Locating "Native Space" at an Early Connecticut College

What does "Native space" look like, especially in contexts that on the surface appear overwhelmingly colonial?  This is the central question of my paper, which focuses on Native people, objects, and cross-cultural encounters at Yale College during the 18th and 19th centuries.  While researching another topic in southern New England, I noticed that Algonquian and other Indians were persistently being mentioned in records about the College's early years.  This was surprising: as far as we know, Yale never housed a formal "Indian College" or "Indian School" like the ones at early Harvard and the College of William and Mary.  (Archaeologists, students, and community members have re-examined those sites to remarkable effect in recent years.)

Yet it turns out early Yale was a vital locale for Native individuals and communities in other ways. Standing upon traditional Quinnipiac homelands along Long Island Sound, the College--and the surrounding town of New Haven--emerged as a gathering place for Natives from multiple tribal communities; as a place for training colonial missionaries who aspired to go out among tribes, and for "educating" selected Native youth temporarily separated from their kin networks.  It was also a place for Native petitioning, protests, and lawsuits that resisted colonial authority.

Perhaps most striking was how Native material cultural "objects" from across North America became deposited in College museum collections in the mid-18th century, largely at the behest of president Ezra Stiles.  They were displayed as "relics" intended for speculation, romanticizing, and critique by Anglo-American observers.  These sensitive cultural items raise troubling questions today, since many are difficult to locate, and therefore to examine for the possibility of tribal repatriation.  By extending the boundaries of what a "Native place" can look like--it can be off-reservation and urban, for example--this paper invites us to re-imagine a site conventionally understood as devoid of or even hostile to Native presence.  Instead, it re-casts the home of Lux et Veritas as grounds with deep, enduring Native significance, and with many opportunities for decolonization in the 21st century.

Christine DeLucia
Assistant Professor of History, Mount Holyoke College