Journey On The Forbidden Path

This vol. draws together records documenting a little known diplomatic effort to establish peace along the war-torn Appalachian frontier during the spring, summer, & fall of 1760. Assembled here is a representative sample of the council minutes, speeches, letters of correspondence, warrants, inventories, passports, journals, diaries, & other types of records documenting a frontier diplomatic mission of the period. These records reveal something of the range & diversity of documentary materials available to scholars interested in reconstructing diplomatic events along a distant frontier during a critical period of Am. history. Individually, they document political maneuvers & details of everyday life, many of which are recorded nowhere else. Collectively, they provide additional keys to understand better how Indians & colonists shaped a new diplomatic landscape along the Penna. frontier after the Brit. succeeded in breaking French power in N. Am. in 1760.

Step into the rugged landscapes of the Arizona and New Mexico deserts in 'The Forbidden Trail' by Honoré Morrow. Set in the pre-World War I era, it follows the journey of Roger Moore, a resilient protagonist who overcomes the challenges of his orphaned childhood to become a pioneer in the development of a revolutionary solar-powered engine.

Pacifist Prophet recounts the untold history of peaceable Native Americans in the eighteenth century, as explored through the world of Papunhank (ca. 1705–75), a Munsee and Moravian prophet, preacher, reformer, and diplomat. Papunhank’s life was dominated by a search for a peaceful homeland in Pennsylvania and the Ohio country amid the upheavals of the era between the Seven Years’ War and the American Revolution. His efforts paralleled other Indian quests for autonomy but with a crucial twist: he was a pacifist committed to using only nonviolent means. Such an approach countered the messages of other Native prophets and ran against the tide in an early American world increasingly wrecked with violence, racial hatred, and political turmoil. Nevertheless, Papunhank was not alone. He followed and contributed to a longer and wider indigenous peace tradition. Richard W. Pointer shows how Papunhank pushed beyond the pragmatic pacifism of other Indians and developed from indigenous and Christian influences a principled pacifism that became the driving force of his life and leadership. Hundreds of Native people embraced his call to be “a great Lover of Peace” in their quests for home. Against formidable odds, Papunhank’s prophetic message spoke boldly to Euro-American and Native centers of power and kept many Indians alive during a time when their very survival was constantly threatened. Papunhank’s story sheds critical new light on the responses of some Munsees, Delawares, Mahicans, Nanticokes, and Conoys for whom the “way of war” was no way at all.

The Kinzua Dam has cast a long shadow on Seneca life since World War II. The project, formally dedicated in 1966, broke the Treaty of Canandaigua of 1794, flooded approximately 10,000 acres of Seneca lands in New York and Pennsylvania, and forced the relocation of hundreds of tribal members. Hauptman offers both a policy study, detailing how and why Washington, Harrisburg, and Albany came up with the idea to build the dam, and a community study of the Seneca Nation in the postwar era. Although the dam was presented to the Senecas as a flood control project, Hauptman persuasively argues that the primary reasons were the push for private hydroelectric development in Pennsylvania and state transportation and park development in New York. This important investigation, based on forty years of archival research as well as on numerous interviews with Senecas, shows that these historically resilient Native peoples adapted in the face of this disaster. Unlike previous studies, In the Shadow of Kinzua highlights the federated nature of Seneca Nation government, one held together in spite of great diversity of opinions and intense politics. In the Kinzua crisis and its aftermath, several Senecas stood out for their heroism and devotion to rebuilding their nation for tribal survival. They left legacies in many areas, including two community centers, a modern health delivery system, two libraries, and a museum. Money allocated in a “compensation bill” passed by Congress in 1964 produced a generation of college-educated Senecas, some of whom now work in tribal government, making major contributions to the Nation’s present and future. Facing impossible odds and hidden forces, they motivated a cadre of volunteers to help rebuild devastated lands. Although their strategies did not stop the dam’s construction, they laid the groundwork for a tribal governing structure and for managing other issues that followed from the 1980s to the present, including land claims litigation and casinos.

Members of three tribes are drawn by fate into the menacing Rift Valley. They come from opposing tribes yet follow individual paths that lead to love and friendship. The story opens with a tough-minded, take-action woman fleeing the brute who replaced her father as leader of the Mila Tanari tribe. She chooses to jump into the Rift rather than be the pawn of the tribe's new leader. A cute and brilliant inventor descends into the valley via ropes and pulleys with his lover, Kareel, to escape the persecution of his Geneer tribe. Together they make a home and are happy until Kareel’s untimely death. A handsome and sensitive healer, a member of the MeTech tribe, is so troubled by the greed of his new stepmother that he trips while gathering plants and tumbles into the Rift Valley. These three are as different as their tribes. Chased by the beasts that patrol the valley floor, the unlikely allies must forge a path toward friendship to survive. Curiosity lures them down a dangerous path in a quest to understand the ruins long protected by the carnivores. The secret they discover changes everything they thought they knew about their tribes and their world. Forbidden Paths is Book One of an exciting trilogy by Rod Mortin. Filled with non-stop action, powerful relationships, and a quest for truth, the Paths Trilogy will inspire you to examine your own beliefs about those outside your tribe.

Among the many upheavals in North America caused by the French and Indian War was a commonplace practice that affected the lives of thousands of men, women, and children: being taken captive by rival forces. Most previous studies of captivity in early America are content to generalize from a small selection of sources, often centuries apart. In Setting All the Captives Free, Ian Steele presents, from a mountain of data, the differences rather than generalities as well as how these differences show the variety of circumstances that affected captives’ experiences. The product of a herculean effort to identify and analyze the captives taken on the Allegheny frontier during the era of the French and Indian War, Setting All the Captives Free is the most complete study of this topic. Steele explores genuine, doctored, and fictitious accounts in an innovative challenge to many prevailing assumptions and arguments, revealing that Indians demonstrated humanity and compassion by continuing to take numerous captives when their opponents took none, by adopting and converting captives into kin during the war, and by returning captives even though doing so was a humiliating act that betrayed their societies' values. A fascinating and comprehensive work by an acclaimed scholar, Setting All the Captives Free takes the study of the French and Indian War in America to an exciting new level.

David Zeisberger: A life among the Indians offers the unique perspective of a Moravian missionary who lived and worked for sixty-three years among the Iroquois and Delaware nations in New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Upper Canada. Earl P. Olmstead's narrative draws on thousands of pages of Zeisberger's own diaries, some of which are translated here for the first time. The diaries offer insights into the role of wampum in tribal government, problems resulting from the mass Euro-American western migration, and incidents of duplicity on the parts of both the American government and Native American nations. Of particular interest are Zeisberger's descriptions of Native American life in the years surrounding the French and Indian War and the American Revolution and the effects of these conflicts on the nations that lived in Ohio Country.

12 Between Private and Public Spheres: Liberty as Cultural Property in Eighteenth-Century British America -- Notes -- List of Contributors -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W