Our Beloved Kin

November 27, 2017
In this dense and ambitious account of the 17th-century conflicts known as King Philip’s War, Brooks (The Common Pot), associate professor of English and American studies at Amherst College, recovers histories of Native American adaptation and resistance to settler colonialism. Tracking the figures of Weetamoo, a female Wampanoag chief, and James Printer, a Nipmuc scholar and printer, Brooks unveils new archival material as well as alternative histories embedded within well-known colonial documents—including Mary Rowlandson’s captivity narrative, in which both Weetamoo and Printer appear. Though historians have portrayed Native Americans as outside the world of print, Brooks close reads materials such as land deeds to show that indigenous people engaged in “strategic adaptations” to colonial culture, making canny use of written documents to protect ancestral lands and confront white settlers. Reading key texts through the lens of geography and tribal history, Brooks reframes King Philip’s War as a complex set of stories about indigenous persistence. With so much material to analyze, Brooks sometimes struggles to untangle narrative threads, and her use of historical fiction to represent indigenous voices tends to confuse rather than enrich her scenes. Nonetheless, Brooks’s project provides a wealth of information for both scholars and lay readers interested in Native American history. Maps. Agent: Geri Thoma, Writers House.