Frontier Indiana

Andrew R. L. Cayton

"The research and scholarship that went into the work are excellent; so good, in fact, that the book should be on the required text list for all Transappalachian frontier courses." -History

Cayton's lively new history of the frontier period in Indiana puts the focus on people, on how they lived, how they viewed their world, and what motivated them. Here are the stories of Sieur de Vincennes, John Francis Hamtramck, Little Turtle, Anna Tuthill Symmes Harrison, Tenskwatawa, Calvin Fletcher-along with many more familiar (and not so familiar) early Hoosiers.

Sales territory is worldwide
A History of the Trans-Appalachian Frontier
1996; 360 pages, 20 b&w photos, 2 maps, index, 6 x 9
cloth 0-253-33048-3 $39.95 L / GBP28.50
paper 0-253-21217-0 $18.95 t / GBP13.50

A Choice Outstanding Academic Book

About the Author

Andrew R. L. Cayton is Professor of History at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. He is author of The Frontier Republic: Ideology and Politics in Ohio Country, 1780-1825 and, with Peter S. Onuf, The Midwest and the Nation: Rethinking the History of an American Region.

Reviews

Cayton's graceful, arresting narrative is grounded in primary and secondary sources, including classics by Emma Lou Thornbrough and Bernard Knollenberg, James Madison's The Indiana Way (CH, Jan'87), and new studies from such scholars as Richard White and Gregory Evans Dowd. Spanning 1700-1850 in ten chapters and an epilogue, Cayton's first-rate study interprets the successive worlds of the Miami (1700-1754), then of individuals whose experiences epitomized unfolding chapters of Indiana frontier history. With a keen ear for the revealing anecdote and apt quotation, the author treats the world of George Croghan (1750-1777); the village of Vincennes (1765-1777); the milieus of George Rogers Clark (1778-1787), Josiah Harmar, and John Francis Hamtramck (1787-1790); Little Turtle (1790-1795); Anna Tuthill Symmes Harrison (wife of William Henry Harrison, 1795-1810); Tenskwatawa (1795-1811); Jonathan Jennings (1800-1816); and the end of the frontier (1816-1850). Along the way readers discover figures such as John and William Conner, the early rivalry between Centerville and Richmond, an explanation of why Indiana remained a state of small towns and farms until the latter half of the 20th century, and the basis for understanding one of the more interesting states of the Union. Fine illustrations, maps. All levels.

-- D. W. Steeples * Choice *



Book Information
ISBN 9780253212177
Author Andrew R. L. Cayton
Format Paperback
Page Count 360
Imprint Indiana University Press
Publisher Indiana University Press
Weight(grams) 485g