Customer Reviews

Behind the Frontier: Indians in Eighteenth-Century Eastern Massachusetts

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Behind the Frontier offers a look at the fall of the Indian nations in Eastern Massachusetts during the mid to late 1700's as white settlers encroached on their land and assimilated them into their cultures. Mandell talks a look at a wide range of factors from trade, war, disease, intermarriage, and legal conflicts that changed the tribes in the area reducing their traditional way of living to nothing and showing how they melded in with the culture. These tribes did not disappear in the traditional sense but lived on behind the frontier by assimilating into societies including Boston. This book does work well to dismiss the general myth that Indians simply were wiped out after King Philips War. It is a very specific topic and one needs to be very interested in Indian history of New England or you will quickly find this a dry book. I have a general interest in colonial history and found parts of this to be very slow at times. One thing Mandell does not do well is outline where each of the Indian tribes is living. This book assumes a lot of knowledge about the geography of New England which I did not have as a reader. There is not a single map to give you a frame of reference so be prepared to research online to follow along. Overall a very strong book analytically, but only if you have some background knowledge in New England colonial history.

I love this book! It covers a topic and a period that has been largely ignored for far too long. Most traditional works of the history of Massachusetts make the mistaken presumption that the Native Americans somehow just disappeared altogether from Massachusetts after King Phillip's War in the 1670s, but such is not the case; the truth is far more interesting than the fiction. The book describes the gradual diminishment of the native populations in great detail, and is incredibly eye-opening in its topic and its scope. Definitely worth a read for any who are interested in the history of Massachusetts and New England in general!

Mandell does excellent work. He uses records that others have over looked. It is the best work on the topic.