Rob Harper. Unsettling the West

The Ohio Valley during the American Revolution has long been a favored tableau of historians. Regional figures such as Daniel Boone, John Murray, White Eyes (Koquethagechton), and Guyasuta command our attention, living—and sometimes dying—for their stake in the fate of empires. In Unsettling the West: Violence and State Building in the Ohio Valley, historian Rob Harper argues that nascent states drove violence in the Ohio Valley. Through an exacting, year-to-year accounting, Harper contrasts periods of relative peace in which disinterested or ambivalent colonial powers neglected the region against outpourings of violence that coincided with the determined effort of elites, and the states they represented, to shape the lands along the Ohio River. In 1774, when Murray, Earl of Dunmore, promised plunder and patronage to those who would support him, more than two thousand men invaded Native American lands north of the Ohio River. Later, in 1782, when Pennsylvanians ruthlessly smashed the skulls of ninety-six Christian Delawares at Gnadenhütten, they were inspired to do so by financiers and politicos at the highest levels of government. In both instances, networks of power and patronage, emanating from the highest levels of government, created an essential context for the violence.

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