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The First Frontier: The Forgotten History Of Struggle, Savagery, And Endurance In Early America (2012)

by Scott Weidensaul(Favorite Author)

3.93 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

0151015155 (ISBN13: 9780151015153)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

review 1: Very readable history -- both the big picture and individual lives (some of whom deserve books or movies of their own) -- of the eastern pre- colonial seaboard in the 16th-18th centuries. These times were barely covered in school, fascinating though they were. I had no idea that, in the 1500's, there were many ships from Europe putting in to eastern shores. There were small settlements all along the eastern seaboard, with accompanying Indian skirmishes and disagreements. Somehow (!), the perfidy of the English wasn't covered in class, altho it was constant through the centuries. Really interesting reading, although, towards the end, the dizzying combination of Indians fighting Indians, Indians fighting whites, whites disagreeing with whites, kidnappings, wars, abducti... moreons, retreats, etc., got to me. It's a wonder that anyone slept well in those years.
review 2: 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. less

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