Indigenous London the henry roe cloud series on american indians and modernity Named in honor of the pioneering Winnebago educational reformer and first known American Indian graduate of Yale College, Henry Roe Cloud (class of 1910), this series showcases emergent and leading scholarship in the field of American Indian Studies. The series draws upon multiple disciplinary perspec- tives and organizes them around the place of Native Americans in the devel- opment of American and European modernity, emphasizing the shared, rela- tional ties between indigenous and Euro-American societies. It seeks to broaden current historic, literary, and cultural approaches to American Studies by fore- grounding the fraught but generative sites of inquiry provided by the study of indigenous communities. Series Editors ned blackhawk Professor of History and American Studies, Yale University kate w. shanley Native American Studies, University of Montana ; Indigenous London Native Travelers at the Heart of Empire Coll Thrush new haven and london Published with assistance from the Mary Cady Tew Memorial Fund. Copyright © 2016 by Yale University. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Yale University Press books may be purchased in quantity for educational, business, or promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected] (U.S. office) or [email protected] (U.K. office). Set in Fournier MT type by Integrated Publishing Solutions. Printed in the United States of America. ISBN 978-0-300-20630-2 Library of Congress Control Number: 2016933934 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper). 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 In memory of those who did not return It is in the nature of the city to encompass everything. —Peter Ackroyd, London: The Biography, 2001 Contents Acknowledgments ix Maps xiii 1. The Unhidden City: Imagining Indigenous Londons 1 Interlude One: A Devil’s Looking Glass, circa 1576 28 2. Dawnland Telescopes: Making Colonial Knowledge in Algonquian London, 1580–1630 33 Interlude Two: A Debtor’s Petition, 1676 62 3. Alive from America: Indigenous Diplomacies and Urban Disorder, 1710–1765 68 Interlude Three: Atlantes, 1761 99 4. “Such Confusion As I Never Dreamt”: Indigenous Reasonings in an Unreasonable City, 1766–1785 103 Interlude Four: A Lost Museum, 1793 133 5. That Kind Urbanity of Manner: Navigating Ritual in Ma¯ori and Ka¯naka Maoli London, 1806–1866 139 Interlude Five: A Hat Factory, circa 1875 169 6. Civilization Itself Consents: Disciplining Bodies in Imperial Suburbia, 1861–1914 173 viii contents Interlude Six: A Notebook, 1929 204 7. The City of Long Memory: Remembering and Reclaiming Indigenous London, 1982–2013 209 Epilogue: The Other Indigenous London 238 Appendix: Self-Guided Encounters with Indigenous London 245 Notes 259 Index 303 Acknowledgments This book has its origins in a conversation with my former husband, a Lon- doner by birth, back in 2007. My first book, Native Seattle: Histories from the Crossing-Over Place, had just been published, and was receiving good press. But London always called. Every time I’d been there, I’d wondered why I hadn’t chosen British history as my field of expertise; the city is a powerfully alluring place and text. So when Simon half-jokingly asked, “Why don’t you write a book like Native Seattle about London, so you could go there on your research grants?” I at first laughed. Who was I, after all, to write about London? But within about five minutes, I realized, That’s it. That’s the next book. What would it be like to take the central concept of Native Seattle— reframing the history of a city through Indigenous experience—to the cen- ter of empire? That is the project here, so my first acknowledgment is to Simon Martin. My second acknowledgment is that I write from occupied territory. With the exception of several sojourns in London and elsewhere, the vast majority of this book was produced in Vancouver, which stands on Indige- nous land. More specifically, the University of British Columbia (UBC) is a guest of the Musqueam Nation, which has inhabited this space for thousands of years, since time immemorial. I wish to honor the graciousness and hos- pitality that I, like many of my colleagues, have received in this, their tradi- tional, ancestral and unceded territory. I also want to acknowledge my own embeddedness in this story. For me, London is a place of ancestry. My forebears, at least on one side of my family, called the city home. Some appear in genealogical records from the ix