Encounters between British and “indigenous” peoples, C.1500–C.1800

To describe native peoples is to engage in a form of cultural appropriation, in what might be termed “ontological imperialism” in which otherness vanishes and becomes part of the same. offer five capsule ways of thinking about encounters between the British and indigenous peoples in the period c. 1500 to c. 1800. They are: identities, variations, metaphors, connections, and arenas. A way to categorize the varied encounters between British and indigenous peoples is to contrast casual, intermittent, fleeting contacts with sustained, routinized, long-term relationships. Relations between the British and indigenous peoples must be sought not just in the larger connections that drew them together but in the myriad meetings, the conversations, the encounters that occurred in a variety of different contact arenas. The chapter emphasizes that identities must be deconstructed, variations over time and across space delineated, metaphors deciphered, links between core and margins dissected, and arenas of contact differentiated.