Bloody Mohawk

by Berleth, Richard

• ISBN13: 9781883789664
• ISBN10: 1883789664
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-01-15
• Publisher: Black Dome Pr

Summary

This sweeping historical narrative chronicles events instrumental in the painful birth of a new nation from the Bloody Morning Scout and the massacre at Fort William Henry to the disastrous siege of Quebec, the heroic but lopsided Battle of Valcour Island, the horrors of Oriskany, and the tragedies of Pennsylvania's Wyoming Valley massacre and the Sullivan-Clinton Expedition's destruction of the Iroquois homeland in western New York State. Caught in the middle of it all was the Mohawk River Valley. In this narrative history of the Mohawk River Valley and surrounding region from 1713 to1794, Professor Richard Berleth charts the passage of the valley from a fast-growing agrarian region streaming with colonial traffic to a war-ravaged wasteland. The valley's diverse cultural mix of Iroquois Indians, Palatine Germans, Scots-Irish, Dutch, English, and Highland Scots played as much of a role as its unique geography in the cataclysmic events of the 1700s the French and Indian Wars and the battles of the American Revolution. Patriots eventually wrenched the valley from British interests and the Iroquois nations, but at fearsome cost. When the fighting was over, the valley lay in ruins and as much as two-thirds of its population lay dead or had been displaced. But by not holding this vital inland waterway the gateway to the West, the river between the mountains, America might have lost the Revolution, as well as much or all of the then poorly defined province of New York.

Author Biography

Richard Berleth received his Ph.D from Rutgers University in 1970 and is currently Chair of the Communication Arts Department at St. Francis College in Brooklyn Heights, New York. Previously he taught English at Pace University and Russell Sage College, was a managing editor for Time/Life Books, a marketing manager for McGraw-Hill, and a senior vice president at Simon & Schuster. His other books include The Twilight Lords: An Irish Chronicle, The Orphan Stone: The Minnesinger Dream of Reich, Samuel's Choice (children's) and Mary Patten (children's).

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. viii
Preface	p. x
Map: New York 1713-1794	p. xii
Acknowledgments	p. xiv
Introduction	p. 1
River between the Mountains	p. 9
On an Indian River	p. 10
Muster at Albany	p. 27
The Battle of Lake George	p. 45
A Rumored Gift	p. 66
The Missionary	p. 92
Illustrations	p. 117
Vale of Nettles	p. 141
A Revolutionary Idea	p. 142
Estranged Neighbors	p. 168
Map: Lake Champlain and Lake George 1776-1777	p. 189
At the Barricades	p. 190
A Ravine Too Far	p. 212
Sorrow on the Land	p. 238
Map: The Sullivan-Clinton Expedition, 1779	p. 264
To Make a Desert	p. 266
Map: The Mohawk River Valley 1775-1783	p. 294
Tenonanatche Farewell	p. 296
Notes	p. 322
Bibliography	p. 350
About the Author	p. 357
Index	p. 358
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