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Reviews in American History 31.4 (2003) 511-518



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Race and Community on the Pennsylvania Frontier

Michelle LeMaster


Jane T. Merritt. At the Crossroads: Indians and Empires on a Mid-Atlantic Frontier, 1700-1763. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003. 352pp. Illustrations, tables, maps, genealogical charts, appendixes, notes, and index. $39.95 (cloth); $19.95 (paper).

In October of 1736, Seneca chief Kanickhungo met with Pennsylvania Proprietor Thomas Penn. Reminding Penn of his father William's treatment of the colony's Native American neighbors, Kanickhungo reported that the elder Penn "opened and cleared the Road between this Place and our Nations, which was very much to our good Liking . . . We now desire that this Road . . . may be kept clear and open, free from all Stops or Incumbrances" (p. 1). This meeting, with which Jane Merritt opens her book, At the Crossroads: Indians and Empires on a Mid-Atlantic Frontier, 1700-1763, also provides the concept that guides much of the narrative that follows. At the Crossroads investigates the multitude of relationships developed between native and white communities (and individuals) in western Pennsylvania during the first half of the eighteenth century up until the end of the French and Indian War. Rejecting the accommodation or resistance paradigm of many earlier histories, Merritt emphasizes instead the diversity of options available to both native peoples and European settlers on the Pennsylvania frontier. "The Indian experience of a colonial New World," Merritt argues, "begins to look more like a crossroads, a place where many paths converged, providing divers possibilities and directions to those who passed through" (p. 2). In the early years of interaction in this region, "Indians in the mid-Atlantic region negotiated a common space with European settlers along the shifting frontier where roads both literally and figuratively passed through and between communities, connecting their lives and histories" (p. 3).

The thesis of the book, however, deals with the ultimate breakdown of interracial cooperation during and after the French and Indian War. By the 1760s, Merritt argues, differences between natives and Europeans increasingly came to be "characterized by race." "[T]he hybrid nature of frontier life, and competition for resources, and the tension of an imperial war had [End Page 511] engendered a nationalist sentiment among both white and Indian populations" (p. 4). Previous efforts at cooperation were abandoned as the various groups on the frontier increasingly adopted nationalist and racialized identities, which crystallized into hostility and mistrust.

Part one begins to flesh out the concept of the Pennsylvania frontier as an intercultural crossroads. The first two chapters focus on "migration and community building" in Pennsylvania, and on interactions among native and European communities in the early eighteenth century. At this time, Pennsylvania represented a "frontier of inclusion," Merritt argues, in which no one particular group dominated the others and diverse communities became interconnected through kinship and economic networks and relationships (p. 4). Efforts of "imperial powers" to assert their control over local communities and internal factionalism also shaped the relationships of frontier communities. The first chapter addresses the manner in which white and Indian communities sought to manage the question of how to distribute the land in the region. Land became central to the struggle for power in the region, as both the proprietors of Pennsylvania and leaders of the Iroquois Confederacy tried to control its distribution. These two "colonial authorities" hoped that by controlling the land, they could also control the region's inhabitants. Ultimately, each power relied upon the cooperation of the other to maintain its influence in the region and to legitimize its own control or expansion. In the early years, however, the reach of both proprietary and Six Nations power was limited, which often left local communities to deal directly with each other. Chapter two looks at kinship and economic ties between natives and whites in this frontier region. While traders often established kinship ties with native communities through marriage, kinship metaphors also extended to diplomatic relationships, injecting expectations of hospitality and reciprocity into white-native relations. When white settlers began to move into western Pennsylvania...

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