The First Frontier: The Forgotten History of Struggle, Savagery, and Endurance in Early America

by Scott Weidensaul

Frontier : the word carries the inevitable scent of the West. But before Custer or Lewis and Clark, before the first Conestoga wagons rumbled across the Plains, it was the East that marked the frontier—the boundary between complex Native cultures and the first colonizing Europeans.

Here is the older, wilder, darker history of a time when the land between the Atlantic and the Appalachians was contested ground—when radically different societies adopted and adapted the ways of the other, while struggling for control of what all considered to be their land.

The First Frontier traces two and a half centuries of history through poignant, mostly unheralded personal stories—like that of a Harvard-educated Indian caught up in seventeenth-century civil warfare, a mixed-blood interpreter trying to straddle his white and Native heritage, and a Puritan woman wielding a scalping knife whose bloody deeds still resonate uneasily today. It is the first book in years to paint a sweeping picture of the Eastern frontier, combining vivid storytelling with the latest research to bring to life modern America’s tumultuous, uncertain beginnings.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, American History, Native American, American, 18th Century, Audiobook

496 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2012

About the author

Born in 1959, Scott Weidensaul (pronounced "Why-densaul") has lived almost all of his life among the long ridges and endless valleys of eastern Pennsylvania, in the heart of the central Appalachians, a landscape that has defined much of his work.

His writing career began in 1978 with a weekly natural history column in the local newspaper, the Pottsville Republican in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, where he grew up. The column soon led a fulltime reporting job, which he held until 1988, when he left to become a freelance writer specializing in nature and wildlife. (He continued to write about nature for newspapers, however, including long-running columns for the Philadelphia Inquirer and Harrisburg Patriot-News.)

Weidensaul has written more than two dozen books, including his widely acclaimed Living on the Wind: Across the Hemisphere with Migratory Birds (North Point 1999), which was a finalist for the 2000 Pulitzer Prize.

Weidensaul's writing has appeared in dozens of publications, including Audubon (for which he is a contributing editor), Nature Conservancy and National Wildlife, among many others. He lectures widely on conservation and nature, and directs the ornithological programs for National Audubon's famed Hog Island Center on the coast of Maine.

In addition to writing about wildlife, Weidensaul is an active field researcher whose work focuses on bird migration. Besides banding hawks each fall (something he's done for nearly 25 years), he directs a major effort to study the movements of northern saw-whet owls, one of the smallest and least-understood raptors in North America. He is also part of a continental effort to understand the rapid evolution, by several species of western hummingbirds, of a new migratory route and wintering range in the East.

- excerpted from his website

Reviews

[Breck Baumann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beginning with the early English settlement of Jamestown and ending during the French and Indian War, author and naturalist Scott Weidensaul describes European contact with the Native tribes of North America in picturesque and vivid detail. He uses sources not only from those typically found in American and British archives, but also accounts from early Dutch, German, and French immigrants as well. As the chapters unfold, the reality of the acts of aggression and betrayal from both the colonists and the natives are both startling and depressing.

Weidensaul opens with a profound introduction—describing what seems to be a pristine and peaceful evening on a quiet frontier settlement, yet upon reaching midnight, the audience is engaged with the disturbing sound of Native American war cries, musket fire, and the scraping of tomahawk against bone and scalp. Read like a true tale of conflicting cultures and boundaries, the heroics and feats that some of the captives go through are downright unimaginable. From the earliest North American bestseller—fascinatingly for the seventeenth century to be pioneered by a woman (Mary Rowlandson)—we also find other accounts like that of John Gyles harrowing trek across a snow-filled landscape, leading to unimaginable painful tribulations and his eventual enslavement:

The Maliseets cut off Gyles’s moccasins and put him by the fire. As the sensation returned to his frostbitten feet, “which were as void of feeling as any frozen Flesh could be,” they began to swell and turned purplish black, erupting in blood-filled blisters. The pain was excruciating.

All too often introductions and prologues can get bogged down with side stories and rather broad details, but Weidensaul explains the contents of each of the three parts that will be chronicled magnificently. Part I follows the beginning of North American habitation, with Part II showing the tensions rising as the colonies are established. Finally, Part III segues to the Pennsylvania frontier where the famed William Penn tries to find common ground—a view that his own sons unfortunately don’t take lightly with the native inhabitants. With comprehensive maps and illustrations littered throughout the text, Weidensaul has created an easy to follow and attention-grabbing narrative of Early and Colonial America.

[Emma Deplores Goodreads Censorship · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was really interested in reading this history of interactions between Native Americans and Europeans in colonial America, though the relatively small number of ratings gave me pause; American history is a popular topic among nonfiction readers. As it turns out I should have heeded those reservations. While I did learn some things from this book, it turned out to be a long, unorganized slog. It took me a long time to read because I returned to it only reluctantly, and because of poor organization did not teach me as much as I was hoping.

