| Summary: |
America's founding involved the melding of disparate cultures and communities, a blurring of coundaries, some physical and others imagined. One of the most significant divisions in early America was that between the country's vast and sparsely populated interior and its crowded coastal cities. To many white colonials, the urban and rural divide represented the borderline between civilization and savagery. Embodying the latter were the nation's Native populations. Wherever Indians lived defined the frontier. As Colin Calloway's fascinating new book reveals, however, a large number of Native leaders were well acquainted with city life. In fact, over the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries they were in town often, regularly traveling to Albany, Boston, Charleston, Philadelphia, Montreal, Quebec, New York, and New Orleans--primarily to conduct diplomatic or trade business, but often from a sense of curiosity and adventure. Some were even tourists. During their visits, which were sometimes for extended periods, they walked the streets, sat in pews, drank in taverns, and slept in hotels and lodging houses. Crowds gathered to see them; people attended the theatre to witness "the Chiefs now in this city"--as they were widely called in newspaper accounts--"watch a play." Based on primary accounts, Calloway's book illuminates in words and pictures what Native visitors to these cities both saw and how they were seen. Their experiences redefine standards narratives, reminding us that America's beginning involved far more than violent confrontations--raids and wars and massacres--between colonists and Indigenous peoples and included longstanding and often sophisticated interaction in metropolitan settings. In the process, "The Chiefs Now in This City" offers both a corrective and a vibrant portrait of a country in formation. -- |
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