Ill Fated Frontier

Ill-Fated Frontier is at once a pioneer adventure and a compelling narrative of the frictions that emerged among entrepreneurial pioneers and their sixty slaves, Indians fighting to preserve their land, and Spanish colonials with their own agenda. Here is a lively and visceral portrait of the wild and enduring American frontier in 1789. The melting pot America would become was barely simmering when an ill-fated attempt to settle land near Natchez in brought together a volatile mix of ambitious Northern pioneers and their slaves, Spanish colonists, and Native Americans who had claimed the land as theirs for hundreds of years. This illuminating episode in American history comes to life in this account of an expedition gone wrong. It began with an optimistic plan to settle and expand in the new territory. It ended ignominiously, with the body of one of the expedition’s leaders returning to New Jersey stored in a pickle barrel. What happened in between—a cautionary tale of greed, incompetence, and hubris—lies at the center of this fascinating account by Harvard historian Samuel A. Forman. Endorsed by New York Times best-selling author Nathaniel Philbrick, it is a startling and frank portrait of a young America that examines the dream of an inclusive American experience and its reality—a debate that continues today. Imperious General David Forman, a terror to his Monmouth County, New Jersey, Loyalist neighbors, during the Revolutionary War obtained a large land grant in Natchez, then part of Spanish West Florida. His charge was to establish a plantation that would lure settlers and establish a new American presence. Staying behind in New Jersey David Forman appointed his rotund and gouty older brother Ezekiel as leader of the expedition, his young cousin Samuel S. Forman as its business manager, and a former military aide as overseer of the enslaved African Americans who accompanied them. It did not go well. When the expedition finally reached the new territory it found waiting Spanish colonials who felt the land was theirs and Native Americans who still maintained their sovereignty over the contested lands. When Ezekiel Forman died unexpectedly, David Forman stormed from New Jersey into Natchez to take control of the unraveling situation. He would find on his arrival that those awaiting him had other ideas about who the land actually belonged to. He would return to New Jersey quite dead and pickled in a barrel of rum. Lively, impeccably researched, and rich in details that have escaped the usual tales of American growth and enterprise, Ill-Fated Frontier shines new and entertaining light on what it means to be an American.

The western frontier was officially pronounced closed in 1890, the year Harvey Fergusson was born in Albuquerque. He spent his life reopening it in a series of novels stretching from the classic Wolf Song to the belatedly acclaimed Grant of Kingdom and The Conquest of Don Pedro. In this first full biography and critical study, Robert F. Gish sees Fergusson as a modern frontiersman in love with the outdoors, women, and writing. The scion of New Mexico family prominent in business and politics, Fergusson moved restlessly from one new frontier to another, always seeking to recreate in his life and work the adventure and freedom enjoyed by his ancestors. After a strenuous open-air life by the Rio Grande he went east to raise a ruckus us a journalist and then to Hollywood as a screenwriter, all the while testing his sexual mettle. Finally freelance writing was the only frontier available to one of his imaginative energy. Fergusson?s early novel Wolf Song is still considered one of the best ever written about the mountain man. Gish shows the writer embracing the gloriously masculine and atavistic role of a ?lone rider? even as he scorned ?the worship of the primitive.? Fergusson struck up a friendship with H. L. Mencken and Theodore Dreiser (who influenced his literary style) and played a part in the development of Taos and Santa Fe as meccas for artists and writers. Based on extensive research, including Fergusson?s diaries and correspondence, Frontier?s End goes a long way toward reconciling the regional with the mainstream in American literature in the person of a serious novelist whose importance is finally being recognized.

Originally published in 1994, this book analysed land developments, deforestation and pasture substitution, colonisation schemes and spontaneous settlement during the latter part of the 20th Century. In so doing, The Forest Frontier presents an overview of the intrinsic environmental and socio-economic resources of the Roraima, the most northerly of the Brazilian Amazon states. Roraima is of special environmental interest because of its extensive savannas and varied forests – the home of some of the largest and most diverse groups of indigenous Indians. This critical assessment of the nature and pace of agricultural advance into Roraima examines the range of strategies which have been proposed to cope with the inevitable development. With the conflict between preserving the natural environment and development still major issues for Brazil, this book remains as relevant now as when it was first published.

When the people of British North America threw off their colonial bonds, they sought more than freedom from bad government: most of the founding generation also desired the freedom to create and enjoy good, popular, responsive government. This book traces the central issue on which early Americans pinned their hopes for positive government action--internal improvement. The nation's early republican governments undertook a wide range of internal improvement projects meant to assure Americans' security, prosperity, and enlightenment--from the building of roads, canals, and bridges to the establishment of universities and libraries. But competitive struggles eventually undermined the interstate and interregional cooperation required, and the public soured on the internal improvement movement. Jacksonian politicians seized this opportunity to promote a more libertarian political philosophy in place of activist, positive republicanism. By the 1850s, the United States had turned toward a laissez-faire system of policy that, ironically, guaranteed more freedom for capitalists and entrepreneurs than ever envisioned in the founders' revolutionary republicanism.

In the late 1880s, the Pecos River region of Texas and southern New Mexico was known as “the cowboy’s paradise.” And the cowboys who worked in and around the river were known as “the most expert cowboys in the world.” A Cowboy of the Pecos vividly reveals tells the story of the Pecos cowboy from the first Goodnight-Loving cattle drive to the 1920s. These meticulously researched and entertaining stories offer a glimpse into a forgotten and yet mythologized era. Includes archival photographs.