Kinship and the American Revolution
from Part I - North America
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 December 2022
This chapter examines the American Revolution in the territory of the Six Nations and in colonial New York as an example of the shift in power to settlers and settler rejection of Indigenous modes of alliance that also typified the expansion of settler colonialism elsewhere. In borderland regions, the American Revolution was also a land war. Ethnic cleansing and warfare broke many of such fragile bonds of kinship (real and fictive) as existed between settlers and Indigenous peoples, even as the metaphor of brotherhood was important to Ranger groups in which Indigenous and settler soldiers fought together. Difference was entrenched through violence. Specific examples of the politics of kinship examined include nineteenth-century settler family stories about warfare, including stories about Joseph Brant, who was often taken as a symbol of settler relationships with the Six Nations; changing practices of captive-taking on the part of the Six Nations; complex relationships between white and Indigenous soldiers; and the breaking of kinship links between the Six Nations themselves, in which the Brants played a significant role.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.