Dispossession by Degrees Indian Land and Identity in Natick, Massachusetts, 1650 1790

O'Brien examines the centrality of land in both the transformation and persistence of Indian identity in New England, and in the place of Indians in the colonial English social order.



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.