BiblioVault - Books about Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775

Captive Histories

English, French, and Native Narratives of the 1704 Deerfield Raid

Evan Haefeli

University of Massachusetts Press, 2006

This volume draws together an unusually rich body of original sources that tell the story of the 1704 French and Indian attack on Deerfield, Massachusetts, from different vantage points. Texts range from one of the most famous early American captivity narratives, John Williams's The Redeemed Captive, to the records of French soldiers and clerics, to little-known Abenaki and Mohawk stories of the raid that emerged out of their communities' oral traditions. Evan Haefeli and Kevin Sweeney provide a general introduction, extensive annotations, and headnotes to each text.

Although the oft-reprinted Redeemed Captive stands at the core of this collection, it is juxtaposed to less familiar accounts of captivity composed by other Deerfield residents: Quentin Stockwell, Daniel Belding, Joseph Petty, Joseph Kellogg, and the teenaged Stephen Williams. Presented in their original form, before clerical editors revised and embellished their content to highlight religious themes, these stories challenge long-standing assumptions about classic Puritan captivity narratives.

The inclusion of three Abenaki and Mohawk narratives of the Deerfield raid is equally noteworthy, offering a rare opportunity not only to compare captors' and captives' accounts of the same experiences, but to do so with reference to different Native oral traditions. Similarly, the memoirs of French military officers and an excerpt from the Jesuit Relations illuminate the motivations behind the attack and offer fresh insights into the complexities of French-Indian alliances.

Taken together, the stories collected in this volume, framed by the editors' introduction and the assessments of two Native scholars, Taiaiake Alfred and Marge Bruchac, allow readers to reconstruct the history of the Deerfield raid from multiple points of view and, in so doing, to explore the interplay of culture and memory that shapes our understanding of the past.

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Captivity and Sentiment

Cultural Exchange in American Literature, 1682–1861

Michelle Burnham

Dartmouth College Press, 2000

In a radically new interpretation and synthesis of highly popular 18th- and 19th-century genres, Michelle Burnham examines the literature of captivity, and, using Homi Bhabha's concept of interstitiality as a base, provides a valuable redescription of the ambivalent origins of the US national narrative. Stories of colonial captives, sentimental heroines, or fugitive slaves embody a "binary division between captive and captor that is based on cultural, national, or racial difference," but they also transcend these pre-existing antagonistic dichotomies by creating a new social space, and herein lies their emotional power. Beginning from a simple question on why captivity, particularly that of women, so often inspires a sentimental response, Burnham examines how these narratives elicit both sympathy and pleasure. The texts carry such great emotional impact precisely because they "traverse those very cultural, national, and racial boundaries that they seem so indelibly to inscribe. Captivity literature, like its heroines, constantly negotiates zones of contact," and crossing those borders reveals new cultural paradigms to the captive and, ultimately, the reader.

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The Carter Journals

Time Travels in Early U.S. History

Shane Phipps

Indiana Historical Society Press, 2014

When fourteen-year-old Cody Carter’s grandfather gives him a box of dusty leather journals written by their Carter ancestors, even the history-loving Cody could not have predicted the adventure he was about to take. Journal by journal, Cody is physically transported back in time to experience the lives of Carters on the frontier in North Carolina, Tennessee, and Indiana as the family moved ever westward in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He hunts with Daniel Boone, huddles in a frontier fort under siege, makes friends with Native Americans in the Indiana Territory, operates a lock on the Whitewater Canal, hides slaves on the Underground Railroad, and experiences defeat at the Battle of Corydon. Ultimately, Cody confronts the difficult questions of war, westward expansion, and slavery while living the history of everyday people. Written by an eighth-grade history teacher determined to bring the past to life for his students, The Carter Journals reminds us that history is all around us---and that we daily make history of our own.

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The Cashaway Psalmody

Transatlantic Religion and Music in Colonial Carolina

Stephen A. Marini

University of Illinois Press, 2019

Singing master Durham Hills created The Cashaway Psalmody to give as a wedding present in 1770. A collection of tenor melody parts for 152 tunes and sixty-three texts, the Psalmody is the only surviving tunebook from the colonial-era South and one of the oldest sacred music manuscripts from the Carolinas. It is all the more remarkable for its sophistication: no similar document of the period matches Hills's level of musical expertise, reportorial reach, and calligraphic skill.