This book purports to cover over 250 years of American history, from pre-contact America up through the 1760s or so. The geographic scope, too, is broad: basically everywhere in what’s now the United States where white colonists and explorers came into contact with natives, from Maine to Florida to Ohio. The interaction between the two populations is the author’s focus.

The book mixes individual narratives with larger-scale history, but unfortunately the two facets often don’t connect well, and the history is not relayed in such a way as to be easy to remember. Though roughly chronological, the book doesn’t organize information in any particular way. Chapters have soft-focus, vague titles like “Between Two Fires,” rather than demarcating particular historical periods or events. It’s unclear how the people whose individual stories are told were chosen: are they meant to be important historical actors in their own right (many of them have a role, and from the book it’s difficult to judge how important that role was), or are theirs just interesting stories that happened to survive in written form? In some cases the book discusses people as if they are important, but it’s unclear why.

Perhaps several centuries are just too much to cover in one book, especially with a large geographic area and large number of groups (both European and Native American) involved. There are a lot of details and the author doesn’t really highlight key points or people or remind us who they are when they reappear. A lot of history happens in the background; events specific to the colonists, like disputes between colonies and the Salem witch trials, are mentioned only in passing. The colonies’ internal issues are not what this book is about, of course, but the book is also told mostly from the perspective of the colonists because they’re the ones who left written records. So I was left with a sense of reading a very incomplete history, and without being given a framework with which to organize all these names and details. We get the winter-trekking adventures of some interpreter or captive in the foreground, and then a dense collection of details in the background that aren’t really supported by the personal story.

The author’s citations are also lacking. His endnotes are extensive, but are almost entirely limited to instances where he quotes someone directly. Then he’ll state his own conclusions as fact and give no background at all for how he arrived at them, or share startling information that, because it’s not provided in the form of a direct quotation, has no reference. So it’s hard to evaluate his information.

Underlying all of this, the author doesn’t seem to have a thesis, any particular view or interpretation he’s arguing for. Some would say that’s good, that a historian should simply tell us what happened without putting his own spin on it. But Weidensaul – who as far as I can tell from his bio is an amateur historian – certainly does have a viewpoint; the lack of an organizing principle, a concerted argument, simply makes it harder to pin down, and leaves me wondering why exactly the author wrote this book.

Overall, yes, I learned some things from this book. But it was too tedious and frustrating for me to be likely to recommend.

[Holly Weiss · Rating 5 out of 5]

Scott Weidensaul takes us back to the true frontier, The First Frontier, where lands east of the Hudson and Delaware were hotly contested for two centuries before the American Revolution. People who laid claim to the eastern seaboard came with ambiguous motives from unimaginably different cultures and lands. Although cohabiting the land, they communicated poorly and remained estranged. This peerlessly researched book opens our eyes to a violent time in the history of America of which most of us are uninformed. One would think that as time went by, civil co-habitation would occur, but the author tells us, “Far from being a cordial melting pot, the frontier was becoming an increasingly fractious mishmash.”

Part One entrenches us in the various cultures of these early inhabitants of eastern America. Part Two describes the 17th century expansion of the American colonies around Chesapeake Bay and New England, resulting in hatred, fear and bloodshed. Part Three is the story of the farther frontier, the Pennsylvania backcountry, where today a marker proclaiming the site of the first Amish settlement reminds us of the ghosts of that time.

Interesting details from the book include:

- 90% of America’s native people lost their lives from foreign disease not long after European colonists arrived.

- A white woman released from Native American captivity returned home to write the first American bestseller. Mary Rowlandson was the first female writer to publish in North America.

- Brickmaker, Thomas Duston, must choose between saving his bedridden wife or his children from the Indians.

- Commercial slave trading boomed on both sides in the 1700s.

- The scrupulous honesty of William Penn earned subsequent respect from the Lenape tribe.

- Fur traders regularly married into Indian society to gain access to their wives’ connections.

- A daughter held captive for a decade recognized her real mother only after hearing her sing an old German hymn.

Although at times plodding, this is first-rate storytelling. The fascinating tales of individuals involved in the clash are interwoven with disturbing accounts of violence and war. The time the reader invests in this time period long left fallow by historians’ pens pays first-rate educational dividends.

The detail in The First Frontier can be daunting to the casual reader. Not for the faint of heart, the book accurately describes the many atrocities of the times. The book is intended to instruct and inform, not to entertain. The payoff for one truly interested in America’s beginnings is intellectually rewarding to one willing to spend time in its pages. Copious notes attest to the exhaustive research poured into the book. Highly recommended.

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt through Netgalley graciously provided the review copy.

Reviewed by Holly Weiss, author of Crestmont

[Bob Mayer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I find this era, pre-Revolution, which lasted hundred of years and covered generations to be fascinating. This book doesn't cover the Spanish who were the first explorers but it is a good accounting of the French and English and Native Americans.

[Steven Peterson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is the story (Page xiv) "that harks back to the days when the East was contested ground--fought over by empires and bled for by people who, regardless of their language, color, or birthplace, saw it as their own and worth dying for."

