Description
Book SynopsisThe Storied Landscape of Iroquoia explores the creation, destruction, appropriation, and enduring legacy of one of early America’s most important places: the homelands of the Haudenosaunees (also known as the Iroquois Six Nations). Throughout the late seventeenth, eighteenth, and early nineteenth centuries of European colonization the Haudenosaunees remained the dominant power in their homelands and one of the most important diplomatic players in the struggle for the continent following European settlement of North America by the Dutch, British, French, Spanish, and Russians. Chad L. Anderson offers a significant contribution to understanding colonialism, intercultural conflict, and intercultural interpretations of the Iroquoian landscape during this timein central and western New York.
Although American public memory often recalls a nation founded along a frontier wilderness, these lands had long been inhabited in Native American villages, where history had be
Trade Review"Anderson’s fascinating work examines the shifts in the New York landscape through the 1840s as the area was used, shaped, and understood by the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) and then the Americans. . . . This volume will work well in college courses as it bridges Iroquois and American histories and explores how written history is often based on cultural assumptions, memories, and oral traditions."—D. R. Mandell,
Choice“Chad Anderson challenges us to move beyond easy generalizations about how settler colonists simply erased indigenous peoples from the North American landscape. His sensitive, deeply researched meditation on the lives and afterlives of the spiritualized geography of Haudenosaunee country is not to be missed.”—Daniel K. Richter, director, McNeil Center for Early American Studies, University of Pennsylvania
“A remarkable book about Iroquoia’s built environment—real, imagined, reimagined. From Big Bone Lick to the
Book of Mormon, Chad Anderson shows how ancient landmarks haunted Americans—Native and non-Native—in the period of U.S. conquest. With subtle readings of Haudenosaunee sources, Anderson shows the rich possibilities of topographical history.”—Jared Farmer, author of
On Zion’s Mount: Mormons, Indians, and the American LandscapeTable of ContentsContents
List of Figures
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Reading the Early American Landscape
1. Visions of the Great Island
2. Predators of the Vanishing Landscape
3. The Many Deaths of John Montour and the Mystery of the Painted Post
4. The Decline and Fall of the Romans of the West
5. The Burned-Over District
Conclusion: Storied Monuments
Notes
Bibliography
Index
