Full Description
Employing a frontier framework, this book traces intercultural relations in the lower Hudson River valley of early seventeenth-century New Netherland. It explores the interaction between the Dutch and the Munsee Indians and considers how they, and individuals within each group, interacted, focusing in particular on how the changing colonial landscape affected their cultural encounter and Munsee cultural development. At each stage of European colonization - first contact, trade, and settlement - the Munsees faced evolving and changing challenges.
Understanding culture in terms of worldview and societal structures, this volume identifies ways in which Munsee society changed in an effort to adjust to the new intercultural relations and looks at the ways the Munsees maintained aspects of their own culture and resisted any imposition of Dutch societal structures and sovereignty over them. In addition, the book includes a suggestive afterword in which the author applies his frontier framework to Dutch-indigenous relations in the Cape colony.
Contents
List of Figures and Illustrations
List of Maps
Preface
Acknowledgments
Notes on Text
List of Abbreviations
Introduction: The Dutch-Munsee Frontier
Chapter 1. First Contact, 1524-1609
Chapter 2. Trade, 1610-1623
Chapter 3. Trade and Settlement, 1624-1638
Chapter 4. Settlement and Warfare, 1639-1647
Chapter 5. Warfare and Diplomacy, 1648-1664
Conclusion: The Closing of the Frontier and Beyond
Afterword: First Contact, Trade, and Settlement in the Cape Colony, 1487-1713
Sources Consulted
Index
