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WWW-VL: HISTORY: Boone &
Crockett's America
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Contents:
1.
Bibliography
a.
Classic Works
b.
Recent Research
2.
On-Line Bibliographies and Archives
2a. Government Archives
2b. University Libraries
2c. Historical Societies
2d. Other Archives
2e. Genealogical Research
3.
Public
History Institutions
4.
Maps
5.
Primary
Sources
6a.
The
Frontier in American Literature
6b.
Scholarly
Journals
7.
Grand
Theory and Frontier History
8.
Encyclopedia
Land
Speculation
Battles
Legislation
Places
Indian
Nations & Other Ethnic Groups
Treaties
Roads
and Trails
Issues
and Events
People
| 1.
Bibliography a. Classic Works -- Major Monographs and Articles Published before 1980. Thomas
Perkins Abernethy, From Frontier to Plantation in Tennessee: A
Study
in Frontier Democracy, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North
Carolina
Press, 1932. The
"Histories of the American Frontier" Series: Published originally
by
the University of New Mexico Press, these surveys remain excellent
sources.
Of particular interest to the early frontier period are:
Some
Older Works Online (mostly drawn from New
River Notes): |
| 1.
Bibliography b. Recent Works: Important literature on early frontier history in the last twenty years. <> Stephen Aron, How the West Was Lost: The Transformation of Kentucky from Daniel Boone to Henry Clay, Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996. Colin Calloway, The American Revolution in Indian Country : Crisis and Diversity in Native American Communities, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Joan Cashin, A Family Venture: Men and Women on the Southern Frontier, Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994. Wilma Dunaway, The First American Frontier: Transition to Capitalism in Southern Appalachia, 1700-1860, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1996. David Hackett Fischer and James Kelly, Bound Away: Virginia and the Westward Movement, Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 2000. David Hackett Fischer, Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America, New York: Oxford University Press, 1989, 605-782. Jack Greene, "Independence, Improvement, and Authority: Toward a Framework for Understanding the Histories of the Southern Backcountry during the Era of the American Revolution," in Ronald Hoffman and Thad Tate, eds. An Uncivil War: The Southern Backcountry during the American Revolution. Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1985, 3-36. John Mack Faragher, Daniel Boone: The Life and Legend of an American Pioneer, New York: Holt, 1992. John Mack Faragher, Sugar Creek: Life on the Illinois Prairie, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986. Allan Gallay, The Indian Slave Trade: The Rise of the English Empire in the American South, 1670-1717, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003. John Grenier, The First Way of War : American War Making on the Frontier, 1607-1814, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Eric Hinderaker, Elusive Empires: Constructing Colonialism in the Ohio Valley, 1673-1800, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Eric Hinderaker and Peter C. Mancall, At the Edge of Empire: The Backcountry in British North America, Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. Marjoleine Kars, Breaking Loose Together: The Regulator Rebellion in Pre-Revolutionary North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2002. Warren R. Hofstra, The Planting of New Virginia: Settlement and Landscape in the Shenandoah Valley, Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins Unviersity Press, 2004. James C. Merrell, Into the American Woods: Negotiators on the Pennsylvania Frontier, New York: Norton, 1999. Jane Merritt, At the Crossroads: Indians and Empires on a Mid-Atlantic Frontier, 1700-1763, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2003. Gregory Nobles, American Frontiers: Cultural Encounters and Continental Conquest, New York: Hill & Wang, 1997. Gregory Nobles, "Breaking in the Backcountry: New Approaches to the Early American Frontier, 1750-1800," William and Mary Quarterly 46: 4 (1989): 641-670. William Pencack and Daniel Richter, eds, Friends and Enemies in Penn's Woods: Indians, Colonists, and the Racial Construction of Pennsylvania, State College, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004. Elizabeth Perkins, Border Life: Experience and Memory in the Revolutionary Ohio Valley, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1998. Daniel Richter, The Ordeal of the Longhouse: The Peoples of the Iroquois League in the Era of European Colonization, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1993. Daniel