Firsting and Lasting: Writing Indians out of Existence in New England (Indigenous Americas) - Tapa dura

served a more pragmatic colonial goal: refuting Indian claims to land and rights. Drawing on more than six hundred local histories from Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island written between 1820 and 1880, as well as censuses, monuments, and accounts of historical pageants and commemorations, O'Brien explores how these narratives inculcated the myth of Indian extinction, a myth that has stubbornly remained in the American consciousness. In order to convince themselves that the Indians had vanished despite their continued presence, O'Brien finds that local historians and their readers embraced notions of racial purity rooted in the century's scientific racism and saw living Indians as "mixed"and therefore no longer truly Indian. Adaptation to modern life on the part of Indian peoples was used as further evidence of their demise. Indians did not-and have not-accepted this effacement, and O'Brien details how Indians have resisted their erasure through narratives of their own. These debates and the rich and surprising history uncovered in O'Brien's work continue to have a profound influence on discourses about race and indigenous rights.

Jean M. O'Brien (White Earth Ojibwe) is associate professor of history at the University of Minnesota, where she is also affiliated with American Indian studies and American studies. She is the author of Dispossession by Degrees: Indian Land and Identity in Natick, Massachusetts, 1650-1790.