ABSTRACT
Colin G. Calloway once observed about the ‘reappearance’ of New England Indians that “if we ignore the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, we can make little sense of what is happening in New England in the twentieth century: if Indians disappeared after King Philip’s War, how can the people asserting their rights today be ‘real’ Indians?”1 He finds the answer to be hidden in stories of change and survival. Two such stories have been the subjects of this study, those of the Delawares (Lenape) and of the Yaquis (Yoeme). And they were found to indeed be ‘real’ Indians, with living identities and continuing tribal ties. Some of the changes to their identities have been brought about through removal which both tribes were exposed to in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century. Yet, as seen in the previous chapter, removal did not bring about the desired results in either one of the countries. In the United States it failed to reach the outcome of eventual assimilation which the governmental rhetoric proclaimed to have been the overarching goal of the nationwide policy. The Delawares were transplanted as a tribe and steadfastly refused to surrender their separateness and to merge with the Cherokees or with mainstream America. They clung to their own tribal identity in spite and because of all pressures to surrender it. In Mexico, the deportations of a significant part of the Yaqui tribe came close to breaking their will to resist and to incorporating the deportees as docile workers in another part of the country. Yet the tribe was saved by the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution which caused the campaign against them to be discontinued. Throughout their ordeal they had held stubbornly to their demands for control over their traditional lands and for the return of those tribal members who had been deported. Within this fight, land and community were of prime concern and importance for both Lenape and Yoeme.