This is a well told story of the contest among settlers of different European lands and native Americans. It is a story of bravery and treachery, a battle over land, efforts at reconciliation--and betrayal. The subtitle speaks to a central theme of the book" "The forgotten history of struggle, savagery, & endurance in early America."

One way of structuring the book is to look at the stories of leading figures--both native American and European and colonists. In the process, the story is humanized. The book also speculates on how native Americans reached the eastern part of the North American continent.

The book begins with efforts by Europeans, whether Basque, French, Vikings, and so on to exploit the riches of the Atlantic Coast. Sometimes, relations with native Americans was positive--and sometimes not. There is the story of English explorers seizing native Americans and spiriting them back to England.

One way of addressing the history employed by the author is to follow a set of characters, as they exemplified life on the frontier. Among the players: Conrad Weiser, George Croghan, Andrew Montour as well as Indian leaders, such as Tanaghrisson. The book traces events, often through the acts of these people and others as well (such as George Washington).

This is a nice book, exploring the first frontier in North America. . . .

[Linda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Winter quarter I tutored a young man in American history from "discovery" to 1800. I learned a few new things and when I saw this book covered much of the same time period, I thought I'd try it out. Fantastic choice!!! First of all, the writer is a writer. His nonfiction is as smooth to read as fiction usually is. He tells the tale of America's beginnings through the eyes of as many of its participants as he can. Of course, not all events are covered by written sources. However, the earliest explorers all mentioned how populated the country was - everywhere they went there were native settlements. Wars and diseases had carried many of them off by time the Pilgrims and others landed which made it seem that the land was uninhabited. Of course, the inevitable clashes came. The settlers did not understand that when the natives "sold" the land, it meant that they basically rented it to them and expected to be "paid" each year for its use. The natives also expected to use it as they always had. They didn't understand the idea of "settlements." Unfortunately. And no one attempted to explain it or understand their point of view until it was too late.

We do see historic characters in their "before fame" aspects. Daniel Boone was a teamster during the French and Indian war and that was how he heard about Kentucky. George Washington lead the band of soldiers who actually fired the first shots that resulted in the French and Indian war. Benjamin Franklin is seen as a land speculator (although he did not steal from the native owned land). He was also the "author" of the "cartoon" of the snake divided into many parts (labeled with the names of the colonies) and the legend "Join, or Die." It did not refer to the beginnings of the American Revolution but to the menance of the natives.

Also interesting to me was the role played by the midwestern natives. I grew up in Indiana in the city where Little Turtle (Miami war chief) is buried. I had read the history of that particular time period (just after the revolution as settlers felt free to continue their march into what was then the Ohio Territory), but I had never really read anything that connected them to the events that happened before.

Something I had forgotten from the tutoring sessions was that Virginia tried to pull a fast one on the rest of the colonies and the settlement of the Ohio territory. As soon as settlers started moving in, Virginia suddenly "remembered" that its royal charter included all the land between its north and south boundaries all the way to the Pacific Ocean. So it had the right to ban settlers from other colonies.

This is a fascinating book. You won't find the declaration of war between Britian and the French during the French and Indian war, but you will see more of the average Joe's view of that war. You briefly see William Penn telling the natives they will be treated as equals, but you see an extended view of his sons plotting, scheming and outright lying to steal land. You'll see the men who served as interpretors, standing between two cultures, many never trusted in either. You'll see all the Praying Indians (Christian) suddenly become suspect at times of raids, suspects of both the whites and the natives. You'll learn the origin of the term "red" in referring to natives, and you'll see how much more important religion was in the original relationship between settlers and natives than skin color.

Read it.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good book about the Pre-revolutionary War contact between the Europeans and Native Americans. It is mostly focused on the relationships with the English and eastern Native Americans. References to French, Spanish, German, Swedish and Dutch contacts are mostly incidental. The book does not attempt to varnish the Native Americans with a patina of "noble savage" lacquer like many books do. It presents the North American natives in the context of their politics and culture. If you like your Native American noble and long suffering with no faults or barbarous conduct, don't read this book. Both sides are presented in their historical setting.

This is a good solid historical perspective of European-Native American contact from the earliest times through the French & Indian War.

[Jaylia3 · Rating 5 out of 5]

For hundreds of years before the thirteen colonies were established, Native Americans and Europeans interacted along the east coast of what is now the United States, and The First Frontier: the Forgotten History of Struggle, Savagery, and Endurance in Early America tells that fascinating but for me largely unknown story. The First Frontier covers some of the same ground as Charles Mann's books 1491 and 1493, but with a tight and detailed focus on the tribes, settlements, varied goals and shifting allegiances of the Native and European people during the early contact years along the eastern seaboard. After a brief introduction, the book begins before the first Europeans, probably Viking raiders and Basque fishermen, made contact and continues until shortly before the Revolutionary War. At a time when religious wars were being waged across Europe, the settlers saw as many differences between themselves--Lutheran, Catholic, Amish, Pilgrim, Puritan and Quaker--as they did between themselves and the native people, whose complex and rapidly changing cultures varied just as much. Having spent most of my life on the East Coast this colorful, lively pre-history of the United States was particularly interesting.

