2006, ISBN: 9780679454717

New York: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2006-02-21. New/New. In 1761, at a boarding school in New England, a young Mohawk Indian named Joseph Brant first met Samuel Kirkland, the so… Mehr…

New York: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2006-02-21. New/New. In 1761, at a boarding school in New England, a young Mohawk Indian named Joseph Brant first met Samuel Kirkland, the son of a colonial clergyman They began a long and intense relationship that would redefine North America For nearly fifty years, their lives intertwined, at first as close friends but later as bitter foes Kirkland serve American expansion as a missionary and agent, promoting Indian conversion and dispossession Brant pursued an alternative future for the continent by defending an Indian borderland nestled between the British in Canada and the Americans, rather than divided by themBy telling their dramatic story, Alan Taylor illuminates the dual borders that consolidated the new American nation after the Revolution By constricting Indians within reservation lines, the Americans sought to control their northern boundary with the British Empire, which lingered in Canada The border became firm as thousands of settlers established farms, held as private property, all around the new reservations This struggle also pitted the federal government against the leaders of New York, competing to control the lands and the Indians of the border country They contended for the highest of stakes because the transformation of Indian land constructed the wealth and the power of states, nations, and empires in North AmericaIn addition to land, the frontier contest pivoted on murders, which repeatedly tested who had legal jurisdiction: Indians or newcomers To assert power, the contending regimes sought to try and execute Indians or settlers who killed one another To defend native autonomy, however, the Indians asserted an alternative by "covering the graves" of victims with presents to console their kin When the gallows replaced covered graves, the Indians lost their middle position as free peoples, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2006-02-21, 6<