Who, Where, and What Were “Indians” in the Early Republic United States?

Up until about the 1830s, European and American travelers to the Pacific routinely labeled Pacific islanders "Indians," suggesting that they saw no distinction between continental and oceanic expansion. My presentation draws on my previous research into Native New England whaling history, my current research on Americans in nineteenth-century Fiji, and additional interests I have in the history of the Marquesas to show how a teleological and terrestrial bias has led historians to misrepresent the geographic mentalité of the early republic United States. The study of U.S. "Indian" history has typically focused on those people Euroamericans encountered as they expanded westward across the continent. But the early republic United States had a vast global reach in its maritime industries and incorporated thousands of "Indians" from the Marquesas, Fiji, Hawai'i, New England, and elsewhere into an American labor force. Historians studying early U.S. history readily draw connections between regions as far apart as New England and the Southwest or the Mississippi and Columbia Rivers, but they have yet to incorporate in narratives of American history those "Indians" whose lands (e.g., Fiji and the Marquesas) never became U.S. territory. My presentation will illuminate this alternative geography of "Indian country" by highlighting the commonalties and differences in the experiences of several individual Native Americans and Pacific Islanders who traveled to or from the United States on New England vessels engaged in whaling and the U.S.-China trade.