New Worlds for All: Indians, Europeans, and the Remaking of Early America

John Lawson was an Englishman (1674-1711). In 1701, he traveled through colonial Carolina—not yet divided into North and South—and what would become Georgia. He eventually settled in present-day North Carolina, where he helped establish several settlements, including New Bern. An admirer of Native culture, Lawson was captured and killed in 1711 by members of the Tuscarora Nation. This incident both reflected and exacerbated tensions that led to the Tuscarora War.

During his travels, Lawson kept a journal that serves as an important source for New Worlds for All and for all students of colonial-era history. In his journal, published in London in 1709, Lawson praises Indigenous canoes, corn, medical skills, and hunting practices, as well as the freedom that prevailed in Indigenous communities. Like Samuel de Champlain a century earlier and Thomas Jefferson a century later, Lawson advocated intermarriage between Europeans and Indigenous Americans.

Sir William Johnson (1715-1774) was a British Indian superintendent from 1756 to 1774. Johnson emigrated to the colonies in the late 1730s, served the Crown as an officer in several wars, and helped maintain peace on the New York frontier for more than a decade prior to the American Revolution. He married a Mohawk woman named Molly Brant and amassed a large estate in the Mohawk River Valley.

In New Worlds for All, Johnson appears as victorious commander of British, colonial, and Mohawk forces at Lake George in 1755; as an architect of the 1768 Treaty of Fort Stanwix; and as a father of eight multiracial children. He also appears in the book’s conclusion as a shrewd and acquisitive man who used his Mohawk connections to secure 66,000 acres for himself.

Samson Occum (1723-1792) was a Mohegan man from Connecticut. He converted to Christianity and served as a minister to various tribes in New England and New York. In the late 1760s, he traveled to Great Britain, where he preached sermons to large audiences and raised money for Indigenous Americans’ religious education. Occum’s former teacher, Eleazer Wheelock, founded Dartmouth College in 1769, but the money Occum raised for Indigenous students was misappropriated. Decades later, Occum helped establish a community of Indigenous Christians at Brothertown, New York.

Although the Dartmouth experience left Occum “[b]itter and disillusioned,” he continued to preach and move between worlds (86). He appears in New Worlds for All as an example of cultural mobility. Contact between Europeans and Indigenous Americans produced people like Occum, who could minister to the Iroquois one year, then raise money in England and Scotland the next.

Samuel de Champlain (1567-1635) was a French explorer. He founded Quebec City and New France, most of which became Canada. Champlain made approximately two dozen voyages across the Atlantic. More than any other individual, he is responsible for France’s successful colonization in North America. He also established New France’s tradition of good relations with Indigenous Americans.

Champlain appears in New Worlds for All primarily as a source of information about Northeastern tribes, in particular those who counted the Iroquois among their enemies. In 1609, for instance, Champlain and a handful of French soldiers fought alongside New France’s allies, the Algonkin and Montagnais, in a battle against their Mohawk enemies. Like John Lawson and Thomas Jefferson, Champlain advocated intermarriage between Europeans and Indigenous Americans.