To Intermix With Our White Brothers: Indian Mixed Bloods in the United States from Earliest Times to the Indian Removals.

To Intermix With Our White Brothers: Indian Mixed Bloods in the United States from Earliest Times to the Indian Removals. By Thomas N. Ingersoll. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, c. 2005. Pp. xxii, 450. $39.95, ISBN 0-8263-3287-0.)

Thomas N. Ingersoll's new book is a history of "mixed bloods," Indian people of multiracial parentage. This is a topic that almost everyone who studies Native American history discusses in some fashion, but one that is difficult to write about satisfactorily. Many tribes experienced significant non-Indian intermarriage from an early date, and many multiracial Indians became important tribal leaders. Using the language of blood, however, can suggest that biology, rather than culture or circumstance, determined these Indians' identities. It can also imply that mixed bloods belonged to distinct communities within tribes, which was seldom the case. Racial mixing mattered in Indian history, but exactly how it mattered is not always clear.

To Intermix With Our White Brothers: Indian Mixed Bloods in the United States from Earliest Times to the Indian Removals rests upon an impressive synthesis of secondary literature on Native American history and American Indian policy. Ingersoll has searched widely for references to mixed-race Indians, and he has drawn together works that seldom appear in other bibliographies. He has then added his own readings of key groups of documents, among them captivity narratives and the records of public debates over early-nineteenth-century Indian affairs. With these materials, he tells two related stories. First, he describes the lives and experiences of mixed-blood individuals, searching for common themes across eras and tribal differences. Second, he examines the mixed-blood image in non-Indian culture. That is, he describes non-Indians' awareness of and reactions to the mixed-blood population.

From the start of colonization, Ingersoll explains, European authorities worked to prevent sex across racial lines. Every empire, however, saw significant numbers of mixed-blood births. Indian communities, in general, were quite accepting of intermarriage. European communities were not, but individual whites in the borderlands were able to ignore the disrepute attached to interracial unions. Intermarriage, frequent though it was, did not lead to an easing of European law and custom regarding race. Throughout early North America, white authorities tried to prevent racial mixing, and mixed bloods were barred from the upper ranks of colonial societies.

That situation persisted in the early United States. There was a surge of intermarriage in the decades following the Revolution, and some whites involved in Indian affairs suggested that this might aid the mission to "civilize" Indians. In practice, however, multiracial unions remained disgraceful in the eyes of virtually all white Americans; mixed bloods seldom could attain positions of respectability among whites. Predictions of assimilation through marriage, Ingersoll suggests, were never taken seriously, even by those making the predictions.

The heart of the book is an examination of removal. Ingersoll places mixed bloods at the center of the struggle over antebellum ethnic cleansing. Mixed bloods, he notes, were at the forefront of tribal resistance to the policy. Moreover, the idea of the mixed blood provided Jacksonians with a powerful reason to drive Indians into the West. For Americans increasingly paranoid about threats to whiteness, mixed bloods raised the specter of a multiracial nation. Banishing racial impurity and preserving America for white men became a crusade that united Jacksonians at a time when few other issues could. The very existence of mixed bloods, Ingersoll suggests, helped to convince some antebellum Americans that the Indians had to go.

Ingersoll's discussions of the mixed-blood image form the most interesting and useful portion of the book. Working with the available literature, he is unable to explain what the emergence of mixed bloods meant to Indian peoples. He does demonstrate, however, that non-Indians thought a great deal about mixed bloods and that their ideas powerfully shaped the conditions in which Indians fought to preserve their lands and communities.

ANDREW DENSON

Western Carolina University