The English Embrace of the American Indians

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-ix

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2. Introduction

   • Alan S Rome

   Pages 1-11

3. The Savage Mind: Metaphysics and the Humanity of the Indian

   • Alan S Rome

   Pages 13-52

4. Savages in the Streams of Time: The Indian in English Historical Consciousness

   • Alan S. Rome

   Pages 53-89

5. A Digression on Air: Race and Climate in Early America

   • Alan S Rome

   Pages 91-122

6. Powhatan’s Two Bodies: Civil Savage, Savage Colonist

   • Alan S Rome

   Pages 123-157

7. Killing with Kindness: The Tragedy of Benevolence

   • Alan S Rome

   Pages 159-198

8. Conclusion

   • Alan S Rome

   Pages 199-208

9. Back Matter

   Pages 209-237

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This book makes a wide, conceptual challenge to the theory that the English of the colonial period thought of Native Americans as irrational and subhuman, dismissing any intimations to the contrary as ideology or propaganda. It makes a controversial intervention by demonstrating that the true tragedy of colonial relations was precisely the genuineness of benevolence, and not its cynical exploitation or subordination to other ends that was often the compelling force behind conflict and suffering. It was because the English genuinely believed that the Indians were their equals in body and mind that they fatally tried to embrace them. From an intellectual exploration of the abstract ideas of human rights in colonial America and the grounded realities of the politics that existed there to a narrative of how these ideas played out in relations between the two peoples in the early years of the colony, this book challenges and subverts current understanding of English colonial politics and religion.

• native American relations with English settlers
• religion in early America
• Pocahontas
• civility and Christianity
• imperial perceptions of indigenous peoples

• University of Sydney , Sydney, Australia

  Alan S. Rome

Alan S. Rome is Research Fellow at the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, Australia. He works on the intellectual history of early modern America and Europe and has taught extensively in American and European history.

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