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

The History of the Province of New-York

William Smith, Jr.

Harvard University Press, 1972

William Smith, Jr., (1728-1793), politician, jurist, historian, and Loyalist produced an admirable history of colonial New York that remains to this day one of the best records of early America written by a colonist. He published the first volume, covering the period 1610-1732, in 1757, and wrote the second (1732-1762) while a neutralist bystander during the Revolutionary War. Thus his History serves as an elegant testimony to the Americans' growing self-consciousness and search for identity on the eve of the Revolution.

As editor of the first accurate and complete version of this important work, Mr. Kammen has prepared a fresh first volume based upon the original edition, plus Smith's rich marginalia in his personal copy, and a second volume based upon the original manuscript. Included in this generously illustrated work is an extensive three-part introductory essay by the editor and four appendixes.

[more]

Hobomok and Other Writings on Indians

Karcher, Carolyn L

Rutgers University Press, 1986

Hobomok, A Tale of Early Times is the provocative story of an upperclass white woman who marries an Indian chief, has a child, then leaves him--with the child--for another man. This novel, originally published in 1824, is a powerful first among antipatriarchal and antiracist novels in American literature. In addition, this collection contains seven remarkable short stories; an extract on Indian women from Child's groundbreaking History of the Condition of Women in Various Ages and Nations (1835); a selection from her best-selling volume of journalistic sketches, Letters from New-York (1843); and her eloquent Appeal for Indians (1868). This revised edition of "Hobomok" and Other Writings on Indians includes three new stories: "The Church in the Wilderness," "Willie Wharton," and "The Indians"--as well as explanatory notes and an updated bibliography.

[more]

Hope Leslie

Or, Early Times in the Massachusetts

Sedgwick, Catherine M

Rutgers University Press, 1987

Hope Leslie (1827), set in the seventeenth-century New England, is a novel that forced readers to confront the consequences of the Puritans’ subjugation and displacement of the indigenous Indian population at a time when contemporaries were demanding still more land from the Cherokees, the Chickasaws, and the Choctaws.

"This handsome reprint ... makes available after many decades the New Englander's tale of seventeeth-century Puritans, and their relations with the indigenous Indian population." -- Nineteeth-Century Literature

" A splendidly conceived edition of Sedwick's historical romance. Highly recommended." --Choice

"Develop(s) the connections between patriarchal authority within the Puritan state and its policy of dispossessing and exterminating Indians. The different heritage it envisions explicitly link white women and Indians and elaborates a communal concept of liberty at odds with the individualistic concept which predominated in American culture." -- Legacy

[more]