Description
The Archaeology of Native-Lived Colonialism: Challenging History in the Great Lakes is a study of the archaeological record of the western Great Lakes region, home to the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois), Anishinaabe (Ojibwe), and Lenni Lenape (Delaware) nations. The Archaeology of Native-Lived Colonialism convincingly utilizes historical archaeology to link the First Nations experience of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to the deeper history of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century interactions and with pre-European times. It shows how these communities succeeded in retaining cohesiveness through centuries of foreign influence and material innovations by maintaining ancient, adaptive social processes that both incorporated European ideas and reinforced historically understood notions of self and community. In reconsidering adaptation and resistance to colonial British rule, Ferris reviews five centuries of interaction that are usually read as a single event viewed through the lens of historical bias. He first examines patterns of traditional lifeway continuity among the Ojibwe, demonstrating their ability to maintain seasonal mobility up to the mid-nineteenth century and their adaptive response to its loss. He then looks at the experience of refugee Delawares, who settled among the Ojibwe as a missionary-sponsored community yet managed to maintain an identity distinct from missionary influences. And he shows how the archaeological history of the Six Nations Iroquois reflected patterns of negotiating emergent colonialism when they returned to the region in the 1780s, exploring how families managed tradition and the contemporary colonial world to develop innovative ways of revising and maintaining identity.