In 1676, Nathaniel Bacon led a well-known colonial uprising against the authority of King Charles II, in the person of Virginia's governor Sir William Berkeley. Bacon and other colonists identified as their chief concern Berkeley's non-aggressive policies toward local Native Americans. Bacon's revolt dramatically altered relations between Chesapeake colonists and Native Americans, and also induced late Stuart imperialists to crack down on colonial autonomy. Despite the widely recognized significance of Bacon's Rebellion, the most important documents chronicling this event have been scattered in several archives and repositories, impeding students' access. Michael Leroy Oberg has transcribed, edited, and introduced the official record left by Samuel Wiseman, King Charles II's scribe assigned to this uprising's investigation_making this history widely available for the first time in book form.

In 1676, Nathaniel Bacon led a well-known colonial uprising against the authority of King Charles II, in the person of Virginia's governor Sir William Berkeley. Bacon and other colonists identified as their chief concern Berkeley's non-aggressive policies toward local Native Americans. Bacon's revolt dramatically altered relations between Chesapeake colonists and Native Americans, and also induced late Stuart imperialists to crack down on colonial autonomy. Despite the widely recognized significance of Bacon's Rebellion, the most important documents chronicling this event have been scattered in several archives and repositories, impeding students' access. Michael Leroy Oberg has transcribed, edited, and introduced the official record left by Samuel Wiseman, King Charles II's scribe assigned to this uprising's investigation-making this history widely available for the first time in book form.

The Head in Edward Nugent's Hand Roanoke's Forgotten Indians Michael Leroy Oberg "Michael Oberg sheds new light on one of the great stories in early American history. . . . He has tried to reconstruct the history of Roanoke not only from the view of colonists, who left all of the written records, but also from the view of the Native peoples of the region. The narrative is briskly paced and the research is thorough."--Peter C. Mancall, author of "Hakluyt's Promise: An Elizabethan's Obsession for an English America" " Oberg's] short, extremely readable work weaves together analyses of developments, causes, and effects with detailed views of the Native and English communities, cultures, leading personalities, and significant events, including their encounters along the Carolina coast. Oberg ends, fittingly and impressively, by tracing the surviving coastal Carolina Indian communities from the seventeenth into the twentieth century. This is an excellent book for U.S. history survey classes. . . . Highly recommended."--"Choice" Roanoke is part of the lore of early America, the colony that disappeared. Many Americans know of Sir Walter Ralegh's ill-fated expedition, but few know about the Algonquian peoples who were the island's inhabitants. "The Head in Edward Nugent's Hand" examines Ralegh's plan to create an English empire in the New World but also the attempts of native peoples to make sense of the newcomers who threatened to transform their world in frightening ways. Beginning his narrative well before Ralegh's arrival, Michael Leroy Oberg looks closely at the Indians who first encountered the colonists. The English intruded into a well-established Native American world at Roanoke, led by Wingina, the weroance, or leader, of the Algonquian peoples on the island. Oberg also pays close attention to how the weroance and his people understood the arrival of the English: we watch as Wingina's brother first boards Ralegh's ship, and we listen in as Wingina receives the report of its arrival. Driving the narrative is the leader's ultimate fate: Wingina is decapitated by one of Ralegh's men in the summer of 1586. When the story of Roanoke is recast in an effort to understand how and why an Algonquian weroance was murdered, and with what consequences, we arrive at a more nuanced and sophisticated understanding of what happened during this, the dawn of English settlement in America. Michael Leroy Oberg is Professor of History at the State University of New York, College at Geneseo. Early American Studies 2007 224 pages 6 x 9 9 illus. ISBN 978-0-8122-4031-3 Cloth $45.00s 29.50 ISBN 978-0-8122-2133-6 Paper $22.50s 15.00 ISBN 978-0-8122-0341-7 Ebook $22.5s 15.00 World Rights American History, Native American Studies Short copy: Examines Ralegh's plan to create an English empire in the New World but also the attempts of native peoples to make sense of the newcomers who threatened to transform their world in frightening ways.

