At the Crossroads Indians and Empires on a Mid-Atlantic Frontier, 1700-1763 / Jane T. Merritt.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Merritt, Jane T.

Contributor:

Omohundro Institute of Early American History & Culture, Content Provider.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Indians of North America--History--Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775.

Indians of North America.

Frontier and pioneer life--Pennsylvania.

Frontier and pioneer life.

White people--Pennsylvania--Relations with Indians.

White people.

Indians of North America--Pennsylvania--History--17th century.

Indians of North America--Pennsylvania--History--18th century.

Pennsylvania--Race relations--History--17th century.

Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania--Race relations--History--18th century.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (350 pages) : illustrations

Manufacture:

Baltimore, Md. : Project MUSE, 2019

Place of Publication:

Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, 2003.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Examining interactions between native Americans and whites in eighteenth-century Pennsylvania, Jane Merritt traces the emergence of race as the defining difference between these neighbors on the frontier. Before 1755, Indian and white communities in Pennsylvania shared a certain amount of interdependence. They traded skills and resources and found a common enemy in the colonial authorities, including the powerful Six Nations, who attempted to control them and the land they inhabited. Using innovative research in German Moravian records, among other sources, Merritt explores the cultural practices, social needs, gender dynamics, economic exigencies, and political forces that brought native Americans and Euramericans together in the first half of the eighteenth century. But as Merritt demonstrates, the tolerance and even cooperation that once marked relations between Indians and whites collapsed during the Seven Years' War. By the 1760s, as the white population increased, a stronger, nationalist identity emerged among both white and Indian populations, each calling for new territorial and political boundaries to separate their communities. Differences between Indians and whites--whether political, economic, social, religious, or ethnic--became increasingly characterized in racial terms, and the resulting animosity left an enduring legacy in Pennsylvania's colonial history.

Notes:

"Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia."

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

979-88-908765-0-8

979-88-908765-1-5

0-8078-9989-5

1-4696-0373-X

OCLC:

1080550708