Affective Colonialism, Power, and the Process of Subjugation in Colonial Virginia, C
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Georgia State University ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University History Dissertations Department of History 5-10-2017 TRIBUTARY SUBJECTS: AFFECTIVE COLONIALISM, POWER, AND THE PROCESS OF SUBJUGATION IN COLONIAL VIRGINIA, C. 1600 – C. 1740 Russell Dylan Ruediger American Historical Association Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/history_diss Recommended Citation Ruediger, Russell Dylan, "TRIBUTARY SUBJECTS: AFFECTIVE COLONIALISM, POWER, AND THE PROCESS OF SUBJUGATION IN COLONIAL VIRGINIA, C. 1600 – C. 1740." Dissertation, Georgia State University, 2017. https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/history_diss/56 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of History at ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in History Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. TRIBUTARY SUBJECTS: AFFECTIVE COLONIALISM, POWER, AND THE PROCESS OF SUBJUGATION IN COLONIAL VIRGINIA, C. 1600 – C. 1740 by RUSSELL DYLAN RUEDIGER Under the Direction of Charles Steffen, PhD ABSTRACT My dissertation explores tributary relationships between Algonquin, Siouan, and Iroquoian Indians and English settlers in Virginia, placing the process of political subjection into the heart of narratives of dispossession. Both indigenous Chesapeake and European political traditions shared ideas of tribute as a structure linking unequal, but conceptually autonomous and self-governing, polities in hierarchical relationships of power. By treating colonial tributary relations as a trans-Atlantic political institution, I interpret colonial power struggles in Virginia as a local instance of global battles over sovereignty, jurisdiction, and political subordination within the heart of the unfolding project of settler colonialism. Remarkably durable and continuously shifting, the tributary system and its central ritual of exchanging payments symbolizing subordination for the promise of protection and friendship, provides a powerful lens for understanding the collision of native and English ideas of subjugation that structured colonial interactions in the region. Framing settler colonialism as a contested but unequal political relationship in which subordinated native peoples retained considerable autonomy opens an otherwise obscure era of Virginia’s Native history, in which the English and several dozen Native peoples from the Chesapeake and the Southern Piedmont forged political ties based on a language of friendship and unequal alliance. Drawing on a variety of archival sources, I follow the efforts of small Native polities, who lived in a world of constrained options, to shape the terms of their subordination. Despite numerous disruptions, the tributary system was at the core of both dispossession and resistance in Virginia well into the eighteenth century. Moreover, tributary forms of power continue to structure the experiences of Indigenous peoples in the Chesapeake, the United States, and many of the world’s other settler- states. In Virginia, state-recognized tribes still pay tribute to the governor every fall. In the United States and beyond, indigenous people remain, both theoretically and legally, subordinated yet “sovereign,” or in John Marshall’s phrase, “domestic dependent nations.” By placing political allegiance and subjugation at the heart of settler colonialism, my work expands the scope of dispossession and offers a framework for thinking about contemporary Indigenous politics. INDEX WORDS: Colonial Virginia, Native Americans, Settler Colonialism, Tribute, Powhatans, Saponis, Meherrins, Nottoways TRIBUTARY SUBJECTS: AFFECTIVE COLONIALISM, POWER, AND THE PROCESS OF SUBJUGATION IN COLONIAL VIRGINIA, C. 1600 – C. 1740 by RUSSELL DYLAN RUEDIGER A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University 2017 Copyright by Russell Dylan Ruediger 2017 TRIBUTARY SUBJECTS: AFFECTIVE COLONIALISM, POWER, AND THE PROCESS OF SUBJUGATION IN COLONIAL VIRGINIA, C. 1600 – C. 1740 by RUSSELL DYLAN RUEDIGER Committee Chair: Charles Steffen Committee: Jacob Selwood Christine Skwiot Wayne Lee Buck Woodard Electronic Version Approved: Office of Graduate Studies College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University May 2017 iv DEDICATION For Bean. