This book describes frontier days in Western Pennsylvania during the period 1760-1795, the incessant conflict between the Indians and the settlers during that time and the forts erected by the frontiers-people for their protection. The sites of 30 forts are identified and the exciting events that occurred at each are described. There is a separate chapter about the Indian tribes who inhabited this land, and another chapter about the nature and background of the Irish, Scotch-Irish, German, and English immigrants who settled in this area. The role of rangers in frontier warfare is explored, as is the role of women fighting for their lives and families from their homes and the forts. The influence upon the settlers of the endless forest and the wild animals is discussed at length.
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Editorial Reviews
About the Author
John A. DeMay is an author, historian, trial lawyer and adventurer. As an avocation he has spent most of his life studying the interaction between the Native American tribes and the white European settlers. He has spent the last several years locating many of the settlers forts which once existed in his native Western Pennsylvania. In addition he has engaged in extensive research concerning the terrible and bloody years of conflict between the Indians and the settlers.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Politically incorrect about "noble red man",
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This review is from: Settlers Forts of Western Pennsylvania (Paperback)
If one is into the white guilt trip, or is a non-white who wants whites into one, then by default one would slam this book.
It depicts a race war between Indians and whites, with the Indians committing mind-bending tortures and massacres without justification on poor white working folks from back east just trying to survive, folks from Scotland, Ireland or Germany without a dime. DeMay's book further claims that the Indians of western Pennsylvania were not native at all to the area, but had been ordered out of their Delaware river region (in eastern Pa. and in Dela.) and into western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio and Kentucky by the powerful Iroquois Confederacy under a deal with the English just 20 years before. In fact, it says the area had been uninhabited for centuries before the whites arrived from what is now West Virginia, mostly feisty Scots-Irish and doughty Germans - and all poor folks, not a Bill Gates, fatcat or chablis-sipping professor among them. I was inspired by the heroism of those European-American men, women and children, especially their toughness mentally. How could a mother go on after seeing her children slow-roasted and eaten in Kitanning (Pa.) by her Indian captors? What was it like to see your father scalped alive and hot coals poured on his head, or to see a gloating squaw eating your ears and fingers? Of course, the myth is that only Indians were Native Americans. When Dennis Stanford's book on the Solutreans comes out this year or next (Google him!), the scientific community will have to acknowledge that there are very strong indications that Europeans settled North America at least 5,000 years BEFORE the Indians came from Siberia. The Discovery channel video "Ice Age Columbus" on this subject, from Channel 4 TV in England, is a true eye-opener. The whole "Kennewick Man" issue is part of this. Why is there a skeleton of an apparent white man from 9,000 B.C. in Washington State, and why do the Indians go to court relentlessly to get it buried without further examination? Why was the skeleton SEIZED by federal authorities under Bill Clinton? In fact, if Dr. Dennis Stanford (merely the director of anthropology at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington!!) is right, then it was the Red Man who committed genocide on the original inhabitants, the Solutrean whites, and Europeans were the true Native Americans. They were doing the same in our modern historical era, says DeMay, in the 1750-1790s period in western Pennsylvania and many other places, torture and massacre, until they were totally defeated by some very brave men, women and children, the European-Americans. Then only the d atrocities stop that the Indians committed against them and -- on a very routine basis as part of their culture -- against each other, both braves and squaws. As Jack Nicholson says in "A Few Good Men" to a liberal lawyer, "you can't handle the truth."
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Curtis is correct,
By
This review is from: Settlers Forts of Western Pennsylvania (Paperback)
I have to agree with Curtis Cleveland. I am not from the school of the "noble, guiltless savage" whose utopia was destroyed by the white man, but Mr Demay's view is decidedly one-sided. He tries to sanitize the massacre at Gnadenhutten by claiming that the peaceful "Moravian" Indians there were knowingly aiding raiding parties against white settlers. This is simply not true and I have never even seen that accusation hinted at in the many years I have been studying the PA/OH frontier. In fact, these Indians and their missionaries were active spies for the rebel government!
Although DeMay has no problem devoting pages to the grisly tortures that the Indians supposedly revelled in, he completely omits the fact that the Moravian Indians were completely unarmed and the brave settlers killed them all, man woman and child, one by one with a cooper's mallet. This is just one example of the distortion in the book. Combined this with hyperbole like claiming that the Iroquois were the "nazis of the Eastern United States" and what you end up with is prejudiced folk tales masquerading as fact. If you must buy it, there is no need to pay the outrageous sums I have seen it go for. I picked mine up new for $2 and the publisher still offers it for the MSRP.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good History Book,
This review is from: Settlers Forts of Western Pennsylvania (Paperback)
School history always has a slant. It is good to have multiple opinions of history, not just a select few.
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