How Indian War Transformed Early America
C 2008 Peter Silver
WW. Norton and Co Publishers
When is the last time you read about Colonialist's being scalped and terrorized by Native Americans as a form of terrorism, or suspicion of the new German-speaking immigrants, the Palatines, being thought of as crude by the Philadelphia establishment?
How about the dread of a Catholic-Indian conspiracy?
Peter Silver reintroduces these subjects without concern of how history collides with some present-day politically correct assumptions about imperialism. The Colonial world is rife with inter-tribal and inter-ethnic immigrant conflicts, some more visceral than others.
In the cities this is merely discomfort. In the wilderness - the frontier that is pushed west - the fear is palatable. Thus, the title, Our Savage Neighbors, is just right, for a book that might get booed at major American Universities where just the opposite stereotype of Native Americans is authorized.
Now that political correctness requires rewriting history, we Americans tend to think of all Native Americans as peaceful, spiritual (New Agey), and passive victims (with Casino Rights), maybe it's time to read OUR SAVAGE NEIGHBORS and learn again about the real terror of Indian War.Scalpings and the slaughter of innocents kept European cultured colonials used to different Rules of War, outraged and terrified, as if the MANSON FAMILY struck on a daily basis. (Some Indian tribes were known to enjoy cutting open pregnant women and ripping their babes out of the womb.) And so much for the prevailing notion that Indians didn't "own" land but shared it like a commune. They sure fought for their turf. And the gun proved to be the great equilizer.
Heavily referenced, this book's strength lies in its focus on the Early America of the Mid-Atlantic region and especially of Pennsylvania and the Ohio Territories, places where the English were followed by the Irish of Scotland (Scots Irish) and the German Palantines, who came into Philadelphia and moved - bit by bit - west, pushing the borders. An Indian raid that left mutilated bodies - scalped and limbs cut off - and farmers fled their homesteads, leaving crops to rot, for the relative safety of the cities, where they stayed for months. They were more afraid of the condition their bodies might be found in, of cut off limbs and rotting rather than being given a Christian burial, than death itself.
This book also illuminates the union of the French and the Indians against the British at Fort Pitt and surrounds, as well as the role of the Quakers and Moravians, who were not trusted for their friendliness to the Indians. It reveals the snobbery of those who arrived to the Colonies earlier, against the Scots-Irish and Palantine Germans, who waited in sordid conditions and disease hoping someone would buy their contract for servitude.
A truly exciting read!
Review C Ancestry Worship - Genealogy 2009 All Rights Reserved including Internet and International. If you wish to quote this review please contact us.
