Review by Matthew W. Dougherty
David J. Silverman Red Brethren: The Brothertown and
Stockbridge Indians and the Problem of Race in Early America (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 2010)
David J. Silverman’s Red
Brethren follows two multi-tribal American Indian communities—the
Brothertowns and the Stockbridges— whose westward migrations reveal new facets
of religion and race in early America. Silverman argues that these communities used
Protestant categories and concepts both to make sense of the racial identity
assigned to them in early America and to propel themselves from New England to
New York to Wisconsin. Like white Americans, they migrated for complex reasons:
Federal pressure to sell their land and encroaching white settlement
contributed, but so did their desire to form autonomous Christian communities
and missionize “heathen” American Indians. Silverman thus contributes to the
story of the west by showing that white Americans were not the only ones who
migrated because of a belief in their particular divine mission. Although his
view of the churches at the hearts of these communities grows fuzzier along the
journey west, his tightly-focused narrative retains its power throughout the
book.
The shared history of the Brothertowns and Stockbridges began
in the 1770s and 1780s when Christian Indians from a number of northeastern
tribes settled in two new communities—Brothertown and New Stockbridge—in Oneida
territory. The move west was made in the hope that the new towns would be
stable bases for cultural survival and missions to their “red brethren” in
non-Christian tribes. Silverman argues that the Brothertowns’ and Stockbridges’
belief that they had something basic in common with non-Christian Iroquois indicates
that they accepted the racial designation of “Indian,” yet attached their own meanings
to it. They believed, for example, that the racial oppression they suffered
resulted from of God’s curse for their ancestors’ disobedience of the
commandments, and would end when divine justice was satisfied. But their
acceptance and modification of the prevailing racial category of “Indian” was
not without cost: Stockbridges and Brothertowns who married African-Americans
were often excluded from the tribe and claims on tribal land. That internal
division grew stronger as the communities moved farther west in the 1820s. Hoping
that another move would provide more security from white settlers and another
chance at evangelism, the Brothertowns and Stockbridges negotiated a treaty with
the Menominee to allow them to settle along the Fox River in Wisconsin. In
1831, however, pressure from the U.S. government and tensions with the
Menominee forced them to move yet again, this time to the shore of Lake
Winnebago. Fearing that further land cessions would be forced on them unless
they made a radical change, the Brothertown voted to abandon tribal status and
become U.S. Citizens in 1839. The Stockbridge followed suit in 1843, but “gave
back” their citizenship and resumed tribal governance only three years later. Silverman
argues that disputes over citizenship in these communities were also disputes
about race. Both those opposed to the idea and those in favor of it referred to
taking citizenship as “becoming white” and saw it as an abandonment of legal
Indian identity, for better or worse. These issues still haunt the
Brothertowns, whose petition for federal recognition was denied by the Bureau
of Indian Affairs in 2012 on the basis that their acceptance of citizenship in
1839 had put an end to their tribal identity.
Silverman is fortunate in that the Brothertowns and
Stockbridges created an unusually large paper trail. In addition to missionary
and government sources, he can draw on the writings of prominent leaders from
both communities and on tribal government documents. For the eighteenth and
early nineteenth centuries, the copious writings of Brothertown’s founder,
Samson Occum, are his main source. After Occum’s death, the paper trail goes on
but its character changes: As he follows the story of the Brothertowns and
Stockbridges to Wisconsin, Silverman relies more and more frequently on the
records of both the tribal and U.S. governments, and has fewer first-person
accounts. His choice to focus throughout on the religious and racial self-awareness
of community leaders minimizes the shock of the transition, but the loss of
Occum as a voluminous, reflective writer and vivid witness does make the latter
part of the narrative less immediate and clear-cut.
Silverman’s narrative relies on the category of “Christian
Indians” to designate the various Native groups that define themselves at least
partly through Christianity in his story. That category fails him, however, in
the final chapters of the book. So long as he focuses on New England, the
dominance of independent, “New Light” Congregational churches in Christian
Native communities ensures that the category “Christian Indian” designates a
related set of approaches to religion and community life. As Silverman and
other scholars such as Joanna Brooks, Rachel Wheeler, and Linford Fisher have
shown, Native-led Congregational churches in New England were in contact with
one another, circulated ideas and people, and had distinctive approaches to
preserving Native traditions through Christian practice. After the Brothertowns
and Stockbridges moved to Wisconsin, however, Baptist and Methodist churches began
appearing in their communities, presumably undermining any sense of a unified
Christian Indian identity. Silverman’s portrays the development of these
separate churches as another sad sign of factionalism (200-202), but doesn’t
address how changes in church fellowship and theology might have affected what
it meant to be a Christian Indian. For example, did membership in the strongly
hierarchical Methodist church constrain Native autonomy more than membership
churches governed at the level of the congregation? Did the racial theory of
the “curse of God” survive in congregations that moved away from the Reformed
theology and Providential view of history underwriting it?
The fact that we can now ask these questions these about
independent Native churches in the west, however, is entirely thanks to
Silverman’s groundbreaking work. With careful scholarship and a strong ear for
narrative, he has brought to life a story that not only casts light on two
remarkable groups whose history challenges many widely-held ideas about
American Indian identity, but also persistently and clearly exposes the
fault-lines in racial thinking in early America. The re-casting of our stories
from the west has brought home the importance of empire, land, and migration as
themes in American religious history. Silverman’s book provides a new way of
thinking about these themes with a clear, affecting narrative suitable for
advanced undergraduates as well as graduate students.
