Synopses & Reviews
Exploring the mental worlds of the major groups interacting in a borderland setting, Cynthia Cumfer offers a broad, multiracial intellectual and cultural history of the Tennessee frontier in the Revolutionary and early national periods, leading up to the era of rapid westward expansion and Cherokee removal. Attentive to the complexities of race, gender, class, and spirituality, Cumfer offers a rare glimpse into the cultural logic of Native American, African American, and Euro-American men and women as contact with one another powerfully transformed their ideas about themselves and the territory they came to share.
Review
While many of us talk about the need for history written from multiple perspectives, Cynthia Cumfer has actually done it, and with considerable subtlety and style.
Andrew R. L. Cayton, Miami University of Ohio
Review
"Attentive to the complexities of race, class, gender, and spirituality. . . . A broad, multiracial intellectual and cultural history of the Tennessee frontier in the Revolutionary and early national periods."
The Courier
Review
While many of us talk about the need for history written from multiple perspectives, Cynthia Cumfer has actually done it, and with considerable subtlety and style.
Andrew R. L. Cayton, Miami University of Ohio
Review
"Successfully illustrates the disintegration of trust and possible amity between Native Americans and white settlers in the post-Revolutionary era within a more detail-oriented ground-level analysis than many before accomplished."
Southern Historian
Review
"[Cumfer] has superbly utilized the insights of leading American historians to define the role of European and black immigrants on the frontier during a period of sweeping changes. . . . [An] engaging survey of the mind of Cherokees, blacks and white on Tennessee's early frontier."
Journal of East Tennessee History
Review
"A cutting-edge study of fascinating subject matter."
Appalachian Heritage
Review
"[A] valuable study."
The Journal of American History
Review
"Locates a complicated process of ideological change."
--Journal of Southern History
Review
"Provides critical insight. . . . [Makes] important contributions . . . to frontier, intellectual, and cultural history."
-North Carolina Historical Review "Locates a complicated process of ideological change."
--Journal of Southern History "Raises questions of profound importance about the American frontier and the formation of national character."
Georgia Historical Quarterly "A nuanced picture of frontier American political life . . . reveals a thriving political culture in which all levels of society participated."
Western Historical Quarterly "Successfully illustrates the disintegration of trust and possible amity between Native Americans and white settlers in the post-Revolutionary era within a more detail-oriented ground-level analysis than many before accomplished."
Southern Historian "Attentive to the complexities of race, class, gender, and spirituality. . . . A broad, multiracial intellectual and cultural history of the Tennessee frontier in the Revolutionary and early national periods."
The Courier "A cutting-edge study of fascinating subject matter."
Appalachian Heritage "[A] valuable study."
The Journal of American History "A well-written book and offers insights on the developing values of the nation as a whole."
Choice "[Cumfer] has superbly utilized the insights of leading American historians to define the role of European and black immigrants on the frontier during a period of sweeping changes. . . . [An] engaging survey of the mind of Cherokees, blacks and white on Tennessee's early frontier."
Journal of East Tennessee History While many of us talk about the need for history written from multiple perspectives, Cynthia Cumfer has actually done it, and with considerable subtlety and style.
Andrew R. L. Cayton, Miami University of Ohio
Review
"Leads historians of Tennessee outward, rather than inward, which is a most welcome development in the state's historiography."
-Tennessee Historical Quarterly
About the Author
Cynthia Cumfer is an attorney and independent scholar in Portland, Oregon.