Gendered Encounters: Warriors, Women, and William Johnson

Abstract

In recent years, New Indian History has emphasized cultural synthesis. Redirecting attention away from traditional themes of conflict and conquest, historians have examined the process by which Indians and Europeans learned to coexist. Initially, according to this literature, neither side enjoyed absolute power and authority over the other. Consequently, native people and European settlers carved out a “middle ground” between their two cultures upon which they engaged in relationships based on mutual accommodation. This mode of contact led to an exchange and intermingling of European and Indian cultural forms and practices.Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Daniel H. Usner, Jr., Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in a Frontier Exchange Economy: The Lower Mississippi Valley before 1783 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992); Colin G. Galloway, New Worlds For All: Indians, Europeans and the Remaking of Early America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997).