Indians, Settlers, and the Northern Borderland of the American Revolution
January 2, 2006
The study of borderlands is hot; Pulitzer and Bancroft prize–winning historian Taylor (William Cooper's Town
) offers a rich, sprawling history focusing on the Iroquois Six Nations of New York and Upper Canada during the era of the American Revolution. Taylor examines Indians' wise but unsuccessful attempts to hold onto their land as colonists encroached on it. One of Taylor's great insights is that historians have taken at face value what European settlers said about the "preemption rights" by which colonists and imperial governments claimed Indian territory. Taylor recovers Indians' reactions to those "rights." Many Indian leaders, recognizing that they couldn't reverse European settlement, tried to at least dictate how that settlement would unfold—they wished to lease, rather than sell, their land, and they hoped to pick their neighbors. Giving narrative shape to the depressing and potentially unwieldy saga is the tale of a 50-year relationship between Joseph Brant, a Mohawk who exploited his ability to shift "between European gentility and Indian culture" in an effort to preserve native land rights, and Samuel Kirkland, a pious Calvinist who was both an evangelist and government agent among the Indians. This complex history told by a master of the trade will repay close reading. 48 b&w illus., 4 maps.
Starred review from March 1, 2006
From the late 1600s to the 1760s, the Iroquois Confederacy had deftly used its diplomatic skills and military prowess to maintain its political independence as European powers fought for control of the continent. Following the conclusion of the French and Indian War, members of the Iroquois Confederacy forged close ties with the British. Pulitzer and Bancroft prize winner Taylor (history, Univ. of California at Davis; "William Cooper -s Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic" brilliantly explores how the Iroquois used their political and military alliance with the British to maintain their sovereignty, a strategy that worked well until the outbreak of the American Revolution. The conclusion of the war found the Iroquois Confederacy splintered. The remnants of the Iroquois attempted to rely on their diplomatic skills in the hopes of maintaining their traditional lands, but the effort was doomed because their sovereignty was not respected by their British or American neighbors; British Canada and the United States of America created a border that ultimately served to destroy Iroquoia. This magnificent scholarly monograph is extremely well written and should be acquired by all libraries." - John Burch, Campbellsville Univ. Lib., KY"
Copyright 2006 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
March 1, 2006
Taylor's " William Cooper's Town" (1995) won American history's most prestigious prizes, the Pulitzer and the Bancroft. Interest will accordingly be elevated for his examination of settler-Indian relations in what became upstate New York and Ontario. Two figures weave through Taylor's meticulous history of five decades following 1760--Mohawk leader Joseph Brant and missionary Samuel Kirkland--but the germinal personality is William Johnson, the British Indian superintendent until his death in 1774. Johnson's diplomatic acumen with the Six Nations of the Iroquois confederacy was a remembered reference point at treaty councils over these decades. A protege of Johnson's, Brant and his sinuous life as a cross-cultural broker tie together Taylor's narrative, which exhaustively accounts the customs and results of these councils. Their invariable consequence was a further encroachment on Iroquois lands, and Taylor evenly explains how the Iroquois attempted to control white settlement through leases rather than outright cession or war. This frontier history will engage general readers with its acute portraiture and turbulent themes of acquisition and dispossession. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)