Description: In 1761, at a boarding school in New England, a young Mohawk Indian named Joseph Brant first met Samuel Kirkland, the son of a colonial clergyman. They began a long and intense relationship that would redefine North America. For nearly fifty years, their lives intertwined, at first as close friends but later as bitter foes. Kirkland served American expansion as a missionary and agent, promoting Indian conversion and dispossession. Brant pursued an alternative future for the continent by defending an Indian borderland nestled between the British in Canada and the Americans, rather than divided by them. By telling their dramatic story, Alan Taylor illuminates the dual borders that consolidated the new American nation after the Revolution. By constricting Indians within reservation lines, the Americans sought to control their northern boundary with the British Empire, which lingered in Canada. The border became firm as thousands of settlers established farms, held as private property, all around the new reservations. This struggle also pitted the federal government against the leaders of New York, competing to control the lands and the Indians of the border country. They contended for the highest of stakes because the transformation of Indian land constructed the wealth and the power of states, nations, and empires in North America. In addition to land, the frontier contest pivoted on murders, which repeatedly tested who had legal jurisdiction: Indians or newcomers. To assert power, the contending regimes sought to try and execute Indians or settlers who killed one another. To defend native autonomy, however, the Indians asserted an alternative by “covering the graves” of victims with presents to console their kin. When the gallows replaced covered graves, the Indians lost their middle position as free peoples.
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Location: United States
End Time: 2024-11-13T02:02:03.000Z
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Item Specifics
Return shipping will be paid by: Buyer
All returns accepted: Returns Accepted
Item must be returned within: 30 Days
Refund will be given as: Money Back
Original Language: English
Book Title: Divided Ground : Indians, Settlers, and the Northern Borderland of the American Revolution
Number of Pages: 560 Pages
Language: English
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication Year: 2006
Topic: United States / Revolutionary Period (1775-1800), United States / State & Local / Middle Atlantic (DC, De, Md, NJ, NY, Pa), United States / 19th Century, Military / United States, Ethnic Studies / Native American Studies
Item Height: 1.8 in
Illustrator: Yes
Genre: Social Science, History
Item Weight: 32.2 Oz
Author: Alan Taylor
Item Length: 9.5 in
Item Width: 6.6 in
Format: Hardcover