Journal Article

Colonial Southeastern Indian History

Hatfield, April Lee

2007

Overview

Scholarship on quickly changing circumstances and rapid realignments has added nuance to earlier conquest/victim stories and opened three related avenues of inquiry about Indians in the colonial Southeast: (1) How did individuals and polities negotiate different kinds of power in this rapidly changing world? (2) Given such swift change, can we find analytical language to describe political units and character of interactions with both precision and some broad applicability? and (3) How central a role did the Indian slave trade play in redefining the region? [...]the trade itself (as well as Indian migrations) connected the two regions. During the last two decades, historians of the colonial Southeast have transformed our dim awareness that an Indian slave trade existed into the stark knowledge that that trade played a crucial role in defining southeastern North America for all of its residents from the middle of the seventeenth century to the middle of the eighteenth century. Much of this work remains unpublished, but searches in the American Historical Association's Dissertations in Progress database, conferences programs, and fellowship award lists make clear that we can anticipate the publication of a flurry of work on Indians involved in the slave trade, on the relationship between the Indian slave trade and Indians' relationship to enslaved Africans, and on the effects of this trade on Indian identities (racial and otherwise).32 Because of its complexity - involving multiple rapidly changing Indian polities, three European empires, and the increasing presence of Africans of different ethnicities - southeastern Indian history looms as a fruitful space for the exploration of questions - about power negotiations, about early modern integration of non- Western, Atlantic, and global economies, about the changing definitions of race and identity, and about the formations and definitions of polities - whose relevance extends beyond the region.33 1 Gary B. Nash, Red, White, and Black: The People of Early America (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1974).

• Publisher: Southern Historical Association
• Subject: African history / American history / Colonialism / Countries / Economic diplomacy / Forum: Redefining and Reassesssing the Colonial South / Globalization / History / Human trafficking / Indian culture / Indian history / International relations / Language change / Native American history / Native Americans / Native North Americans / Negotiation / Politics / Trade / Trade regionalization / United States history / White people