Synopses & Reviews
For centuries the Western view of the Iroquois was clouded by the myth that they were the supermen of the frontier—"the Romans of this Western World," as De Witt Clinton called them in 1811. Only in recent years have scholars come to realize the extent to which Europeans had exaggerated the power of the Iroquois.
First published in 1987, Beyond the Covenant Chain was one of the first studies to acknowledge fully that the Iroquois never had an empire. It remains the best study of diplomatic and military relations among Native American groups in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century North America.
Published in paperback for the first time, it features a new introduction by Richter and Merrell. Contributors include Douglas W. Boyce, Mary A. Druke-Becker, Richard L. Haan, Francis Jennings, Michael N. McConnell, Theda Perdue, and Neal Salisbury.
Review
“A must for serious students of the Iroquois and Indian-white relations in the colonial period.”
—William A. Starna, Ethnohistory
Synopsis
Includes bibliographical references (p. 165-202) and index.
About the Author
Daniel K. Richter is Professor of History and Director of the McNeil Center for Early American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. His most recent book,
Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America (2002), won the 2001–2002 Louis Gottschalk Prize in Eighteenth-Century History and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History.
James H. Merrell is Professor of History at Vassar College. His book, The Indians' New World: Catawbas and Their Neighbors from European Contact Through the Era of Removal (1989), won the Bancroft Prize, the Merle Curti Award, and the Frederick Jackson Turner Award. His most recent book is Into the American Woods: Negotiators on the Pennsylvania Frontier (1999).
Table of Contents
ContentsAcknowledgments
Contributors
Foreword by Wilcomb E. Washburn
Preface to the paperback edition by Daniel K. Richter and James H. Merrell
Maps
The Iroquois and Their Neighbors in the Early 1670s
The Iroquois and Their Neighbors in the Early 1760s
Introduction
Daniel K. Richter and James H. Merrell
Part I Perspectives from Iroquoia
1. Ordeals of the Longhouse: The Five Nations in Early American History
Daniel K. Richter
2. Linking Arms: The Structure of Iroquois Intertribal Diplomacy
Mary Druke Becker
3. Covenant and Consensus: Iroquois and English, 1676–1760
Richard L. Haan
part II Near Neighbors
4. Toward the Covenant Chain: Iroquois and Southern New England Algonquins, 1637–1684
Neal Salisbury
5. "Pennsylvania Indians" and the Iroquois
Francis Jennings
6. Peoples "In Between": The Iroquois and the Ohio Indians, 1720–1768
Michael N. McConnell
Part III Distant Friends and Foes
7. "Their Very Bones Shall Fight": The Catawba-Iroquois Wars
James H. Merrell
8. Cherokee Relations with the Iroquois in the Eighteenth Century
Theda Perdue
9. "As the Wind Scatters the Smoke": The Tuscaroras in the Eighteenth Century
Douglas W. Boyce
Notes
Index