Stephen A. Marini, discoverer of The Cashaway Psalmody, offers the fascinating story of the tunebook and its many meanings. From its musical, literary, and religious origins in England, he moves on to the life of Durham Hills; how Carolina communities used the book; and the Psalmody's significance in understanding how ritual song—transmitted via transatlantic music, lyrics, and sacred singing—shaped the era's development. Marini also uses close musical and textual analyses to provide a critical study that offers music historians and musicologists valuable insights on the Pslamody and its period.

Meticulous in presentation and interdisciplinary in scope, The Cashaway Psalmody unlocks an important source for understanding life in the Lower South in the eighteenth century.

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The Cassique of Kiawah

A Colonial Romance

William Gilmore Simms

University of Arkansas Press, 2003

First drafted as a novel called Oyster Point when the author was only eighteen, The Cassique of Kiawah was finally published thirty-five years later, in 1859, at the height of William Gilmore Simms’s career. It is a history through fiction of early Charleston, South Carolina, and completed Simms’s series of Revolutionary War novels. Through satire and realism he portrays the charm and the corruption of late seventeenth-century Charleston society, and he contrasts the quiet majesty of the wilderness with the violence of man. The book was widely reviewed and highly praised, and it confirmed Simms’s position as the nation’s best-known novelist.

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CENTENARY ED WORKS NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

VOL. VI, TRUE STORIES FROM HISTORY AND B

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

The Ohio State University Press, 1972

"Because it represents the first scholarly effort to establish texts as close as possible to the intentions of the author, this Centenary Edition makes obsolete all previous editions, notorious for their textual corruption. An eminent staff . . . has analyzed and synthesized the evidence of all MSS and worthwhile printed editions. Each volume includes a well documented introduction concerning such matters as circumstances leading to composition and history of publication as well as textual notes on alterations in the MSS, editorial emendations, etc." --Choice "The Centenary Edition, which has been producing weighty volumes of definitively edited texts of Hawthorne for a full generation, is now the sine qua non of Hawthorne scholarship. As an example of editorial care and research thoroughness it has been a model for the profession and as a physical object a model for publishers. In addition to the immensely important achievement of producing fully accurate texts of the romances, tales, and sketches, the Centenary editors have made available, for the very first time, all of the various Notebooks and letters. For the letters, especially, the wait has been long but the result is gratifying. Reading straight through the Centenary's six volumes of letters is a self-indulgent pleasure that brings us markedly closer to the man than we can get in any other way." --American Literature Representing decades of work, this is the definitive edition of Hawthorne's works. Each volume includes comprehensive notes and explanatory material. I: The Scarlet Letter $62.95 cloth 0-8142-0059-1 II: The House of the Seven Gables $69.95 cloth 0-8142-0060-5 III: The Blithedale Romance and Fanshawe $72.95 cloth 0-8142-0061-3 IV: The Marble Faun $83.95 cloth 0-8142-0062-1 V: Our Old Home $72.95 cloth 0-8142-0002-8 VI: True Stories from History and Biography $72.95 cloth 0-8142-0157-1 VII: A Wonder Book and Tanglewood Tales $72.95 cloth 0-8142-0158-X VIII: The American Notebooks $98.95 cloth 0-8142-0159-8 IX: Twice-told Tales $83.95 cloth 0-8142-0202-0 X: Mosses from an Old Manse $83.95 cloth 0-8142-0203-9 XI: The Snow Image and Uncollected Tales $72.95 cloth 0-8142-0204-7 XII: The American Claimant Manuscripts $83.95 cloth 0-8142-0251-9 XIII: The Elixir of Life Manuscripts $98.95 cloth 0-8142-0252-7 XIV: The French and Italian Notebooks $98.95 cloth 0-8142-0256-X XV: The Letters, 1813-1843 $98.95 cloth 0-8142-0363-9 XVI: The Letters, 1843-1853 $98.95 cloth 0-8142-0364-7 XVII: The Letters, 1853-1856 $83.95 cloth 0-8142-0365-5 XVIII: The Letters, 1857-1864 $98.95 cloth 0-8142-0383-3 XIX: The Consular Letters, 1853-1855 $83.95 cloth 0-8142-0384-1 XX: The Consular Letters, 1856-1857 $83.95 cloth 0-8142-0462-7 XXI: The English Notebooks, 1853-1856 $98.95 cloth 0-8142-0670-0 XXII: The English Notebooks, 1856-1860 $98.95 cloth 0-8142-0671-9 XXIII: Miscellaneous Prose and Verse $98.95 cloth 0-8142-0644-1