[Dale · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have had Scott Weidensaul's The First Frontier for longer than a year, buried in my legendary pile of books (actually, I am more organized than that, they are all in 4 milk crates) but when I heard an interview with Wiedensaul on the John Batchelor radio show I was reminded to dig it out.

Weidensaul is to be commended for a very thorough job of researching the history of the relationship between the natives and the European colonists. The records are scant, the spelling is haphazard and so much of it is buried in myth and politics.

He starts with the disposition of the American Indian population prior to the arrival of Europeans. The limited history of pre-Colombian contact is discussed (with the Vikings and various fishing fleets) and the discussion of the similarities of differences of the various American Indians arrayed along the Atlantic coastline is quite interesting.

But, as Weidensaul's narrative continues and the colonies become established the book becomes quite repetitive and I found that I had to force myself to plow through what seemed to be an endless list of atrocities from both sides up and down the coast from Maine to Connecticut...

Read more at: http://dwdsreviews.blogspot.com/2013/...

[Jim Gise · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Forgotten“ no more! Highly recommend this trip through America before it was America.

[Christopher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great opening and setting the stage for the eastern frontier. Sadly, what seems like it is going to be grand and inclusive of many conflicts tends to sideline important stuff like the growth of New France (which after establishment barely appears until the final struggle that would be its demise), the Iroquois expansion, and other events in order to give more attention to dramatic but quite small scale captivity narratives. If the rest of the book had maintained what was going in the first two sections this would have been an instant classic.

[Charles Moore · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is my second Weidensaul book and I found it something of a struggle requiring endurance but in the end worthwhile. We don't tend to spend much of our education on the struggles before the Revolutionary War if only because the current cry for patriotism is not part of that history. In fact, which is why this can be a tough read, sides are rather confusing to the reader as I wonder how knowing which side you were on was confusing and dangerous to the citizens.

This is a slow read, very detailed, very involved, but very informative. He settles mostly on his native Pennsylvania but starts with the first contacts at at the beginning of the 1600s on the New England and Canadian coasts. I like his premise, that American history needs to be reminded of the "before" we rebelled. Joseph Ellis, a very distinguished American historian, suggests we didn't become American until the writing of the Constitution in the early 1800s. There is a lot here that I don't recall reading much about in high school.

I recommend reading First Frontier but set aside some time.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here are a good collection of stories that present a compiled history of various struggles in early American history. It showcases some interesting characters that are often ignored, and goes deep into the history with what seems to be a pretty balanced view of each civilization and the struggles of each.

I found the 17th century stories to be the most fascinating, because these are the stories about which I don't often hear. Scott brings forth a lot of terrific characters about which I hope I can read more, and these stories and Scott's ability to tell them are some of the best parts about this book.

I also found the descriptions of Indian captivity and adoption, the descriptions of the origination of the American peoples, and the description of the early wars to be helpful and clarifying. There are a few old books on Conrad Weiser out there that also have some good information on his life, but Scott's coverage of his negotiations and work with the six nations here is straightforward and clear.

[Jo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lenape, Pequot, Yamasee, Narragansett - these are not the names that usually come to mind when we think of Native American nations that resisted white encroachment. But that's because we're used to thinking of the frontier as western, and the nations I mentioned are eastern peoples. Weidensaul's engagingly written book recounts the history of Native American-European contact in the east - America's first frontier - until just after the end of the French and Indian War. I knew some of this history, particularly concerning the Pequot and the Narragansett, but there was much in this book that was new to me. Weidensaul skilfully discusses Native American alliances and diplomacy during a time when European nations competed ferociously for domination of North America. The pressures on Native Americans are explained clearly and sympathetically. The First Frontier is packed with information and it broadened my understanding of this period of American history and its consequences.

[Jean-Paul Adriaansen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I should have given this book a 5-star rating for the thorough investigating by the author. This monumental work is overflowing with tons of historical details, names, and dates.
The clash between civilizations was probably nowhere that intense as in the Americas. 2 cultures, completely strange to each other, have to manage to coexist together, without understanding the languages and the habits of the others. It is the epic struggle for survival of the Indian tribes, driven away west and northward from their well organized territories by greedy European invaders. It is also the struggle for building a new life in a country that looks like the promised land.
However, as I want to read very fast, always looking forward to the next book on my shelf, this book demanded too much of my attention. It is a slow but very interesting read.

[Dale Grauman · Rating 3 out of 5]

You could probably talk me back up to four stars. But the author tries to treat many disconnected stories as if they were all part of one unified narrative, and I had trouble identifying and keeping track of that unified narrative.

The "forgotten history" subtitle is basically printed clickbait. While it's true that most non-historians have either forgotten or never learned this stuff, everything in this book is well documented in other perfectly accessible histories. Weidensaul synthesizes a bunch of stories around a common theme, but as far as I can tell he hasn't discovered (or even rediscovered) any new stories or new insights. There's nothing wrong with writing a synthesis of established history, but it irks me that he (or his publisher?) thought it'd be cool to market it with an over-stated subtitle.