Richter, et al., Beyond the Covenant Chain: The Iroquois and Their Neighbors in Indian North America, 1600-1800, State College, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003. Claudio Saunt, A New Order of Things : Property, Power, and the Transformation of the Creek Indians, 1733-1816, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Alan Taylor, Liberty Men and Great Proprietors: The Revolutionary Settlement on the Maine Frontier, 1760-1820, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1990. Alan Taylor, William Cooper's Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic, New York: Random House, 1995. Frederika Teute and Andrew Cayton, Contact Points: American Frontiers from the Mohawk Valley to the Mississippi, 1750-1830, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1998. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812, New York: Knopf, 1990. Daniel Usner, Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in a Frontier Exchange Economy: The Lower Mississippi Valley Before 1783, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1992. Matthew Ward, Breaking The Backcountry : Seven Years War In Virginia And Pennsylvania 1754-1765, Pittsburgh, PA; Pittsburgh University Press, 2004. Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991. The
"History of the Trans-Appalachian West" Series: Edited by Malcolm
Rohrbough
and Walter Nugent and published by the Indiana University Press, this
is
an excellent series of state-by-state studies. |
| 2.
On-Line Bibliographies and Archives
2a.
Government Archives: Archives of Appalachia (East Tennessee State U.-Johnson City, TN) On-Line Guide to Manuscripts (Barker) Center for American History (U. of Texas-Austin) Perkins Library (Duke U.) Hargrett Library (U. of Georgia) Historical Collections of the Great Lakes (Bowling Green State U.) King Library (U. of Kentucky) Kentucky Library and Museum (Western Kentucky U.) Wilson Library Manuscripts Department (U. of North Carolina) South Caroliniana (U. of South Carolina) University of Tennessee Library Finding Aids Alderman Library (U. of Virginia) Downtown Campus Library (U. of West Virginia) Appalachian Collection West Virginia Collection<> 2c. Historical Societies: American Philosophical Society (Philadelphia) Filson Historical Society (Lousiville) On-Line Guide to Manuscripts Georgia Historical Society Illinois State Historical Society Indiana Historical Bureau Kentucky Historical Society On-Line Guide to Manuscripts Historical Society of Michigan Mississippi Historical Society Ohio Historical Society Ohio Fundamental Documents Ohio History Central (An On-Line Encyclopedia) South Carolina Historical Society Tennessee Historical Society East Tennessee Historical Society West Tennessee Historical Society Texas State Historical Association Handbook of Texas Online Virginia Historical Society Watauga Historical Association Western Reserve Historical Society (Cleveland, OH) On-Line Guide to Manuscripts State Historical Society of Wisconsin On-Line Guide to Manuscripts Draper Manuscripts: The SHSW holds the original Draper Manuscripts, a monumental collection of correspondence, research notes, and primary sources collected by frontier historian Lyman Draper during the 19th-century. It is one of THE vital collections for anyone doing original research on the early American frontier. You can search the Draper Manuscripts online here, but also check university and major public libraries in your area for the microfilm edition of the collection. 2d.
Other Archives and Bibliographies: 2e.
Genealogical Research |
| 3.
Public History Institutions Museums: American Association of Museums Amherst Museum (NY) The Association for Living History, Farm and Agricultural Museums Blue Ridge Institute (VA) Cherokee Heritage Center Frontier Culture Museum Heritage Center Museum of Lancaster County (PA) History Museum of Western Virginia Holland Land Office Museum (Batavia, NY) Kentucky History Center The Kentucky Museum (Western Kentucky U.) History and Folklife of the Kentucky Frontier Landis Valley Museum (PA) Museum of the Cherokee Indian Mountain Heritage Center (Western Carolina U.) Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts (MESDA) Museum of East Tennessee History Museum of the Middle Appalachians (VA) Museum of the Shenandoah Valley (VA) Ohio Historical Center Old Salem, Inc. (Winston-Salem, NC) Rocky Mount Museum (TN) Shenandoah Germanic Heritage Museum (VA) Tennessee Association of Museums Ulster-American Folk Park (County Tyrone, Northern Ireland) Virginia Association of Museums Virtual Museum of Surveying Historic
Sites: On-Line
Exhibits State
and National Parks Archaeological
Research Historic
Agencies and Associations Frontier
Living History |
| 4.
