Borderland Narratives

The essays in Borderlands Narrative explore the analytical power of a borderlands approach to understanding early American history on the frontiers with indigenous peoples from the Ohio River valley to Florida. The eight case studies cover the period from first European settlement to American expansion. Taken together, the chapters present race making and accommodation as a complex, multivariate process at the margins of imperial expansion. The borderlands became a contingent and decentered place where power was negotiated among multiple groups. The essays lay out a constellation of social arrangements and shifting identities on the Anglo-American frontier. Several chapters highlight fluid collaborations between European settlers and indigenous communities. Rob Harper details a variety of allegiances developed between indigenous groups and settlers in the Ohio River valley during the beginning of the American Revolution. Tyler Boulware explores multiple ways Choctaw and Cherokee groups incorporated horses, transforming their culture and relations with settlers. In a chapter that more closely follows from classic borderlands scholarship, Carla Gerona explores the echoes of early European explorers as they entered the historical fog of the Gulf Coast

Archaeology · Art · Cherokee · Ethnology · Frontier · Geography · Indigenous · Narrative · Negotiation · Political science · Power (physics · Scholarship · Settlement (finance · Social science · Sociology · Archaeology and Natural History · History · Law