Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America

Edited by Anya JabourFacing East from Indian Country: A History of Early America. By Daniel K. Richter. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001. Pp. x, 317. Maps, illustrations. Cloth, $26.00.)In 1836, Native-American author William Apess published an essay entitled Eulogy on King Philip. This essay, Daniel Richter states in Facing East from Indian Country, placed the peoples in their rightful place in history: at the center of the American story. Apess's work soon fell into obscurity-not by accident, argues Richter-as a deliberately stereotyped image of the peoples emerged in a newly racialized culture.Daniel Richter, director of the McNeil Center for Early American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, prefaces Facing East from Indian Country by placing his reader in St. Louis, a jumping-off point for America's overland trails. In a unique strategy, rather than following the tradition of emphasizing Americans' ever-westward movements, the author directs his readers' attentions eastward in what he calls a visual reorientation (8). He skillfully uses this method throughout his work, continuously aligning his reader's gaze with that of the Natives' as they encountered the Europeans advancing from the East from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries.Richter begins in the 1500s with a chapter entitled Imagining a Distant New World. Facts are difficult to come by during this era when facing east, which makes gaining a complete understanding of American history from the perspective difficult. Yet this very dearth of information gives Richter more to work with than one might think. He argues that the lack of information is significant in and of itself: it mirrors what little information the Natives had. Like scholars today, the early Indians were left to draw upon their imagination.Chapters two through five cover the colonial era-the focus of Richter's study and the basis for the major theme he presents. During this time period, Native-American and British colonial cultures coexisted in mutual respect that, while not always congenial, was nonetheless cooperative. In chapter two, Confronting a Material New World, Richter analyzes the Natives' adaptations to new systems of commerce, farming methods, concepts of property, and transformations of the natural environment. Richter continues his analysis from an eastward point of view in chapter four, Native Voices in a Colonial World, in which he discusses two forms of documents that allow the voice to be heard: conversion narratives and diplomatic council speeches. These records, explains Richter, reveal the perceptions of a coexistence with the Europeans on Indians' terms.In his third chapter, Living with Europeans, Richter retells the histories of Pocahontas, Kateri Tekakwitha, and Metacom (King Philip). Richter argues that European-Americans' westward point of view has focused on how these narratives fit within their own history, proving cultural incompatibility. However, facing east, these stories present a different set of possibilities, he says. Each of these individuals deliberately sought cooperation and coexistence, although through different means.Chapter five, Native Peoples in an Imperial World, looks at Americans in eighteenth-century America. During this century, Richter argues that the histories of the peoples and British colonists were parallel. …