Separate Peoples, One Land: The Minds of Cherokees, Blacks, and Whites on the Tennessee Frontier

Exploring the mental worlds of the major groups interacting in a borderland setting, Cynthia Cumfer offers a broad, multiracial intellectual and cultural history of the Tennessee frontier in the Revolutionary and early national periods, leading up to the era of rapid westward expansion and Cherokee removal. Attentive to the complexities of race, gender, class, and spirituality, Cumfer offers a rare glimpse into the cultural logic of Native American, African American, and Euro-American men and women as contact with one another powerfully transformed their ideas about themselves and the territory they came to share. The Tennessee frontier shaped both Cherokee and white assumptions about diplomacy and nationhood. After contact, both groups moved away from local and personal notions about polity to embrace nationhood. Excluded from the nationalization process, slaves revived and modified African and American premises about patronage and community, while free blacks fashioned an African American doctrine of freedom that was both communal and individual. Paying particular attention to the influence of older European concepts of civilization, Cumfer shows how Tennesseans, along with other Americans and Europeans, modified European assumptions to contribute to a discourse about civilization, one both dynamic and destructive, which has profoundly shaped world history. MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict MuPDF error: syntax error: invalid key in dict Contents 7 Acknowledgments 10 Note on Cherokee Names 12 Introduction 14 PART ONE: Diplomatic Relations 34 CHAPTER ONE: Kinship and Nationhood: The Construction of Relationship between Cherokees and Settlers, 1768–1788 36 CHAPTER TWO: Ungrateful Brothers and an Uncivilized Nation: The Cherokees and Settlers Reconceive Their Relationship, 1776–1796 64 CHAPTER THREE: Fictive Father and Federalism: Cherokees, Tennesseans, and the United States, 1796–1810 90 PART TWO: Intracommunal Relations 112 CHAPTER FOUR: ‘‘The Name of My Nation Is Cherokee’’: The Reformulation of Cherokee Identity 114 CHAPTER FIVE: ‘‘The Nigger-Trader Bought Me’’: African American Community 138 CHAPTER SIX: ‘‘A Never-Failing Resource in the Benevolence of Society’’: Sociability and Family in the Euro-American Community 168 CHAPTER SEVEN: ‘‘The Protection of Civil Government’’: Governance in the Euro-American Community 192 CHAPTER EIGHT: ‘‘The Best Security of Rising Greatness’’: Economic Relations in the Euro-American Community 218 Conclusion 244 Notes 250 Index 324 Kinship And Nationhood : The Construction Of Relationship Between Cherokees And Settlers, 1768-1788 -- Ungrateful Brothers And An Uncivilized Nation : The Cherokees And Settlers Reconceive Their Relationship, 1776-1796 -- Fictive Father And Federalism : Cherokees, Tennesseans, And The United States, 1796-1810 -- The Name Of My Nation Is Cherokee : The Reformulation Of Cherokee Identity -- The Nigger-trader Bought Me : African American Community -- A Never-failing Resource In The Benevolence Of Society : Sociability And Family In The Euro-american Community -- The Protection Of Civil Government : Governance In The Euro-american Community -- The Best Security Of Rising Greatness : Economic Relations In The Euro-american Community. Cynthia Cumfer. Includes Bibliographical References (p. [237]-310) And Index. Exploring the mental worlds of the major groups interacting in a borderland setting, this book offers a multiracial intellectual and cultural history of the Tennessee frontier in the Revolutionary and early national periods, leading up to the era of westward expansion and Cherokee removal.