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Host: Scott LaMar
First Frontier author Scott Weidensaul describes the brutal history between Native Americans and settlers in PA and on the East Coast
Written by Scott LaMar, Smart Talk Host/Executive Producer | Jul 16, 2012 8:25 PM
Radio Smart Talk for Tuesday, July 16:
In most American schools, the nation's history is taught starting with the Jamestown settlement in Virginia and the Pilgrims in Massachusetts in the 1600s and then skips ahead to the American Revolution in the 1770s. Few of us are familiar with the stories of the challenges and dangers the inhabitants of the North American continent faced in between or before.
Pulitzer Prize finalist and author Scott Weidensaul's latest book, The First Frontier - The Forgotten Struggle, Savagery, and Endurance in Early America is one of the most extensive chronicles of the period from when European explorers and settlers arrived in the 16th Century to the French and Indian Wars in the 1760s.
Weidensaul will appear on Tuesday's Radio Smart Talk to describe this violent, brutal 250-year period when Native Americans and Europeans on the East Coast got to know one another, fought, inter-married, traded goods, and enslaved, kidnapped and killed each other. It is a story not for the faint of heart.
Much of Weidensaul's book focuses on Pennsylvania where areas north and west of Harris' Ferry - today's Harrisburg - were considered the wild frontier.
It's an incredible story so be sure to tune in.
The First Frontier - The Forgotten History of Struggle, Savagery, and Endurance in Early America is witf's Pick-of-the Month book available at the Midtown Scholar Bookstore, 1302 North Third Street in Harrisburg. Weidensaul will appear at the bookstore Saturday, July 21 at 3 p.m. as part of Midtown's PA Frontier History Day.
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Listener 1
2012-07-17 13:36
Great program! From tv and movies we have a vision of eastern Indians as nomadic hunter gatherers, but they were actually quite successful farmers. Could your guest speak to that? Thank you.Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T
Pat Heefner
2012-07-17 13:50
Yes, Listener 1. Ask the author about what General Sullivan found when he burned out the Iroquois during the American Revolution.
Listener 2
2012-07-17 13:57
I was wondering if this author had any info on David the robber Lewis.
Lisa
2012-07-17 14:03
I find that there is a great deal of difference in emphasis on different parts of history depending on which area of the state you attended school. My husband grew up here in the east and recalls that there was a great deal of emphasis on the American Revolution and the Civil War in his history. He doesn't remember having had a history class specifically on Pennsylvania history or having ever studied the Seven Years War. Having grown up in the western end of the state, the history I was taught focused on the Seven Years War and the Revolution. The Civil War was what got brushed over (no battles in our area, I guess). I do however remember my 8th grade history class very clearly. That was the year we studied nothing but Pennsylvania's history and were required to learn the names and locations of all 67 counties. I am thankful that I had that class as I was familiar with most of the PA people/incidents Mr. Weidensaul mentioned today. Can't wait to read the book.
Scott Weidensaul
2012-07-17 17:46
Some certainly were, and the scale of Native agriculture is often overlooked. Verranzano in 1524 talked about fields extending 75 miles inland from Narragansett Bay, "open and free of any obstacle or trees," and in the 1620s a missionary got repeatedly lost in Ontario, not in the forest, but in endless cornfields. Some Iroquois villages in New York were surrounded by six square miles of maize fields.That said, not all of the eastern cultures were large-scale farmers; there's a growing consensus that the Lenape (Delaware), for example, were more akin to casual gardeners, supplementing a hunter-gatherer diet - although once the Swedes arrived, the Lenape started growing corn for trade.
Scott Weidensaul
2012-07-17 17:53
That's a great point - with Fort Necessity, Fort Pitt, Braddock's defeat and so much more, it would be natural for there to be a greater focus on Seven Year's War history in western Pa. I wish my teachers in Schuylkill County had touched on the way the frontier years shaped this area, too.
Pat Heefner
2012-07-17 18:38
When I was in junior high (9th grade--1957), PA history was a requirement for graduation. A semester of PA history and a semester of civics.I was so fortunate to sign up for an adult course in a local junior college on Pontiac's War. I knew he was an Indian but knew nothing beyond that. It was wonderful and I went on to take any other class offered in colonial history. We live west of Gettysburg (not too far from where Mary Jemison was captured in 1758, who then spent the rest of her life with the Seneca). Everyone here thinks about nothing but the Civil War. I'm ordering your book today.
Scott Weidensaul
2012-07-17 20:03
It's almost as though our capacity for history limits out with just one big event, isn't it? Valley Forge was a Revolutionary War icon - but Perkiomen Creek was inhabited for 10,000 years before Washington's troops showed up there. Years ago, when I was a reporter in Schuylkill County, I spent the day with a respected amateur archaeologist. Driving around the countryside, I challenged him to find an ancient campsite - and within a short while he'd stopped the car, jogged up through the woods, and began digging in the soft earth. Soon, to my astonishment, he had a broken projectile point in his hand. "How did you know to dig here?" I asked. He pointed out that the land faced south, with a rising hill to the north to block the wind, and a spring just below the flat, well-drained bench - a perfect campsite. "Remember," he said, "there were people here for thousands and thousands of years. Everywhere they could camp, they did camp. You just have to see the land through their eyes."
Katie
2012-07-17 20:52
This was a fascinating topic and I am grateful that I can learn more in the book! Thank you for a wonderful conversation this morning!
Jose E Velazquez
2012-07-18 02:47
Really fantastic show today. really informative and enlightening on so many levels great job