[Journal entry by one of "New England's white Indians" written the night before the attack of Dunbar's men in 1734]

Monday the 11th of March of 1734

Tonight we made plans to fight back against Dunbar's men. They came to enforce that ridiculous and unjust Mast Tree Law. But we have a plan, a good plan. We are going to send a raiding party, dressed as Indians, to confront them. William came up with most of it, but it was James who really explained it. William used to be part of a hunting party back in England that would pain their faces black to help avoid detection. But we are doing more than hiding who we are. We are dressing as Indians to show those British the power of this land. We have inherited it from the Indian people who have vanished. Living here, working this land, it has imbued us with their bravery, their ancient ways, and we are its new stewards. This raid should send those British men running back to their ships!

I am a little nervous, but it is a good plan. I have most of my costume ready, but still have not decided how I will paint my face. I think we decided we would all paint our faces black the way William used to do back in England. We will all cary war clubs, but I don't think I will have to use mine. Those English cowards will run before we get the chance. Besides, who are they to benefit from the bounty of this land? It is us who have had to toil, to build our homes here, to live a life different from that of our fathers and grandfathers in Europe. We are the new natives. The Indians have mostly left this area, and they have left it to us. 

I hope that Mary and the children do not worry too much. I don't think the raid will be too dangerous. I will hopefully come back tomorrow night and record the events of the raid. 

Until tomorrow, 

Henry 

In the late eighteenth century, however, rebellious American colonists in New England and Pennsylvania did something unique. Increasingly inclined to see themselves in opposition to England rather than to Indians, they inverted interior and exterior to imagine a new boundary line of national identity. They began to transform exterior, noble savage Others into symbolic figures that could be rhetorically interior to the society they sought to inaugurate. In short, the ground of the oppositions shifted and, with them, national self-definition...This inversion carried extraordinary consequences for subsequent American politics and identity. - Deloria