Born in 1788, Eleazer Williams was raised in the Catholic Iroquois settlement of Kahnawake along the St. Lawrence River. According to some sources, he was the descendant of a Puritan minister whose daughter was taken by French and Mohawk raiders; in other tales he was the Lost Dauphin, second son to Louis XVI of France. Williams achieved regional renown as a missionary to the Oneida Indians in central New York; he was also instrumental in their removal, allying with white federal officials and the Ogden Land Company to persuade Oneidas to relocate to Wisconsin. Williams accompanied them himself, making plans to minister to the transplanted Oneidas, but he left the community and his young family for long stretches of time. A fabulist and sometime confidence man, Eleazer Williams is notoriously difficult to comprehend: his own record is complicated with stories he created for different audiences. But for author Michael Leroy Oberg, he is an icon of the self-fashioning and protean identity practiced by native peoples who lived or worked close to the centers of Anglo-American power. Professional Indian follows Eleazer Williams on this odyssey across the early American republic and through the shifting spheres of the Iroquois in an era of dispossession. Oberg describes Williams as a "professional Indian," who cultivated many political interests and personas in order to survive during a time of shrinking options for native peoples. He was not alone: as Oberg shows, many Indians became missionaries and settlers and played a vital role in westward expansion. Through the larger-than-life biography of Eleazer Williams, Professional Indian uncovers how Indians fought for place and agency in a world that was rapidly trying to erase them.

Was the relationship between English settlers and Native Americans in the New World destined to turn tragic? This book investigates how the newcomers interacted with Algonquian groups in the Chesapeake Bay area and New England, describing the role that original Americans occupied in England's empire during the critical first century of contact. Michael Leroy Oberg considers the history of Anglo-Indian relations in transatlantic context while viewing the frontier as a zone where neither party had the upper hand. He tells how the English pursued three sets of policies in America securing profit for their sponsors, making lands safe from both European and native enemies, and "civilizing" the Indians and explains why the British settlers found it impossible to achieve all of these goals. Oberg places the history of Anglo-Indian relations in the early Chesapeake and New England in a broad transatlantic context while drawing parallels with subsequent efforts by England as well as its imperial rivals the French, Dutch, and Spanish to plant colonies in America. Dominion and Civility promises to broaden our understanding of the exchange between Europeans and Indians and makes an important contribution to the emerging history of the English Atlantic world."

Was the relationship between English settlers and Native Americans in the New World destined to turn tragic? This book investigates how the newcomers interacted with Algonquian groups in the Chesapeake Bay area and New England, describing the role that original Americans occupied in England's empire during the critical first century of contact. Michael Leroy Oberg considers the history of Anglo-Indian relations in transatlantic context while viewing the frontier as a zone where neither party had the upper hand. He tells how the English pursued three sets of policies in America securing profit for their sponsors, making lands safe from both European and native enemies, and "civilizing" the Indians and explains why the British settlers found it impossible to achieve all of these goals. Oberg places the history of Anglo-Indian relations in the early Chesapeake and New England in a broad transatlantic context while drawing parallels with subsequent efforts by England as well as its imperial rivals the French, Dutch, and Spanish to plant colonies in America. Dominion and Civility promises to broaden our understanding of the exchange between Europeans and Indians and makes an important contribution to the emerging history of the English Atlantic world."

Many know the name Uncas only from James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans, but the historical Uncas flourished as an important leader of the Mohegan people in seventeenth-century Connecticut. In Uncas: First of the Mohegans, Michael Leroy Oberg integrates the life story of an important Native American sachem into the broader story of European settlement in America. The arrival of the English in Connecticut in the 1630s upset the established balance among the region's native groups and brought rapid economic and social change. Oberg argues that Uncas's methodical and sustained strategies for adapting to these changes made him the most influential Native American leader in colonial New England.Emerging from the damage wrought by epidemic disease and English violence, Uncas transformed the Mohegans from a small community along the banks of the Thames River in Connecticut into a regional power in southern New England. Uncas learned quickly how to negotiate between cultures in the conflicts that developed as natives and newcomers, Indians and English, maneuvered for access to and control of frontier resources. With English assistance, Uncas survived numerous assaults and plots hatched by his native rivals.Unique among Indian leaders in early America, Uncas maintained his power over large numbers of tributary and other native communities in the region, lived a long life, and died a peaceful death (without converting to Christianity) in his people's traditional homeland. Oberg finds that although the colonists considered Uncas "a friend to the English," he was first and foremost an assertive guardian of Mohegan interests.