Time of Anarchy: Indigenous Power and the Crisis of Colonialism in Early America by Matthew Kruer (review)

Abstract

In Time of Anarchy, Matthew Kruer examines the history of the Susquehannocks in the seventeenth century, demonstrating their remarkable influence on social and political events across a wide-reaching geography. Researching the history of the Susquehannocks presents challenges because, as Kruer notes, available evidence is “usually fragmentary, brief, and frustratingly vague” (8). Nonetheless, through extensive research and careful interrogation of colonial documents and archaeological sources, Kruer makes crucial discoveries, even from the smallest details or “glimpses” (243) of Susquehannocks left by colonial recorders. Kruer expertly weaves a complex story in chapters organized around several areas of analysis: “emotional cultures, rumors, migrations, conspiracy theory, peacemaking, captivity, and racial thinking” (7). During the main period of this study, 1675–85, the Susquehannocks’ population was small. Kruer stresses, however, that we should not be misled by the size of the group. “Its actions caused repercussions far out of proportion to its numbers” (4), he argues, adding that “Susquehannock influence was often indirect, but it had enormous geographic breadth and transformative intensity” (4–6).1 Susquehannocks affected political and social developments not just in their homelands in the Susquehanna Valley but also in the valleys of the Potomac, Delaware, and Hudson Rivers and in the area near Albemarle Sound. “Despite their small numbers,” Kruer writes of the Susquehannocks, “the ripple effects of their actions set in motion a series of political convulsions that gripped the English colonies” (111). He shows how Susquehannocks’ movements, alliances, and warfare—as well as rumors about these—raised alarms among colonists, whose fears of Indigenous attacks fed into popular unrest over how colonial governments responded to these challenges. Borrowing language from Maryland and Virginia colonists, Kruer refers to this as a “Time of Anarchy” (6) during which popular dissatisfactions and tumults spread. What happened in Virginia reverberated in Maryland, and vice versa. Colonial rebellion in Virginia stoked political flames in Carolina’s Albemarle region. Kruer follows the evidence carefully; time and again, he links colonial political unrest back to the Susquehannocks and to colonists’ fears about what