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A Cold Welcome

The Little Ice Age and Europe’s Encounter with North America

Sam White

Harvard University Press, 2020

Cundill History Prize Finalist
Longman–History Today Prize Finalist
Winner of the Roland H. Bainton Book Prize

“Meticulous environmental-historical detective work.”
—Times Literary Supplement

When Europeans first arrived in North America, they faced a cold new world. The average global temperature had dropped to lows unseen in millennia. The effects of this climactic upheaval were stark and unpredictable: blizzards and deep freezes, droughts and famines, winters in which everything froze, even the Rio Grande. A Cold Welcome tells the story of this crucial period, taking us from Europe’s earliest expeditions in unfamiliar landscapes to the perilous first winters in Quebec and Jamestown. As we confront our own uncertain future, it offers a powerful reminder of the unexpected risks of an unpredictable climate.

“A remarkable journey through the complex impacts of the Little Ice Age on Colonial North America…This beautifully written, important book leaves us in no doubt that we ignore the chronicle of past climate change at our peril. I found it hard to put down.”
—Brian Fagan, author of The Little Ice Age

“Deeply researched and exciting…His fresh account of the climatic forces shaping the colonization of North America differs significantly from long-standing interpretations of those early calamities.”
—New York Review of Books

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Colonial New Hampshire

A History

Jere R. Daniell

University Press of New England, 2015

In his full-scale history of New Hampshire from the Algonkin people to the coming of the American Revolution, the historian Jere R. Daniell discusses the Indian population, the development of community life, the founding of New Hampshire as a royal colony, the political adjustments that existence as a separate colony necessitated, the nature of New Hampshire’s social institutions, and many other subjects. His epilogue links colonial New Hampshire to subsequent developments in the state. This volume will interest historians of colonial New England and New Hampshire.

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Colonial Wars, 1689-1762

Howard H. Peckham

University of Chicago Press, 1965

Although the colonial wars consisted of almost continuous raids and skirmishes between the English and French colonists and their Indian allies and enemies, they can be separated into four major conflicts, corresponding to four European wars of which they were, in varying degrees, a part: King William's War (1689-97) (War of the League of Augsburg); Queen Anne's War (1702-13) (War of the Spanish Succession); King George's War (1744-48) (War of the Austrian Succession); and The French and Indian War (1755-62) (Seven Years' War).

Mr. Peckham chronicles the events of these wars, summarizing the struggle for empire in America among France, England, and Spain. He indicates how the colonists applied the experience they gained from fighting Indians to their engagements with European powers. And what they learned from the colonial wars they translated into a political philosophy that led to independence and self-government.

The ready involvement of the colonies in European ambitions, the success and failure of co-operation between colony and mother country, the efforts of the English colonies together, and the growing differences between them and Britain give the narrative continuity and rising excitement.

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Community without Consent

New Perspectives on the Stamp Act

Edited by Zachary McLeod Hutchins

Dartmouth College Press, 2016

The first book-length study of the Stamp Act in decades, this timely collection draws together essays from a broad range of disciplines to provide a thoroughly original investigation of the influence of 1760s British tax legislation on colonial culture, and vice versa. While earlier scholarship has largely focused on the political origins and legacy of the Stamp Act, this volume illuminates the social and cultural impact of a legislative crisis that would end in revolution. Importantly, these essays question the traditional nationalist narrative of Stamp Act scholarship, offering a variety of counter identities and perspectives. Community without Consent recovers the stories of individuals often ignored or overlooked in existing scholarship, including women, Native Americans, and enslaved African Americans, by drawing on sources unavailable to or unexamined by earlier researchers. This urgent and original collection will appeal to the broadest of interdisciplinary audiences.

