It is ironic, but in many ways fitting, that most 21st century Americans should know the name Oneida not as one of the original peoples of North America but as a name that they vaguely associate with forks. That association is derived from the Oneida Community, a utopian society established at Oneida, New York, in 1848 and dissolved about 1880. Other the links between the two technically stopped at the similarity of their names, a closer examination reveals an odd collection of similarities.
The Oneida Community was a religious and social experiment based on communistic principles and because of this, along with their system of ôcomplex marriageö in which all adults in the community were considered married to one another, they were often viewed with suspicion bordering on hatred by outsiders. This, along with the usual problems that beset utopian communities, brought about the dissolution of the community and the devolution of its associated company from a broad-based manufacturing concern that has gradually narrowed its activities from the manufacture of steel traps and silk and the canning of fruits and vegetables to the manufacture of fine plated and sterling silverware, for which it is now known (Jamison 23).
Certainly, much of what drew the censure of local people around the 19th-century Oneida community was the inhabitants belief in eugenics and Communism. But it was no doubt also based in the fact that the inhabitants of the Oneida Community were very successful, often much more so than their neighbors. And the success of oneÆs neighbors is often a very difficult cross to bear, as the Oneida Indians of the 21st century have learned.
To understand the various conflicts that now surround the Oneida nation û which is in the process of making various land claims against the state of New York and whose success at raking in gambling money from the often much poorer neighboring communities has caused resentment û a brief ...