Maps (see also Roads and Trails, below):
Exploration and Settlement, 1800-1820 European Exploration and Settlement in the United States 1513-1776 Native American Tribes of the Frontier U.S. Federal Circuit and District Courts, 1837 U.S. Territorial Acquisitions, 1783-1853 Early Native American Tribes and Culture Areas Kentucky Maps Tennessee Maps The Maps Our Ancestors Followed (mostly early Tennessee) Alabama Maps Mississippi Maps Colonia South Carolina Maps Revolutionary South Carolina Maps Ohio Maps Maps of the Ohio Frontier Indiana Maps Hargrett Library Maps (U. of Georgia) Illinois Maps Missouri Maps Louisiana Maps Arkansas Maps Virginia Maps Pennsylvania Maps New York Maps North Carolina Maps New River Valley in 1835 South Carolina Maps George Washington Maps Library of Congress -- American Memory Map Collections Early U.S. History Maps (University of Texas Library) Assorted U.S. History Maps American Revolution and Its Era (Library of Congress) Cherokee Historical Maps The Five Nations and the Great Lakes The Northwest Territory Indian Tribes of the Mid-Atlantic States |
| 5.
Primary Sources Documents: Tennessee Documentary History (UT-Knoxville) Documents in Tennessee History The Creek Documents Cherokee Portraits and Images Documenting the American South (UNC-Chapel Hill) John Bradbury's Travels in the Interior of North America (1809-1811) Documents for the Study of American History (AMDOCS) Documents on the War of 1812 (Hillsdale College) Documents on U.S. Indian Wars (Hillsdale College) Richard Furman's Address (South Carolina backcountry, 1775) Charlottetown Resolves (1775) Archiving Early America Avalon Project (Yale U.) Exploring the West (U. of Virginia) Paxton Boys Protest Letters from an American Farmer George Washington's Proclamation on the Whiskey Rebellion (1794) Early Texas Documents Southeastern Native American Documents, 1730-1842 (UGa) American Memory Collections [Library of Congress] Travels in America, 1750-1920 (includes Reuben Gold Thwaites's 32-volume Early Western Travels, 1748-1846) Pioneering the Upper Midwest: Books from Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, ca. 1820-1910 The First American West: The Ohio River Valley, 1750-1820 Thomas Jefferson's Indian Addresses Crevecouer, Letters from an American Farmer Lewis and Clark, Journals Diary of Captain Benjamin Warren at Massacre of Cherry Valley (Upstate NY, 1778) |
| 6a.
The Early Frontier in American Literature Eighteenth & Nineteenth Century: Cambridge History of English and American Literature [online at Bartleby.com] Travellers and Observers, 1763–1846 Thoreau Longfellow Mark Twain Travellers and Explorers, 1846–1900 Francis Parkman John Filson Daniel Pierce Thompson James Fenimore Cooper The Pioneers John Pendleton Kennedy William Gilmore Simms See also John Caldwell Guilds and Caroline Collins, William Gilmore Simms and the American Frontier, Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1997. Nathaniel Beverly Tucker Thomas Bangs Thorpe John Ludlum McConnel Samuel A. Hammett Joseph Glover Baldwin Robert Montgomery Bird Edward Eggleston Early American Fiction Collection (U. of Virginia) Twentieth
Century: For
a
broader analysis of the symbolism and mythology of the frontier
experience,
see the work of Richard Slotkin, especially his three-volume
study: 6b.
Scholarly Journals Online
Articles |
| 7.
