Customer Reviews

The Shawnees and the War for America: The Penguin Library of American Indian History series (Penguin's Library of American Indian History)

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This concise and well written book is a nice history of Shawnee interactions with European settlers. The author is a distinguished historian specializing in Native American history. Many readers will probably be at least somewhat familiar with the most famous Shawnee leaders, the warrior Tecumseh and his brother, the religious leader Tenkswata. In the period of the War of 1812, they attempted to form an eastern Indian coalition to resist American encroachment on what is now much of the Midwest and South. Calloway relates this story quite well and links it to a series of larger themes. One is the persistent role of the Shawnee in resistance to European encroachments. Originating in the Ohio Valley, Shawnee bands, like many Native American groups, migrated through several regions of eastern North America during the 17th, 18th, and early 19th centuries. Calloway suggests that the peripatetic Shawnee had a broad perspective on conflict with European settlers and often became leaders in resistance against European and American settlers. Shawnee leaders participated in Pontiac's rebellion and conflicts with Americans in the early years of the republic.

Calloway uses the experience of the Shawnee to illustrate the general history of eastern Indians. The Shawnee and other Indian societies faced huge disadvantages in terms of population, access to modern weapons, and epidemiology. They were also often disunited and victims of their decentralized political traditions. Calloway provides nice overviews of Shawnee society, the sad narrative of their encounters with Europeans, and good analysis of the underlying forces.

Shawnees and the War for America is an excellent history of the Shawnee experience during the two centuries of their struggle to hold onto the land they occupied when the EurAmericans invaded.

The author has included names and described Shawnees in action with words that create pictures. The tale of travail of Cornstalk is compelling. The descrlption of the Shawnee's defeat of the American Army under St.clair, which "effectively distroyed the new nation's only army" deservers more text in our history books.

The book is concise, brief amd well writtened with a neutral viewpoint, but there is no way to make the plot have a better ending.

The Shawnees we see today are the survivors of a genocide that swept away 95% of their ancestors and took most of their land to build a nation almost as worthy a Shawnee nation.

Read this book!

The book referenced below tells the heroic tale of the Shawnees coming to America.

Frozen Trail to Merica: Talerman

You will have a better perspective.

I'm part Shawnee and this is about as an impartial and a complete view of the Shawnee history from someone outside of the Native American culture as a person could hope for. Lots of research went into this book, and it is far from being another run of the mill dry regurgitation of facts. This book is a great read.

I found this book interesting, concise and easy to read. I'd recommend it to anyone interested in the Shawnee Indians and their role in resisting the Euro-American settlement of the Ohio Valley lands west of the Allegheny mountains.