Into the American woods
Subtitle: negotiators on the Pennsylvania frontier
By: James H. Merrell.
Publisher: Norton
Published: 1999
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 463
ISBN-13: 9780393046762
Subjects: Frontier and pioneer life -- Pennsylvania; Pioneers -- Pennsylvania -- History -- 17th century; Pioneers -- Pennsylvania -- History -- 18th century; Negotiation -- Pennsylvania -- History -- 17th century; Negotiation -- Pennsylvania -- History -- 18th century; Indians of North America -- Pennsylvania -- Government relations -- History -- 17th century; Indians of North America -- Pennsylvania -- Government relations -- History -- 18th century; Intercultural communication -- Pennsylvania -- History -- 17th century; Intercultural communication -- Pennsylvania -- History -- 18th century; Pennsylvania -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775
Other titles: Negotiators on the Pennsylvania frontier
Description: An award-winning historian's beautifully written reconstruction of how Europeans lived in peace and war with Indians on America's colonial frontier. They've been with us since the mythic past, when Hermes carried messages from the gods to the Greeks and Deganawidah with his disciple Hiawatha built the Great League of Peace among the Iroquois. They are the go-betweens, the shadowy figures who move between us and them, linking different worlds.

These were the "woods-men," wise in the ways of the American woods, knowledgeable about the other, able to navigate the treacherous shoals of misunderstanding and mistrust. From the Quaker colony's founding in the early 1680s into the 1750s, they did the hard, dirty work that helped maintain the fragile "long peace" between Indians and colonists. But, skilled as they were in the alchemy of translation and negotiation, they could not prevent the sickening plummet from peace to war after 1750.

The bloodshed and hatred of frontier conflict at once made go-betweens obsolete and taught the harsh lesson of the woods: the final incompatibility of colonial and native dreams about the continent they shared. Long erased from history, the go-betweens of early America are recovered here in vivid detail.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 329-438) and index.
Table of contents: title: Chronology; title: Introduction : "I have a large intriestt in ye woods"; title: Prologue : The killing of Jack Armstrong, 1744; title: "Fitt and proper persons to goe between" : paths to the woods; title: Finding friends : woodslore, 1699-1723; title: "That road between us and you" : passages through the woods; title: The lessons of brinksmanship : woodslore, 1728 1743; title: "A good correspondance" : conversations; title: In the woods : woodslore, 1755-1758; title: "A sort of confusion" : treaties; title: Epilogue : The killing of young Seneca George, 1769