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The Heart of a Deal: Corruption and Conquest in David McCullough's The Pioneers
- Journal of the Early Republic
- University of Pennsylvania Press
- Volume 41, Number 2, Summer 2021
- pp. 185-195
- 10.1353/jer.2021.0027
- Article
- Additional Information
Abstract:
This essay evaluates David McCullough's use of primary sources in his best-selling book, The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West, focusing on his discussion of the origins of the Ohio Company. The essay argues that a rigorous application of historical methods yields a very different interpretation than the one McCullough advanced. When McCullough's evidence is analyzed alongside other contemporaneous accounts and viewed through an up-to-date understanding of historical contexts, the Ohio Company emerges not as a noble venture to plant innocent ideals in a vacant wilderness, but rather as a corrupt scheme to profit off the conquest of unceded Indigenous land.