The Brothertown Nation of Indians

A group of educated Christian Natives from a variety of New England tribes came together in central New York in 1785 to form a community of their own, Brothertown, a proprietary “Body Politick” modeled after a New England town with an elected leadership. In an effort to retain their land rights and remain self-sufficient, the Natives of Brothertown sought accommodation rather than resistance to Anglo-American ideas about religion, land use, and gender relations by embracing the notion of “civili