Saturday, January 8, 2011: 9:20 AM
Dartmouth Room (Marriott Boston Copley Place)
“Keeping up the Indian yell”:
The Intercultural Context of Agrarian Violence
My paper explores the intercultural context of agrarian violence along the early American frontier. Much work has been done on the “Whiskey Rebellion,” the North Carolina Regulation, and other episodes of contention over property and power that roiled the backcountry in the eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. However, little has been done to meaningfully connect this story with another aspect of frontier history—the study of Indian-European contact and conflict. My paper seeks to bridge this gap; its approach is that of a case study. I focus on the Wyoming controversy: a land and jurisdictional dispute that pitted Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and groups of settlers and speculators allied to each in a struggle for control of the Wyoming Valley and its environs (present-day northeast Pennsylvania) between roughly 1750 and 1810.
I argue that agrarian violence and Indian-white relations intersect in two meaningful ways. First, Indian-white contact contributed to the texture of backcountry unrest. Old World traditions of popular protest and the experience of the American Revolution certainly shaped the rituals of agrarian resistance, but contact with Native peoples also had an impact. The fact that land rioters often donned “Indian” disguises while perpetrating acts of violence speaks to this influence and is a practice whose meaning needs to be carefully unpacked. Moreover, I contend that the willingness of land rioters in the Wyoming Valley to take part in acts that were not just violent, but deadly, was in large part a legacy of intercultural, racialized conflict between Indians and Europeans. One of the most palpable links between Indian-European contention and episodes of agrarian unrest was the violence that white frontier settlers deployed, first against Indian adversaries, and, later, against the land speculators, government officials, and settlers who threatened their soil rights.
The Intercultural Context of Agrarian Violence
My paper explores the intercultural context of agrarian violence along the early American frontier. Much work has been done on the “Whiskey Rebellion,” the North Carolina Regulation, and other episodes of contention over property and power that roiled the backcountry in the eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. However, little has been done to meaningfully connect this story with another aspect of frontier history—the study of Indian-European contact and conflict. My paper seeks to bridge this gap; its approach is that of a case study. I focus on the Wyoming controversy: a land and jurisdictional dispute that pitted Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and groups of settlers and speculators allied to each in a struggle for control of the Wyoming Valley and its environs (present-day northeast Pennsylvania) between roughly 1750 and 1810.
I argue that agrarian violence and Indian-white relations intersect in two meaningful ways. First, Indian-white contact contributed to the texture of backcountry unrest. Old World traditions of popular protest and the experience of the American Revolution certainly shaped the rituals of agrarian resistance, but contact with Native peoples also had an impact. The fact that land rioters often donned “Indian” disguises while perpetrating acts of violence speaks to this influence and is a practice whose meaning needs to be carefully unpacked. Moreover, I contend that the willingness of land rioters in the Wyoming Valley to take part in acts that were not just violent, but deadly, was in large part a legacy of intercultural, racialized conflict between Indians and Europeans. One of the most palpable links between Indian-European contention and episodes of agrarian unrest was the violence that white frontier settlers deployed, first against Indian adversaries, and, later, against the land speculators, government officials, and settlers who threatened their soil rights.
See more of: Intercultural Violence in Early America: Conflict in a Comparative Perspective
See more of: AHA Sessions
See more of: AHA Sessions