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Conquering the American Wilderness

The Triumph of European Warfare in the Colonial Northeast

Guy Chet

University of Massachusetts Press, 2003

A study of military tactics and strategy before the War of Independence, this book reexamines the conquest of the North American wilderness and its native peoples by colonial settlers. Historians have long believed that the peculiar conditions of the New World, coupled with the success of Indians tactics, forced the colonists to abandon traditional European methods of warfare and to develop a new "American" style of combat. By combining firearms with guerrilla-like native tactics, colonial commanders were able not only to subdue their Indian adversaries but eventually to prevail against more conventionally trained British forces during the American Revolution. Yet upon closer scrutiny, this common understanding of early American warfare turns out to be more myth than reality. As Guy Chet reveals, clashes between colonial and Indian forces during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries did not lead to a reevaluation and transformation of conventional military doctrine. On the contrary, the poor performance of the settlers during King Philip's War (1675–76) and King William's War (1689–1697) prompted colonial magistrates to address the shortcomings of their military forces through a greater reliance on British troops and imperial administrators. Thus, as the eighteenth century wore on, growing military success in the New England colonies reflected an increasing degree of British planning, administration, participation, and command. The colonies' military and political leadership, Chet argues, never rejected the time-tested principles of European warfare, and even during the American War of Independence, the republic's military leadership looked to Europe for guidance in the art of combat.

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Cross-Border Commemorations

Celebrating Swedish Settlement in America

Adam Hjorthén

University of Massachusetts Press, 2018

The histories of colonial settlement in America are generally presented as uniquely national stories. Yet because these histories involved settlers who crossed oceans, they are inherently transnational and have been important for different groups throughout the world. To understand how settlement histories are used to promote social, political, and commercial relations across national borders, Adam Hjorthén explores the little-known phenomenon of cross-border commemorations.

Focusing on two celebrations of Swedish settlement in America—the 1938 New Sweden Tercentenary and the 1948 Swedish Pioneer Centennial—Hjorthén examines a wide variety of sources to demonstrate how cultural leaders, politicians, and businessmen used these events to promote international relations between the United States and Sweden during times of great geopolitical transformation. Cross-Border Commemorations argues that scholarship on public commemoration should expand beyond national borders and engage the shared and contested meanings of history across local, national, and transnational contexts.

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Crossroads

Descriptions of Western Pennsylvania 1720–1829

John W. Harpster

University of Pittsburgh Press, 1938

Crossroads is a collection of thirty-seven colorful and perceptive writings left by early travelers and settlers who ventured west of the Allegheny Mountains. Traders, surveyors, soldiers, preachers, and immigrants, some of them well known and some obscure, tell of the loneliness, terror, and beauty of the frontier.

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Culture and Language at Crossed Purposes

The Unsettled Records of American Settlement

Jerome McGann

University of Chicago Press, 2022

Culture and Language at Crossed Purposes unpacks the interpretive problems of colonial treaty-making and uses them to illuminate canonical works from the period.

Classic American literature, Jerome McGann argues, is haunted by the betrayal of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Indian treaties—“a stunned memory preserved in the negative spaces of the treaty records.” A noted scholar of the “textual conditions” of literature, McGann investigates canonical works from the colonial period, including the Arbella sermon and key writings of William Bradford, John Winthrop, Anne Bradstreet, Cotton Mather’s Magnalia, Benjamin Franklin’s celebrated treaty folios and Autobiography, and Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia. These are highly practical, purpose-driven works—the record of Enlightenment dreams put to the severe test of dangerous conditions. McGann suggests that the treaty-makers never doubted the unsettled character of what they were prosecuting, and a similar conflicted ethos pervades these works. Like the treaty records, they deliberately test themselves against stringent measures of truth and accomplishment and show a distinctive consciousness of their limits and failures. McGann’s book is ultimately a reminder of the public importance of truth and memory—the vocational commitments of humanist scholars and educators.

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