Dispossession by Degrees

According to Jean O'Brien, Indians did not simply disappear from colonial Natick, Massachusetts as the English extended their domination. Rather, the Indians creatively resisted colonialism, defended their lands, and rebuilt kin networks and community through the strategic use of English cultural practices and institutions. In the late eighteenth century, Natick Indians experienced a process of 'dispossession by degrees' that rendered them invisible within the larger context of the colonial social order, and enabled the construction of the myth of Indian extinction.

• Reconstructs and analyses Indian land loss, from large tribal cessions to individually sold land
• Reconstructs eighteenth-century Indian lineages and life histories
• Analyses changes in the role of land in Indian identity and in colonial ideas of the place of Indians in society