New Worlds for All: Indians, Europeans, and the Remaking of Early America

Chapter 7 describes the mass movement of people. It considers Colonial America “a world in perpetual motion” (154). Contrary to myth, most Indigenous Americans were not nomadic, but were agriculturalists with powerful ties to the land. They also had extensive knowledge of their homeland and in some cases their continent. The European invasion brought Indigenous Americans into contact with thousands of settlers who differed from one another in meaningful ways. The Scotch-Irish, for instance, who emigrated in large numbers in the 18th century, harbored longstanding hostility toward the English and had a history of moving—or being forced—from one place to another. This “massive movement” of Scotch-Irish and others over a period of three centuries “was a momentous event in human history” (140). Its impact on Indigenous communities triggered not one mass exodus but a series of displacements that occurred at different times and in different places.

Individuals, by choice or coercion, moved between cultures. The colonial frontier “operated as a sponge as often as a palisade, soaking up rather than separating people and influences” (155). European traders often lived among the tribes with whom they traded–Sir William Johnson with the Mohawk, for instance, and Alexander Cameron with the Cherokee. Indigenous Americans took thousands of European captives, some of whom, when offered freedom, chose to remain with the tribes.