[Don Kent · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have greatly enjoyed this author's previous books but this was a really tough read. His summary of what is known about the migration of peoples to America was excelllent, but the intricracies of his rhetoric regarding the indian wars was a bore.

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have read better books on the subject. Look at any written by Fred Anderson.

[Ishmael Seaward · Rating 5 out of 5]

The time and location of The First Frontier is from about 1600 to 1760, beginning with the first European settlements in America and ending with the French and Indian War, and from the Atlantic Ocean to the Appalachian Mountains. It really focuses on the clash of cultures between the Native Americans and the Europeans. It is probably as even-handed as any book on this topic and reads like a novel, full of anecdotes and first person quotes, and some fascinating maps. But then I like history and have walked in many of the locations mentioned, so I suppose I’m prejudiced.

Part 1 is mostly is about New England, from the Maritime Provinces south to Connecticut, up to the end of King Phillips War. It begins with the populating of the Americas via the land bridge from Asia to North America that existed during the ice ages. As the author points out, “land bridge” is a bit of a misnomer; it was about a 1000 miles wide, plenty of room for tribes of hunters to follow the migrating herds. The author brings up the Clovis points and touches on the controversy about the dating and distribution of the Clovis culture. For more information, the reader might dig into the Younger Dryas event and evidence for a meteor collision about 10000 years ago. And then there is the Kennewick Man and what his DNA implies. The continent was by no means empty; there were about 1 million inhabitants between the Atlantic and the Appalachians, pre-contact. And agriculture was wide spread. The slash and burn techniques created open meadows well suited for agriculture. These park-like expanses were remarked on by early arrivals, attributing them to Providence. The reality is that is the European diseases largely depopulated vast areas, leaving them open for the new arrivals. European contact prior to 1500 was actually fairly routine. Basque and Portuguese fisherman regularly sailed to the rich cod fisheries, then landed and salted their catch for transport back home. They managed to keep it secret for years but were finally found out. Other stuff I learned: Indians had been scalping other Indians long before the Europeans arrived. Tribal warfare was a way of life; wiping out the enemy was not the objective. It was usually conducted to capture women and children who would then be adopted into the tribe. Men were captured for several reasons: ritual torture, slavery, or adoption; some were killed as retribution for the killing of a sachem of the raiding tribe. But wholesale slaughter of the opponents was frowned upon, until the Great Swamp Fight. Narragansetts were observing an uneasy peace with the colonists, but as was traditional with most tribes, they honored requests for shelter and safe haven. Settlers had been pushing the Indians out of their lands, and many of the tribes were decimated by disease and filled with resentment at the loss of their lands. Some had taken to conducting raids; the settlers struck back without discrimination. Indian survivors took shelter with the Narragansett, who had built a fort in what is now Rhode Island. Settlers demanded that the refugees be handed over; the Indians refused and took refuge in their fort. It was a stand-off for several days, but the colonists prevailed. The ensuing slaughter essentially wiped out the Narragansett (500 warriors, or about 2000 Indians) and introduced the European concept of killing all your enemies in warfare. The Indians applied those tactics in the follow-on to the Great Swamp Fight, called King Phillip’s War. An Indian known as King Phillip sparked a broad war engaged in by all the displaced and decimated Indian tribes, from Nova Scotia south to Connecticut against the colonists. There was not much quarter given and by the end, much of New England was a smoking ruin. The case of Mary Rowlandson is a very interesting description of how Indians treated their captives during this time period.

Part 2 shifts to the south, mainly South Carolina. Here there were ongoing conflicts with the Spaniards to the south and their Indian allies. There was also slavery. The plantation owners needed slaves to work their properties, so they paid their Indian neighbors to bring Indian slaves. Between disease and slavery, the local tribes were decimated. Finally the slavers woke up and realized they were next in line. So they packed up and migrated north, into the Ohio country. Hence the Tuscarora’s arrival in Pennsylvania, along with a collection of other tribal remnants. Meanwhile, the depopulation forced the plantation owners to look for slaves overseas. In addition to agriculture, there was a huge traffic in deerskins, known as buckskins. South Carolina was exporting as many as 60,000 buckskins a year through Charles Town alone. The popularity and penetration of the trade in buckskins was such that “buck” became frontier slang for American currency.