Grand Theory in Frontier History Frederick Jackson Turner The Frontier in American History The Turner Thesis:An Annotated Bibliography of the American Frontier Heritage, by Laurie Kovacovic Materials by and About Frederick Jackson Turner The "Frontier Thesis:" In a famous address and essay (linked above) American historian Frederick Jackson Turner argued that the experience and environment of the western frontier was central to the creation of a distinctive American nation. Pioneers cleared the way for American development, but left a vital legacy in the nation's institutions and character. Free land attracted settlers to the West, Turner contended, carrying them beyond the reach of traditional culture and institutions America had inherited from Europe. On the frontier, these settlers developed self-reliant and anti-authoritarian traits that Turner asserted served as the foundation of American democracy. Major "Turnerian" Historians include: Ray Allen Billington Allan & Margaret Bogue Prominent
early critics of the "frontier thesis" who still worked with Turnerian
concepts include: Recent
Critics of the Frontier Thesis: Turner's ideas about the frontier
have
been attacked on many fronts over the last 100 years. Even
historians
heavily influenced by Turner's ideas -- such as Abernethy and Gates --
argued that land on the frontier was never free, but in fact often
monopolized
by wealthy speculators, making frontier democracy an illusion.
Many
recent scholars have picked up this theme, claiming that frontier
development
was in fact controlled by corporations and the government. Still
others have challenged Turner's assumption of the inevitability of
Euro-American frontier
expansion, arguing that he ignored the existence of Native Americans
and
other minorities on the frontier, and the role that interactions
between
these groups and white settlers had on frontier society.
The Middle Ground: Many historians believe White's work offers a new "paradigm" for frontier history. White argues that the frontier was not "the outer edge of the wave-- the meeting point between savagery and civilization," as Turner had claimed, but rather a place where different cultures met and created new ways of relating and thinking through a process of mutual accommodation. Cultural change did not occur as Indians adopted European ways, but rather as both sides tried to find shared cultural ground on which their ongoing relations could be conducted. The frontier was a place where, as White put it, "diverse peoples adjust their differences through what amounts to a process of creative, and often expedient, misunderstandings. People try to persuade others who are different from themselves by appealing to what they perceive to be the values and practices of those others. They often misinterpret and distort both the values and the practices of those they deal with, but from these misunderstandings arise new meanings and through them new practices." Academic publications on frontier history have been dominated since the mid-1990s by the search for this "middle ground," and seem likely to continue to be so in coming years. Albion's Seed: In his monumental study of eighteenth-century colonial life, David Hackett Fischer argued that white America's distinctive regional "folkways," descended from regional cultures in the British Isles. In particular, in the final section of the book, Fischer traced the early frontier's culture of clannishness, violence, and opposition to government authority to the cultural baggage of immigrants from the "borders" of Britain, particularly Scotland and Ulster. Fischer tracked a myriad of distinctive folkways from the British borderlands directly to the backcountry. While criticized for a perhaps excessive emphasis on this kind of cultural inheritance, Albion's Seed is the best synthesis of twentieth-century work on the cultures of frontier settlers in the United States. For an on-line summary and discussion of issues drawn from Fischer's work, see Elizabeth Semancik's website, Albion's Seed Grows in the Cumberland Gap. For other works studying the early frontier from the perspective of European cultural inheritance, see Terry Jordan and Matti Kaups, The American Backwoods Frontier: An Ethnic and Ecological Interpretation, and Grady McWhiney, Cracker Culture: Celtic Ways in the Old South. The
"Capitalism Debate": Another scholarly debate of particular
interest
to historians of the early frontier went on during the 1970s and
1980s.
After Louis Hartz and other "consensus" historians contended that
capitalism
was an integral part of early American culture, a group of scholars
argued
that in fact eighteenth-century farmers were pre-capitalist in their
outlook,
more interested in family strength and community autonomy than
profits.
