The Indian World of George Washington The First President, the First Americans, and the Birth of the Nation

by Calloway, Colin G.

• ISBN13: 9780190652166
• ISBN10: 0190652160
• eBook ISBN(s): 9780190652180
• Additional ISBN(s): 9780190652173
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2018-04-06
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• More Book Details
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Summary

George Washington's place in the foundations of the Republic remains unrivalled. His life story--from his beginnings as a surveyor and farmer, to colonial soldier in the Virginia Regiment, leader of the Patriot cause, commander of the Continental Army, and finally first president of the United States--reflects the narrative of the nation he guided into existence. There is, rightfully, no more chronicled figure.

Yet American history has largely forgotten what Washington himself knew clearly: that the new Republic's fate depended less on grand rhetoric of independence and self-governance and more on land--Indian land. Colin G. Calloway's biography of the greatest founding father reveals in full the relationship between Washington and the Native leaders he dealt with intimately across the decades: Shingas, Tanaghrisson, Guyasuta, Attakullakulla, Bloody Fellow, Joseph Brant, Cornplanter, Red Jacket, and Little Turtle, among many others. Using the prism of Washington's life to bring focus to these figures and the tribes they represented--the Iroquois Confederacy, Lenape, Miami, Creek, Delaware--Calloway reveals how central their role truly was in Washington's, and therefore the nation's, foundational narrative.

Calloway gives the First Americans their due, revealing the full extent and complexity of the relationships between the man who rose to become the nation's most powerful figure and those whose power and dominion declined in almost equal degree during his lifetime. His book invites us to look at America's origins in a new light. The Indian World of George Washington is a brilliant portrait of both the most revered man in American history and those whose story during the tumultuous century in which the country was formed has, until now, been only partially told.

Author Biography

Colin G. Calloway is the John Kimball Jr. 1943 Professor of History and Native American Studies at Dartmouth University. His previous books include A Scratch of the Pen and A Victory with No Name.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
List of Native Americans

Introduction

One: Learning Curves
Chapter 1: Virginia's Indian Country
Chapter 2: The Ohio Company and the Ohio Country
Chapter 3: Into Tanaghrisson's World
Chapter 4: Tanaghrisson's War
Chapter 5: Braddock and the Limits of Empire
Chapter 6: Frontier Defense and a Cherokee Alliance
Chapter 7: Frontier Advance and a Cherokee War

Two: The Other Revolution
Chapter 8: Confronting the Indian Boundary Line
Chapter 9: "A good deal of Land."
Chapter 10: The Question of Indian Allies
Chapter 11: Town Destroyer
Chapter 12: Killing Crawford
Chapter 13: Building a Nation on Indian Land

Three: The First President and the First Americans
Chapter 14: An Indian Policy for the New Nation
Chapter 15: Courting McGillivray
Chapter 16: The Greatest Indian Victory
Chapter 17: Philadelphia Indian Diplomacy
Chapter 18: Achieving Empire
Chapter 19: Transforming Indian Lives
Chapter 20: A Death and a Non-Death