Republic of Indians - (Early American Studies) by Bradley J Dixon (Hardcover)

About the Book

"A sweeping history of the Native Southerners who challenged European empires from the inside. This book tells the story of Indigenous leaders who wrote their principles into Spanish and English law. Their petitions stand as enduring contributions to American political thought, and it was these "vassals" and "subjects" who gave meaning to the modern idea of tribal sovereignty"--

Book Synopsis

A sweeping history of the Native Southerners who wrote their principles into Spanish and English law

A sweeping history of the Native Southerners who challenged European empires from the inside, Republic of Indians tells the story of Indigenous leaders who wrote their principles into Spanish and English law.

While in the Spanish Empire, Natives were a recognized part of "la república de indios," the "republic of Indians," other Natives across the early American South understood themselves to be joined with European colonists in larger polities, each jealously guarding their own bodies of liberties under royal sanction. Thus, rather than simply rejecting European pretensions to rule them as subjects and vassals, Native Southerners as diverse as the Apalachees, Pamunkeys, Powhatans, and Timucuas redefined their status to become political players in legislative assemblies and the courts of distant monarchs. They pushed for incorporation in larger political systems in which they had a say and were themselves instrumental in creating.

Adapting pre-invasion practices to the technology of writing and the challenges of colonialism, Indigenous petitioners sought exemptions from labor and protection for "the lands that God gave to them," as well as the right to install preferred leaders, avoid enslavement, ally with the Crown against colonists, ease harsh colonial laws, and even amend the terms of treaties and compacts. Bradley J. Dixon shows how their petitions also stand as enduring contributions to American political thought and how it was these "vassals" and "subjects" who gave meaning to the modern idea of tribal sovereignty. In the South, the Spanish and English empires came to resemble one another precisely because they were both dependent to a remarkable degree on maintaining Indigenous political consent and were founded in large part on Indigenous conceptions of law.

Review Quotes

"In Republic of Indians, Bradley J. Dixon inverts the conventional story line of early America. Local Native leaders and communities in the seventeenth and early eighteenth-century American South were not merely reactive subjects to Spanish and English colonists. Rather, through a close-up comparative frame, Dixon shows how they were active participants in the politics of the colonial regimes, they used colonial legal institutions and protocols to their favor, and, with their colonial partners, they forged a new hybrid colonial political entity--a republic of Indians."-- "Robbie Ethridge, author of From Chicaza to Chickasaw: The European Invasion and the Transformation of the Mississippian World, 1540-1715"

"In artful prose, Bradley J. Dixon tells the story of how Native peoples like the Apalachees and Pamunkeys created Indigenous republics in Virginia and Florida by petitioning the Crown to defend their rights against the depredations of the settlers. In doing so, Republic of Indians offers a profound challenge to our assumptions about Native political power in the 1600s and 1700s, while showing how interconnected were the histories of the English and the Spanish in the Americas."-- "Craig Yirush, author of Settlers, Liberty, and Empire: The Roots of Early American Political Theory, 1675-1775"

"In this masterfully researched and thought-provoking work, Bradley J. Dixon not only compares the inner-workings of the Spanish and English empires in the region, but also shows that Native people were central to the social, political, and legal formations of the colonial world. Republic of Indians helps us reimagine the political landscape of the early South."-- "Alejandra Dubcovsky, author of Talking Back: Native Women and the Making of the Early South"

About the Author

Bradley J. Dixon is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Memphis.