Part 3 focuses on Pennsylvania, where William Penn tried to deal fairly (comparatively speaking) with the Indians. Unfortunately, it didn’t rub off on his sons. Initially, the colonists were not supposed to go north of South Mountain, basically the eastern-most mountain of the Alleghenies. But the deceit of the Walking Purchase defrauded the Indians and forever changed the relationship. Logstown, in what is now western PA, was the western-most trading post of the Anglophones. This part opens with Weiser, Croghan, an Indian named Tanaghrisson, and Montour sitting around a fire in Logstown on the Ohio River. The histories of these men are woven through the story of early Pennsylvania. Logstown was a veritable Babel of languages, spoken by the exiles of tribes from the Carolinas to the Great Lakes, from Delaware to Maine. Here the Lenape tribe took refuge and appealed to the Five Nations for inclusion; hence the Five Nations grew to Six Nations. To appreciate how isolated Logstown was from the colonies, one only needs to stand on the top of Bald Eagle Mountain, to the immediate northwest of State College PA. Looking off to the northwest, the viewer is awed by the vista. About two thousand feet below begins the Appalachian Plateau, stretching all the way to the Great Lakes. The land is lumpy and bumpy, but flat nonetheless. If the viewer turns 180 degrees and looks to the south east, the vista is equally awe-inspiring. The long ridges of the Appalachians simply fade into the distance. But Logstown wasn’t isolated enough. The French in Canada took umbrage at any English settlements in the Mississippi & Ohio basins, so they pressed south from Lake Erie and captured Logstown. Then the colonists sent Braddock and Washington to retake the town, unsuccessfully. But this was the origin of what we call the French and Indian War, another singularly bloody encounter. It involved practically everyone, French, English, colonists of all stripes, Indians and metis. Almost all the participants had been born in North America. At the end, the French lost Canada and the Indians lost their country.
The maps are fascinating. They include maps of the tribes pre-contact, as well as the network of trails that threaded through PA. One author remarked that if an Indian got lost in the woods, it was most likely because he got confused about which trail to take.

[Astor Teller · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first frontier is played out while the US was still part of Britain – in the 1600s and 1700s – and is a refreshing take on the conflict/cooperation between the American natives and the European immigrants, long before the usual setting with cowboys and Indians (for the lack of a better term).

The author takes a trip to prehistoric times to put his book in context. We meet the Kennewick man, a skeleton that is over 8000 years old and also look at stone spears from the Clovis culture.

I knew that the vikings had visited American soil, but didn’t know that the Basques used the fishing grounds on the coast for commercial trade (Bacalao). I also knew that a lot of Native Americans succumbed to European diseases, but I didn’t know that they also were farmers and left the Europeans good agriculture land to till.

Or that the there was a big Native American slave trade, often done by the Native Americans themselves to get hold of European goods (and weapons).

What I also take from this book is the use of wampum beads as currency and that George Washington baptism of fire also caused the Seven Years War and that the Iroquois gladly sold the land of lesser neighbouring tribes (America wasn’t very peaceful before the Europeans arrived either).

The book which is easy to read and covers a lot of subjects as well follow a select cast through the centuries, but it’s easy to get lost in all the names. The book is also witty written which made me chuckle of some of the character portraits.

All in all, a very good book that covers a mostly forgotten or fragmented past.

[Casey · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good book, covering the first 150 years of interactions between the Native Americans and the colonists of North America. Though the book does provide some broader aspects of the political and cultural dynamics on the Atlantic seaboard, it concentrates on three specific regions and periods: New England in the 17th century, the Carolinas in the early 18th century, and the Western Pennsylvania frontier in the mid 18th century. The narrative concentrates on the chaos, devolution, shifting alliances, and uncertain futures which made up the history of the frontier. The author points out not a clash of civilizations but rather a confusing mess of small political entities (tribes not confederations, colonial interests not Colonists) with many divergent interests. Likewise, the center of effort was shown not always as a nebulous frontier line. Great native conflicts, centuries in the making, happened amongst tribes far outside the orbit of the white settlers, but with great impact on their endeavors. I especially appreciated how the author bridged the cultural divide, showing that all sides were seeking similar political arrangements, just that their methods were widely divergent. Great for those looking for more information on colonial America or as an example of a highly dynamic multi-polar political system.

[Scott Turner · Rating 3 out of 5]

For most students of American history, the colonial period is little more than a footnote. But nearly two centuries passed from the founding of Jamestown in 1607 to the American Revolution in 1776. Before the first European set foot in North America, an incredibly diverse tapestry of human societies populated the continent. Almost from the first moment of contact between the Europeans and Native Americans, there emerged complicated relationships and conflicts. The English, French, and Spanish competed with each other to expand trade and control territory. The Wampanoag, Wapanahki, Narragansett and many other indigenous tribes competed with each other to survive not only the onslaught of European settlement, but even more catastrophically, European diseases like smallpox and measles. Alliances were made and broken, and unspeakable atrocities were committed on all sides. But decade by bloody decade, a clear narrative emerged. The original inhabitants of America would be conquered and displaced through violence, deception, and unbounded greed. The Indian wars portrayed in hundreds of Hollywood westerns were only the final chapter of a genocidal saga that began when the first Europeans came ashore. The First Frontier fills an important gap in the historical narrative, but the level of detail will likely prove overly tedious for all but committed students of history.

