. Trade resumed and the violence increased as human captivity, once based on social control before contact, was transformed into a market economy that demanded constant slave raids for profit.

By the early eighteenth century, a "new paradigm" in Anglo-Native bartering emerged as colonists began requesting Indian children as leverage during tributary negotiations. Due to the increased fear of slave raids, Indians acquiesced to such demands, as the colonists promised to protect the children from enslavement. Unsurprisingly, the colonists could not provide adequate protection for their Indian allies or their children.

The Treaty at Albany of 1722 was reached with the cooperation of Governor Alexander Spotswood of Virginia and the governors of Maryland, Pennsylvania, and New York with the Iroquoian League (which now included the southern Tuscarora) agreeing that death or enslavement overseas would be the penalty for "any southern Indian who ventured north of the Potomac or passed west of the [Blue Ridge] mountains" and any of the Iroquois League "who went south or east of the boundaries." The treaty was upheld until 1738.

Shefveland's book provides a general history that will be useful to undergraduates and others with little knowledge of the subject. Her discussion of Indian slavery and the Indian slave trade enriches her study, yet it also highlights its limitations. First, without the discussion of Indian slavery, much of the work she presents on tributary Indians, particularly as it relates to the Powhatan, has been adequately covered, as demonstrated by her abundant use of secondary sources. The work would have benefited from a more thoroughgoing exploration of the Iroquois and Sioux tribes in the Virginia region.

Second, the Anglo-Native paradigm has run its course and should be expanded to include other social phenomena. Case in point, Virginia recognized three classes of slaves: Negro, Indian, and mulatto. Yet Shefveland makes only a passing mention of African slavery and fails to explore its confluence with Indian slavery. Also, she collapses the Negro and mulatto categories into the single category "African," which as my work and that of Jack D. Forbes demonstrate is problematic. Not only did the Indian and African slave trades overlap during this period, but racial categories did not have the same meanings they do today. Hence, Negro was not synonymous with African. With a good portion of...