Brothers Among Nations

"Early intercultural encounters in North America have been encased in a nationalistic mythology that presents the colonizers as strong, confident, and culturally superior to the natives, who are portrayed as child-like, passive, and backward. With this book, Cynthia Van Zandt takes her place in a long line of historians who have labored to overturn that mythology by showing just how precarious early colonial ventures were."--Timothy J. Shannon, Virginia Magazine of History & Biography
"This highly original work shows us colonial America as we have rarely seen it before. Where other historians have found conflict among European, African, and Indian inhabitants, Cynthia Van Zandt reveals cooperation, accommodation, and alliance. Along the way, she introduces us to a cast of characters almost wholly unfamiliar to historians and conveys with admirable clarity the ethnic, religious, and cultural heterogeneity of these new colonial societies. Brothers among Nations furnishes a major new interpretation of the first decades of European settlement in North America, one sure to command a wide readership."--Alison Games, Georgetown University
"In clear, accessible prose, Cynthia Van Zandt reveals a lost world, a world in which far-flung alliances gave underlying unity to seemingly disconnected local events. No one who reads Brothers among Nationswill ever again see the interconnected histories of Virginia, New England, and New Netherland in quite the same way."--Daniel K. Richter, McNeil Center for Early American Studies, University of Pennsylvania
"Cynthia Van Zandt vividly brings to life the neglected careers of intercultural brokers. These newcomers, reaching out to Native America, forging alliances and even placing themselves under Indian protection, ensured the survival of the infant settlements.--Allan Greer, author of Mohawk Saint: Catherine Tekakwitha and the Jesuits
"By focusing on kinship--rhetorical as well as real--and the fluidity of bo