[Amanda Flores · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book allows readers to see both sides of “colonization”…
where native Americans are usually seen as victims of land theft…this books allows us to learn that this was not in fact all true. That Europeans scammed and lied to the natives, has been proven…but all in all, it seems as both sides were mostly lead and motivated by greed and money. Native Americans easily sold out their neighboring tribes in order to fit their own agendas. The natives were just as cruel, if not more, to civilians and others who were captured and held for torturing purposes. One specific moment that tells this hard truth is the story of Hannah Duston, her new born, and Mary Neff, who were captured by the Cowasuck Abenaki tribe and while trekking, the natives thought the new born was slowing them down, so decided to kill the baby in one of the most gruesome ways.

This happened amongst Europeans who, too were able to capture kill, or enslave natives…but it just goes to show that both sides were at fault for the events that took place. Many would say that none of it would have happened if the Europeans didn’t steal and lie about land deals…but all in all, animal nature is in fact to conquer…just wished as humans we could have been more humane about doing so…but animals are usually anything but!

[David Elton · Rating 4 out of 5]

The First Frontier. Scott Weidensaul. About the settlement of the east coast of the US, from Indians to the start of the US Revolution. Pretty engaging. Mr. Stabo’s adventures – many escapes from various confinements. Conrad Weiser, hustler, speaker of Mohawk, used as interpreter, used as a negotiator many times for years. Pennsylvania Quaker in the legislature impeded Indian settlement and treaties. Wm. Penn was OK stand-up guy in dealing with everyone; not so, his sons, esp. with the Indians. The Walking Purchase in the Susquehanna (or Wyoming?) valley was a fraud not forgotten by the Indians. White guys laid out the course, with food, etc. along the way, practiced the course and took much more land than the Indians expected.

In New England, mixed problems with the Indians. Some helped, all exploited. Indian rebellion: King Philip’s war (he was an Indian). Coordinated attacks on whites.

In the southeast, tons of deer, hence deerskins, buckskins used for trading with the English and French and Spanish. Hence the term for a dollar: buck. Tons of slavery (all over). Indians found the English would pay a year’s worth of deerskins for one Indian slave. Well. This led to Indians enslaving each other big time. The heck with the deerskins. January 26, 2025.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's not hard to guess why this history was "forgotten"--that is, intentionally forgotten. Who knew that the forests and fields of New England were so heavily settled and populated by 17th century Native Americans that the earliest white newcomers at first had trouble even finding a place to live? Who knew that European illnesses decimated the Native American farms and villages and thereby handed the white new comers fields abandoned by the dead Native Americans, fields already cleared, plowed and prepared for the crops of the Europeans? Who knew that for decades the government and military forces and white population of the Carolinas engaged in the systematic robbery, murder, and enslavement of peaceful Native Americans --as a matter of official policy-- and that acquiring and selling slaves (of Native Americans, not Africans) was their chief industry? The seeds of genocide were planted during this earliest era of European America, and no surprise that they sprouted and grew their horrid crop during the following two centuries of European immigration into the North American continent.

[Cheryl · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is history writing at its finest. Much of the material has been covered in other books I have read, such as Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond, and 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann, so in some ways, not original material, but the storytelling was the thing. It looks more closely at the eastern seaboard, and the tribes that were living there even dipping into the latest theories of when and who and how humans came to spread across the globe.

“The story that is emerging, rich and nuanced in its testament to human achievement, may be no less wondrous than the idea of Keloskape’s arrows calling forth humans from the trunks of ash trees. But however people arrived, by whatever means and journeys, the eventual result was a staggering diversity of human cultures that came to occupy every corner of the New World. Was there one migration out of Asia, or many spanning tens of thousands of years? Were the newcomers mighty mammoth hunters, or master mariners who came millennia earlier?”

The author spends a little awesome, nerdy time on “before contact,” on the geography, flora and fauna of the Americas, and how when the glacial sheets melted for the last time, the billions of gallons of icy water dammed in lakes flowed out into the Atlantic in a short amount of time, cutting off the warm Gulf Stream and causing 150 years of cold in the Northern Hemisphere. Cool.
Looking at a map of the eastern seaboard with the tribal names crowded in together, it solidifies the new evidence that America wasn’t a pristine wilderness on European arrival; it had been altered and changed by the Natives for centuries upon centuries. The entire state of Massachusetts was inhabited by “southern New England and eastern Long Island Algonquians” but in New York it was divided into smaller tribal boundaries of Mahican, Mohawk, Oneida, Oyundaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and so on. It looks a little crowded, or at least more than we traditionally thought. There is another map of Indian trails in Pennsylvania, and while not jam-packed, it was almost as extensive as our current highway and road system.

Interspersed with the history, there are little gems that were like lightbulbs going off in my head, and make me really thankful for all the brilliant and thoughtful writers like Weidensaul who write these gems, that alter my whole thought process and make me marvel at the wonder of this world. For example, I think I knew that Native names of tribes were significant and ceremonial, but to really think in those terms is a little magical. “The people of the east” lived in the “land of the dawn,” with neighbors who are “the people who live where the river spreads out,” and it made me think in these terms for a while. I am the “woman with the chocolate lab” who lives in the “house with the gorgeous afternoon sunlight” who works at the “place that is a haven for refugees” near the “lake of blue light” that lies in the shadow of “the rocky and holy mountains.” Etcetera. It’s fun.