This assertion, heavily influenced by Marxist theory, generated a
spirited
if sometimes abstract and pedantic discussion of the economic
motivations
of early American farmers. While the the issue had petered out by
the later 1990s, the debaters had done a good deal of work relevant to
any study of pioneer farmers. |
| 8.
Encyclopedia
Land
Speculation: Despite
the mythology of "free land," large amounts of land were acquired by
speculators. Defined as anyone attempting to profit from
the steady increase in the value of undeveloped land, speculators
quickly
gained a bad name on the frontier. Accused of retarding westward
expansion, gouging settlers, and profiting without labor while engaging
in all manner of infamous frauds, speculators were the target of
numerous
state and national laws (only occasionally successful) designed to
prevent
them from acquiring undeveloped frontier land. Despite
their
unsavory reputation (often earned, of course), many speculators did
facilitate
frontier
settlement by paying for accurate surveys, extending credit to
settlers,
and establishing towns, roads, and other needed services. See, in
particular, the work of Alan Taylor, including Liberty Men and
Great
Proprietors: The Revolutionary Settlement on the Maine Frontier,
and William
Cooper's Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early
American
Republic for recent analyses of the economics and politics of land
speculation. Battles:
People:
First Nations: Issues of Consequence Histories: Although incomplete, this set of online histories are an excellent reference. First Nations Catawba History First Nations Cherokee History First Nations Chickasaw History First Nations Iroquois History First Nations Illinois History First Nations Miami History First Nations Shawnee History First Nations Delaware History First Nations Huron History First Nations Sauk and Fox History <>Miami Delaware Seminole Creek/Muskogee Sites Cherokee Sites First Nations Cherokee History Cherokee Archaeology Chickasaw Sites First Nations Chickasaw History Choctaw Sites Shawnee Sites Iroquois Sites First Nations Iroquois History Scots-Irish: A large influx of immigrants from norther Ireland arrived in British North America between the 1750s and 1770s. Referred to as Scots-Irish because of their Scots Presbyterian ancestry, these migrants left Ulster to escape the discriminatory effects of the Test Act as well as the economic struggles brought on by economic depression and rack-renting. Arriving in Pennsylvania, many of these Scots-Irish migrants made their way down the Great Wagon Road into the backcountry of the Carolinas, subsequently spreading across the South. Viewed at the time as a distinct cultural group, many subsequent scholars have tried to trace various aspects of white southern culture to a Scots-Irish heritage. See also: James Leyburn, The Scotch-Irish: A Social History; David Hackett Fischer, Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in North America, John Walker Dinsmore, The Scotch-Irish in America: Their History, Traits, Institutions and Influences, Especially as Illustrated in the Early Settlers of Western Pennsylvania and their Descendants, and Grady McWhiney, Cracker Culture: Celtic Ways in the Old South. Virginia Germans: From their initial settlements in southeastern Pennsylvania, many protestant German colonists made their way south into the Shenandoah Valley, first at the invitation of Lt. Governor Alexander Spotswood, who wished to start an iron industry in backcountry Virginia. Typically referred to as "Dutch" in contemporary sources, by the Revolution Germans were the dominant ethnic group in the northern portion of the Valley, and smaller settlements stretched along the frontier into northeastern Tennessee. See Klaus Wust, The Virginia Germans, (Charlottesville, NC: University Press of Virginia, 1969). North Carolina Scots: Beginning in the late 1720s, a large number of Highland Scots began a settlement in the Sand Hills region of southern North Carolina. Creating a gaelic-speaking community around the town of Cross Creek, this core attracted large numbers of highlanders in a migration that peaked in the years just before the Revolution. Most of the North Carolina Highlanders remained loyal to the crown, but their militia was defeated at the Battle of Moore's Creek in 1780. Many lost their lands to Patriot confiscations and emigrated, either to Canada or to the western frontier. A large group remained behind, keeping the Sand Hills a Scottish area into the 20th century. See Duane Meyer, The Highalnd Scots of North Carolina, 1732-1776, (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1987). Legislation:
|