Few mementoes remain of what Ohio was like before white people
transformed it. The readings in this anthology—the diaries of a
trader and a missionary, the letter of a frontier housewife, the
travel account of a wide-eyed young English tourist, the memoir of an
escaped slave, and many others—are eyewitness accounts of the Ohio
frontier. They tell what people felt and thought about coming to the
very fringes of white civilization—and what the people thought and
did who saw them coming.
Each succeeding group of newcomers—hunters, squatters, traders, land
speculators, farmers, missionaries, fresh European
immigrants—established a sense of place and community in the
wilderness. Their writings tell of war, death, loneliness, and
deprivation, as well as courage, ambition, success, and fun. We can
see the lust for the land, the struggle for control of it, the terrors
and challenges of the forest, and the determination of white settlers
to change the land, tame it, "improve" it.
The new Ohio these settlers created had no room for its native
inhabitants. Their dispossession is a defining theme of the book. As
the forests receded and the farms expanded, the Indians were pressured
to move out. By the time the last tribe, the Wyandots, left in 1843,
they were regarded as relics of the romantic past, and the frontier
experience came to a close.
Anyone fascinated by the panorama of America's westward migration will
respond to the dramatic stories told in these pages.
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Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9780813158228
Publisert
2015
Utgiver
Vendor
The University Press of Kentucky
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok