Customer Reviews

Frontier Indiana (A History of the Trans-Appalachian Frontier)

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This is one of my favorite books on the history of the Old Northwest Territory. I enjoyed it very much, and I felt it was very interesting. Cayton writes in chapters, explaining about certain parts of Indiana from the viewpoints of someone involved in the area of Indiana studied, either in the military, politically, as a Native American, and a civilian. It's a great book and I have used it as a reference, and read back over it many times since I bought it for a course several years ago.

First let me mention a few things about the author before we take a look at the book.

Andrew Cayton, Distinguished Professor of History at Miami University of Ohio, is THE world authority on the frontier history of the Western Reserve and Northwest Territory. Here, as in all of the books he writes, you're dealing with the product of a powerful, critical intellect and a novelist's narrative skill. Dr. Cayton's books do not disappoint, and this one is no exception.

This book establishes a thesis that the author goes on to further explore in his later books, namely, that the unique cultural characteristics of the states that formed immediately over the Appalachian mountains during (and after) the American Revolution - Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana - are a direct result of the blending of peoples from different migration routes. Indiana is NOTHING like Ohio, for example, because the French and the native Americans established large cultural footprints there, whereas, they did not in Ohio. American migrants into Indiana, which formed from the Northwest Territory, came (mostly) from the South, from lowland Virginia, through Kentucky, and across the Ohio river. In Ohio, which formed as an extension of the older Western Reserve, migrants came across the Ohio river from Pennsylvania, far northwestern Virginia and, most profoundly, from New England. Nobody is likely to confuse Vincennes, Indiana with Marietta, Ohio. No, no, Hoosiers are nothing like Buckeyes, and neither are like blue-grass Kentuckians.

The book is divided into chronological chapters, defined by the dominant cultural influences of each period. It starts with the "World of the Miami," and passes through successive periods of French, English, and American territorial influences. What do we end up with by the time Indiana becomes a state in 1816? E Pluribus Unum, in the most profound sense of that overused and misunderstood Latin phrase.

The author weaves a fine narrative of pioneer life in the Northwest Territory, and describes how movement, and the LACK of movement, settled into the Hoosier culture we recognize today. It's extremely well done, convincing, deeply researched and sparsely illustrated with a few well-chosen maps and photographs. Readers should note that this is essentially a cultural history, rather than an economic or military history. Commerce, trade, and warfare, while not completely neglected, do not form the core of the study. Frontier politics, obviously, are an important ingredient in the total thesis.

I recommend this book to anyone with a general interest in the early history of Indiana, and the larger Northwest Territory.

This book is well written. I enjoy searching for family tree members in genealogy. I wanted a book to give me background on the movement of people and development of states during the expansion of the USA. This book is a good addition to my library.