In the Shadow of the Great Blue Hill (book review)
Really, they weren’t savages…
Book review:
In the Shadow of the Great Blue Hill
by Karen H. Dacey
Lanham, NY: University Press of America, Inc., 1995
176 pages, with bibliography and index
“…a cultural tragedy” in the Massachusetts Bay area.
Namely, the transforming conflict between the Puritan colonists and the Algonquian-speaking Indians of eastern Massachusetts—specifically, the Massachusett and the Nipmuc clans—who shared Algonquian languages and resistance to the European invasion, but little else.
Dacey gives duly detailed attention to: the relentless physical expansion of the Puritan colonial settlements; the efforts, championed by Rev. John Eliot, to “civilize” and “Christianize” the Indians, including the optimistic creation of 14 Praying Indian towns; King Philip’s (Metacomet’s) War, 1675-1676, a spirited but manifestly quixotic attempt by the fatally disorganized Indians to gain control of their ancestral lands from the colonists, and the barely disguised greed, treachery, and self-serving disdain of the Europeans as they steadily grabbed control of the eastern Massachusetts landscape from the indigenous peoples.
In the Shadow of the Great Blue Hill offers a nuanced elaboration of the story we think we know so well. She offers respectful accounts of the lifestyles and ambitions of the colonists and Indians.
The conflict was, in fact, intensely personal.
Dacey declares: “I believe that what happened in Massachusetts Bay was a cultural tragedy.”
Indeed, she supports this provocative distillation of the colonists’ motivation: “…[the Puritans] were determined to change the Indians into Europeans. Although greed for land clearly fueled the struggle in colonial New England and eventually erupted into all-out war, the Bay settlers really preferred to do cultural battle. They could not believe that if given the opportunity, the Indians would not choose to become like them.”
You may be surprised to learn that the Indians weren’t savages.
In the Shadow of the Great Blue Hill probes the expectations and disappointments of the Praying Indians, the powerful Indian clans that resisted the colonists, and the colonists themselves.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
Book review:
John Eliot:
The Man Who Loved The Indians
Entertaining, convenient biography
by Carleton Beals
click here
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In other words: Poems for your eyes and ears with 64 free verse and haiku poems,
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