xvii [1], 268, [1]] pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm.
Notes
Autographed by the author.
Includes author's note, notes, about the author and index.
"The Black Boys, also known as the Brave Fellows and the Loyal Volunteers, were members of a white settler movement in the Conococheague Valley of colonial Pennsylvania sometimes known as the Black Boys Rebellion. The Black Boys, so-called because they sometimes blackened their faces during their actions, were upset with British policy regarding American Indians following Pontiac's War. When that war came to an end in 1765, the Pennsylvania government began to reopen trade with the Native Americans who had taken part in the uprising. Many settlers of the Conococheague Valley were outraged, having suffered greatly from Indian raids during the war. The 1764 Enoch Brown School Massacre, in which ten school children had been killed and scalped, was the most notorious example of these raids." [from Wikipedia]
Summary
"The American Revolution has traditionally been depicted as a struggle between North American settlers and British imperial forces, but this intensively researched study from Spero, the director of Philadelphia's American Philosophical Society Library, analyzes the crucial role of settler attitudes toward Native Americans in sparking the conflict. While administrators in London viewed Native people as important trading partners within their American empire, many white colonists saw them as a terrifying menace and 'wanted to be free of the Indians as much as they wanted to be free of their imperial overlords.' Spero tells of the little-studied Pennsylvania backcountry rebels called the Black Boys, who in 1765 revolted against Britain's willingness to accommodate Native interests. Readers who have been accustomed to considering the Revolutionary War as a conflict between American liberty and British oppression may find this account discomfiting, but Spero presents convincing support for his thesis that hatred of Indians and desire for their lands played a pivotal role in fomenting the revolution and 'produced the roadmap' for the next century of American history, delving deeply into previously underutilized sources, including the journals of fur trader George Croghan. Spero's thoughtful work is an important contribution to ongoing reassessments of the nature and meaning of the American founding." (from Publishers Weekly.com)
Suzy comes to America -- At home in the land of brotherly love -- Shaking off the yoke -- A new home on the frontier -- A little romance -- Political adviser, lawyer, activist, and advocate for the Indians -- Businesswoman and scientific author -- The American Revolution -- Celebrated poet -- Last years and legacy -- Afterword: from Wright's Ferry to Columbia.
Summary
Introduces Suzy Wright, a Quaker who helped settle the Pennsylvania frontier, defended the rights of Native Americans, and provided legal counsel to her neighbors.
edited by Andrew R.L. Cayton and Fredrika J. Teute.
ISBN
0807847348 (pbk. : alk. paper)
Place of Publication
Chapel Hill
Publisher
University of North Carolina Press,
Date of Publication
c1998.
Physical Description
x, 390 p. : ill., maps ; 25 cm.
Notes
"Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia, the Newberry Library, Chicago, and the Historic New Orleans Collection."
Includes bibliographical references (p. 361-382) and index.
Contents
Introduction : on the connection of frontiers / Andrew R.L. Cayton and Fredrika J. Teute -- Shamokin, "the very seat of the Prince of darkness": unsettling the early American frontier / James H. Merrell -- Metaphor, meaning, and misunderstanding : language and power on the Pennsylvania frontier / Jane T. Merritt -- Black "go-betweens" and the mutability of "race," status, and identity on New York's pre-revolutionary frontier / William B. Hart -- "Insidious friends" : gift giving and the Cherokee-British alliance in the Seven Years' War / Gregory Evans Dowd --"Domestick ... quiet being broke" : gender conflict among Creek Indians in the eighteenth century / Claudio Saunt -- Pigs and hunters : "rights in the woods" on the trans-Appalachian frontier / Stephen Aron -- Distinctions and partitions amongst us : identity and interaction in the revolutionary Ohio Valley / Elizabeth A. Perkins -- "Noble actors" upon "the theatre of honour" : power and civility in the Treaty of Greenville / Andrew R.L. Cayton -- To live among us : accommodation, gender, and conflict in the Western Great Lakes region, 1760-1832 / Lucy Eldersveld Murphy -- "More motley than Mackinaw" : from ethnic mixing to ethnic cleansing on the frontier of the Lower Missouri, 1783-1833 / John Mack Faragher -- Remembering American frontiers : King Philip's War and the American imagination / Jill Lepore.
History of the early settlement of the Juniata valley: embracing an account of the early pioneers, and the trials and privations incident to the settlement of the valley, predatory incursions, massacres, and abductions by the Indians during the French and Indian wars, and the war of the revolution, &c
By U. J. Jones. With notes and extensions compiled as a glossary from the memoirs of early settlers, the pension statements of revolutionary war soldiers, and other source material, by Floyd G. Hoenstine ...
