Choice Review

Mitrrd (Univ. of Iowa) has written a valuable account of the Native Americans of the Hudson Valley and environs. He builds on Robert Grumet's excellent work, The Munsee Indians (CH, Sep'10, 48-0468), examining archival collections from Albany to London. While most historians emphasize that Native decline occurred in four wars with the Dutch from the 1640s to the early 1660s, Mitrrd claims that these Native peoples had a "remarkably tenacious" political and diplomatic life until the American Revolution. His focus is on how they networked to resolve disputes with other Native peoples in the valley as well as in southern New England and western Long Island. The narrative jumps back and forth in chronology, making it difficult to follow. Moreover, Mitrrd is not always convincing. Because of the language in accords signed, the author naively insists that the Indians were "in principle equals in their treaties and agreements," when, in the early 1660s, those captured in war were sold into slavery and sent to the Caribbean. Women's diplomatic roles, ignored by Mitrrd, were in economic exchange, namely, in trade in textiles, as Kees Jan Waterman has pointed out. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates to researchers/faculty. L. M. Hauptman emeritus, State University of New York at New Paltz