More “how didn’t I know this” moments included a little footnote on time, how the dates during this period are out of whack due to that pesky arbitrary Julian calendar that was to be fixed by the Gregorian calendar but England refused to accept until an act of Parliament in 1752 whereby the entire country skipped ahead 11 days from Sept 2nd to Sept 14th. SO THOSE DATES DON’T EXIST IN HISTORY IN ENGLAND. Come on, this is crazy stuff of sci fi novels, right? Let me say it again, the entire country skipped ahead and lost 11 days. I wonder if I did learn it in boring history classes and just couldn’t comprehend its magnitude. Now, blows my mind.

Other little gems: that unfortunately if the Vikings were the first exposure to the Indians, they were Vikings that had been banned from their counties from being too violent and murderous, so I can’t imagine their latent diplomacy gene showed itself. Genetic researchers found a hallmark gene marker from Asians and American Indians in a small Icelandic population, showing that they brought at least one Native American back with them. In a corollary, the author talks about many Indians brought back to Europe as slaves and novelties, especially to France, and I wonder if there were many children born of intermixing. Some went willingly, as emissaries, and I want to know what their first impressions were, what adventure gene made them volunteer, and whether it was ever a wondrous or elevating experience, say, seeing Europe’s grand cathedrals or cities. Shakespeare has an Indian character in Henry VIII and it was probably based on Epenow, an Algonquian from Nantucket. Bizarrely, Shakespeare’s actual words were of an Indian with a “great tool” and my mind can’t quite wrap around how all y’all English people knew this. Epenow ended up back home after conning his captors with promises of a gold mine and diving off the boat when they reached shore. Smart. Rape does not appear to be a common practice from the Indian tribes when they practiced war against the colonist and people on the frontier, but unfortunately it was from the Europeans. I want to know more about this: how does a human culture evolve with rape as a tool and bringer of war, when it is possible to not evolve such practices? Not to perpetuate the Noble Savage myth, but to shed light on human nature.

And last, and somewhat extraneously, needlessly, but worth it: a laugh out loud description of how, umm, over time, syphilis has become less virulent. It may have been the only germ the Native Americans sent over the pond to Europe, while our lovely germs absolutely decimated them. Not for the squeamish: “In its first incarnation, syphilis was utterly terrifying, marked by intense pain and acorn sized pustules oozing smelly green matter…like many disease, it became less potent over time, since venereal diseases spread more readily when their carriers do not look like something from a horror movie…” Dude has a way with words.

[Mike Negley · Rating 4 out of 5]

A history well researched with an extensive list of resources of the 250+ years prior to the American Revolution as respects early explorers, colonization by England, France and Spain. The trading of goods from Europe for animal pelts with native tribes, the slave trade of natives captured in raids between native tribes and sold to English & Spanish colonials and the wars fought between all these groups. The author covered the issue of how treaties were made between Colonials and native tribes for land as the European colonies expanded including the different concepts of ownership of land & use between Europeans and native tribes and the disagreements which often resulted in fighting between these groups. The manuscript could have been better organized using a progressive timeline and more maps, but it was well worth reading.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not the history you learned in school.

Weidensaul provides a fascinating, sometimes horrifying account of the tragic encounters between Native Americans and land-hungry Europeans, from the earliest known encounters up to the bitter, brutal frontier wars of the final struggle between France and Britain for control of North America. Weidensaul provides an overview of current scholarship on pre-contact societies, the impact of the Spanish explorers, the ravages of European diseases, and the ways in which Native American societes struggled to adapt. He brings into sharp relief relatively unknown but critical developments like the Carolina slave trade, and illustrates the precarious nature of life on the violent colonial frontier with the stories of a number of truly remarkable characters. Highly recommended for anyone interested in the colonial period.

[Delway Burton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent. A dense read. Would be 5 star but leaves out a few points (The Cherokee War in the SE). It makes the current wave of historical revisionism as even more ridiculous than it is. The complexity of American history from 1492-1775, makes the settlement of the American West look like historical kindergarten. Our popular historical mythology overlooks the fact that the West other than the Pacific coast was depopulated prior to the arrival of the horse. The complexity of the East, hundreds of tribes and languages, complex highly evolved culture, the competition between France, England, and France, the biological wonderland, millions of Native American deaths, tens of thousands of European deaths, stagger the imagination. A major dose of historical reality.

[James G. Fedorka · Rating 5 out of 5]

A nice read; structured with a reasonable pace and loaded with well researched history. The exploration of a largely glossed over period in our nations past comes to life without tedium. Enjoyed reading all the footnotes and the bibliography as well. Weidensaul makes a sweeping appraisal of a large, active and at times violent and cruel time period with relative ease. Being a sociology / human interaction enthusiast, I enjoyed the patient, evenhanded treatise on the clash of European and native cultures with the unfortunate but inevitable outcome. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1.... Scott Weidensaul