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This work would not have been possible without the generous financial, emotional, and intellectual support of many people and institutions. My greatest debt is to my committee, particularly its core members from GSU. Chuck Steffen guided this project with a calm demeanor and an astutely critical perspective from its very beginnings, and has earned my respect and gratitude many times over. I can't imagine that anyone has ever been graced with a better mentor and chair. Jake Selwood and Christine Skwiot (now of the Maine Maritime Academy) have gone well above and beyond the normal role expected of committee members, reading chapter drafts in real time and otherwise mentoring me and my work in ways that made both me and it better. Wayne Lee and Buck Woodard, my outside readers, have been of great help as well. Buck saved me from several anthropologically naive errors, shared his unmatched expertise in Virginia Indians with me, and gave me repeated opportunities to share my work with a wide variety of audiences in Williamsburg during the summer of 2016. A wide variety of institutions provided financial support to my work. At GSU, the History Department, Writing Across the Curriculum Program, and the Student Innovation Fellowship program paid the bills while I read and wrote. A Provost Dissertation Fellowship provided a vital year of support to see the dissertation to its conclusion. Smaller internal grants, including those from AHGSU and a GSU Dissertation Grant provided additional support. Faculty, staff, and my fellow students at GSU proved consistently ready to read drafts, engage in long conversations and nourish my body and spirit as well as my mind. Denis Gainty, Lela Urquhart, Nick Wilding, Denise Davidson, Joe Perry, Isa Blumi, Rob Baker, Carolyn Biltoft, vi Mindy Clegg, Lauren Thompson, Casey Cater, Megan Piorko, Suzanne Litrell, Kate Odari, Tim Lawrence, Lisa Armistead, Amber Amari, and Robin Wharton all provided friendship, sound advice, critical eyes, cold beers and other forms much appreciated companionship and mentoring. Brennan Collins, I hope, will already know how much he has shaped me. Anna Baumstark read most of the project as it was being written and did as much to make this work possible as anyone. Carol Bengelsdorf, Margaret Cerullo, Walid Ra’ad, and Ali Mirsepassi are much overdue for a public note of appreciation. Amongst my friends in Atlanta, I particularly owe Allyson Tadjer for innumerable hours of stimulating conversation, Michelle Lacoss, for her wisdom over many lunches, Andy Reisinger, who generously opened his home to me in a time of crisis, and above all, my dear friend Sara Patenaude, for too many reasons to list but which she will understand. I see you, Sara. Outside institutional support funded three consecutive summers of archival research. The Mellon Foundation, IMLS, and Folger Shakespeare Libraries provided archival resources and the paleographic training necessary to read them. The University of Illinois Rare Books and Manuscript Library at Urbana-Champaign generously funded a very productive month in their wonderful collection of early modern materials. The Virginia Historical Society opened its doors to me for two weeks of madcap archival raiding. NEH funding to attend a summer institute on Native American History deepened my conceptual background and provided an extended opportunity to conduct research at the Library of Congress during the summer of 2015. The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation gave me the chance to spend an extended period in the friendly and rich confines of the Rockefeller Library. My debts to all those institutions are immeasurable. My thanks go out to all the librarians, archivists, and staff who assisted me while in the archives. In particular, Owen Williams, Elyse Martin, Paul Dingman and Heather Wolfe at vii the Folger, Dennis Sears and Valerie Hotchkiss at the UIUC, Francis Pollard and John McClure in Richmond at the VHS, my cohort at the NEH (notably Edison Cassadore, Guntram Herb, John Bowes, Sabine Klein and Stephanie Fitzgerald), and Buck Woodard, Marianne Martin, Joseph Beatty, and Doug Mayo, and the Native Interpreters at Colonial Williamsburg deserve special thanks. Several institutions funded conference travel that allowed me to share my work with engaged and knowledgeable audiences. I owe a debt to the McNeil Center for Early American Studies and to the lively group of Early Americanists at the 2013 "Traces of Early America" conference, the participants at the 2015 Conference on Histories of Peace in Early American sponsored by the Tanner Center for the Humanities, and 2016 participants of the conference on Indigenous Sovereignties held at the University of Nantes. My family proved once again to be my greatest advocates. Thanks Mom, Dad, Veege, Luke, Chelsea, and Bean. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................................. V LIST OF FIGURES ............................................................................................................. IX STATEMENT ON SPELLING