For centuries the Western view of the Iroquois was clouded by the myth that they were the supermen of the frontier--"the Romans of this Western World," as De Witt Clinton called them in 1811. Only in recent years have scholars come to realize the extent to which Europeans had exaggerated the power of the Iroquois.
First published in 1987, Beyond the Covenant Chain was one of the first studies to acknowledge fully that the Iroquois never had an empire. It remains the best study of diplomatic and military relations among Native American groups in seventeenth- and...
For centuries the Western view of the Iroquois was clouded by the myth that they were the supermen of the frontier--"the Romans of this Western Wor...
James Merrell's brilliant book is an account of the "go-betweens," the Europeans and Indians who moved between cultures on the Pennsylvania frontier in efforts to maintain the peace. It is also a reflection on the meanings of wilderness to the colonists and natives of the New World. From the Quaker colony's founding in the 1680s into the 1750s, Merrell shows us how the go-betweens survived in the woods, dealing with problems of food, travel, lodging, and safety, and how they sought to bridge the vast cultural gaps between the Europeans and the Indians. The futility of these efforts became...
James Merrell's brilliant book is an account of the "go-betweens," the Europeans and Indians who moved between cultures on the Pennsylvania frontier i...
Newly expanded, the second edition of American Encounters provides the most comprehensive, up-to-date collection of scholarship on the Native American experience from European contact through the Removal Era. Retaining the hallmark essays from the celebrated first edition, the second edition contains thirteen new essays, emphasizing the most recent, noteworthy areas of inquiry, including gender relations, slavery and captivity, and the effects of Christianity on the course of native history. With each essay prefaced by helpful headnotes that highlight key concepts and draw...
Newly expanded, the second edition of American Encounters provides the most comprehensive, up-to-date collection of scholarship on the Nat...
Newly expanded, the second edition of American Encounters provides the most comprehensive, up-to-date collection of scholarship on the Native American experience from European contact through the Removal Era. Retaining the hallmark essays from the celebrated first edition, the second edition contains thirteen new essays, emphasizing the most recent, noteworthy areas of inquiry, including gender relations, slavery and captivity, and the effects of Christianity on the course of native history. With each essay prefaced by helpful headnotes that highlight key concepts and draw...
Newly expanded, the second edition of American Encounters provides the most comprehensive, up-to-date collection of scholarship on the Nat...
This eloquent, pathbreaking account follows the Catawbas from their first contact with Europeans in the sixteenth century until they carved out a place in the American republic three centuries later. It is a story of Native agency, creativity, resilience, and endurance.
Upon its original publication in 1989, James Merrell's definitive history of Catawbas and their neighbors in the southern piedmont helped signal a new direction in the study of Native Americans, serving as a model for their reintegration into American history. In an introduction written for this twentieth anniversary...
This eloquent, pathbreaking account follows the Catawbas from their first contact with Europeans in the sixteenth century until they carved out a plac...