Abstract
Interpretations of New England’s Native past are fought on a highly contested landscape. This project examines the region’s historical memory by taking two approaches: interpreting the imagery and discourse around Indigenous northeasterners at the College of the Holy Cross across the early twentieth century; and examining how Native intellectuals, from the Early Republic to the rise of Red Power, framed their communal histories in the region. These interpretations of the Indigenous past, I show, are a critical thread in binding social identities in the region. For Holy Cross students, erasing Native history allowed the largely Catholic student mody to imagine themselves as the rightful inheritors of the region. Indigenous intellectuals, on the other hand, made clear that the past had more instructive qualities. By recording their histories, these thinkers hoped to defend their communities from removal, revitalize their cultures, challenge comfortable settler narratives, and reassert their sovereignty in the Northeast.