Two hundred and fifty years after the American Revolution, historians continue to find new stories to enrich our understanding of the creation of the United States. In Defending Fort Stanwix and Declarations of Independence, William L. Kidder and Christopher R. Pearl, respectively, draw our attention to the hinterlands of New York and Pennsylvania to add voices often ignored in histories of the founding. Both books testify to the complexity of the era and the contradictions of a nation forged with the twin ambitions of liberty and empire.One of the most important yet little studied theaters of the American Revolutionary War is central New York where the Patriots’ defense of Fort Stanwix in August 1777 facilitated the defeat of British Lieutenant General John Burgoyne at Saratoga two months later. In Defending Fort Stanwix: A Story of the New York Frontier in the American Revolution, William L. Kidder offers a comprehensive account of the fort’s construction, siege, and aftermath. In so doing, he “explores the stories of Continental Army soldiers, local militiamen, Indians, and civilians, both male and female, for a fuller understanding of the successful defense” (viii).Fort Stanwix was first built in 1758 during the Seven Years’ War when British Brigadier General John Stanwix determined that the region needed better defenses. The spot chosen—today, Rome, New York—was then known as the Oneida Carrying Place because it was where members of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) nations transported their canoes from the Mohawk River Valley to Oneida Lake. The British never completed the fort before they abandoned it, such that by the time of the Treaty of Fort Stanwix conference in 1768, negotiators had to erect temporary buildings on the site.The heart of Kidder’s story begins in May 1776 when US Major General Philip Schuyler dispatched the 3rd New Jersey Regiment to rebuild the fort. Kidder takes a granular approach, detailing unsung heroes like French engineer Captain Bernard Moissac de Lamarquise, who sketched plans for the fort’s construction, and Oneida blacksmith Thomas Spencer, an effective scout and a “strong, eloquent supporter of the ideals of the American cause” (43). Kidder traces the grueling challenges of building a defensive structure on the frontier as well as the daily lives of soldiers, colonists, and Natives in and around the fort.In May 1777, Burgoyne dispatched Lieutenant Colonel Barry St. Leger with an army of 1,400 soldiers to head east from Lake Ontario toward Albany. By this point, US Colonel Peter Gansevoort had taken command of Fort Stanwix. As Gansevoort hurried to finish the fort, he sought recruits and supplies, court-martialed drunks and deserters, and pursued peace with the Oneidas. Finally, on August 1, the British army arrived and laid siege to the fort. Kidder gives an extremely detailed account of the twenty-three harrowing days inside the fort as British forces repeatedly bombarded Fort Stanwix. Ultimately, the siege was broken when US Brigadier General Benedict Arnold’s subterfuge convinced St. Leger to withdraw.Kidder concludes by tracing life in the fort after the siege ended. Although the British had departed, Gansevoort still had to battle disease, desertion, and boredom until the American victory at Yorktown made the frontier defense unnecessary and the fort began to deteriorate. By the time that Haudenosaunee representatives gathered for a second Treaty of Fort Stanwix conference in 1784, all that was left was “a mostly grass-and brush-covered earth shell containing just two bark-roofed earthen-floored huts” (256).Defending Fort Stanwix offers keen insights into army life during the Revolution. The strength of the book is its detailed accounts of men like Spencer and Gansevoort, but Kidder also makes a concerted effort to include women like Mary Smith Tapp who endured the siege while five months pregnant. He also makes the Oneidas central to his account, highlighting the difficulties Indigenous peoples faced in the Revolution.At the same time, Kidder’s narrow focus means he gives short shrift to related events that could have made the book more consequential. The Battle of Oriskany and Arnold’s maneuvers receive little attention, despite their importance to the siege. Likewise, Kidder underplays the internal conflicts of the Six Nations, thereby missing an opportunity to better understand the Iroquois civil war which centered around Fort Stanwix.In Declarations of Independence: Indigenous Resilience, Colonial Rivalries, and the Cost of Revolution, Christopher R. Pearl also examines the Revolution in the backcountry, focusing on the upper Susquehanna River Valley, which today includes Lycoming County, Pennsylvania. This seldom-studied theater of the war allows Pearl to explore fights between Native Americans, settlers, speculators, and imperial officials from 1749 to 1784. The “American Revolution was much messier and more contradictory than Americans today understand,” he asserts (5).Pearl’s story begins with the Susquehanna Nations (also known as the Susquehanna Indians) who occupied the region in the middle of the eighteenth century. A mix of Indigenous tribes and peoples, the Susquehannas’ land was claimed by the Haudenosaunees and coveted by proprietary officials and desperate squatters. Lenape (Delaware) chief Teedyuscung defended the Susquehannas’ lands by demanding that Pennsylvania recognize Indigenous sovereignty, although the colonists ignored this as borderland disputes snowballed into the Seven Years’ War.The Treaty of Easton of 1758 ended France’s claims to the region, but this led to new problems. Soon settlers from Connecticut joined those from Pennsylvania as an intercolonial competition to the land broke out. This was followed by interracial violence that matched Pontiac’s War and the Paxton Boys in intensity and destruction. Pearl writes, “In sum, speculators vied against squatters, squatters and speculators instigated disputes with Native peoples, Native nations fought back while also arguing among themselves, and even the elites battled each other as land companies and colonial governments tried to undermine each other” (127).In 1768, colonists and Natives sought peace by agreeing to the Treaty of Fort Stanwix which drew a borderline separating colonial and Indigenous lands. Although this opened new land for white settlement, most of the property was doled out to the governor’s favorites or snatched up by speculators. As a result, the mostly Scots Irish settlers headed west to the Lycoming Creek area and onto the Susquehannas’ land where they became squatters.By 1773, over two hundred colonial families occupied the region, and they organized themselves into a rudimentary republic known as Fair Play. Fair Play was governed by a tribunal which “gained its legitimacy by rooting itself in popular sovereignty, boasting annual elections, a mandatory rotation of officeholders, and a franchise that included any white male who improved land in the territory” (193). The settlers enforced laws and morals, and they supported the growing independence movement. Driven by a hatred of eastern elites and a suspicion of Native Americans, the men of Fair Play gathered under an elm tree on July 4, 1776, and proudly proclaimed “themselves and the country free and independent of Great Britain” (213).Continental and British armies did not intrude on the Susquehanna Valley; rather, the local cycle of interracial violence intensified. In May and June 1778, “a combination of loyalist rangers and Seneca, Cayuga, Delaware, and Shawnee warriors, as well as a detachment of Nanticoke and Conoy” raided the valley, murdering settlers and burning their houses (229). The settlers retaliated, and the violence continued. With the Treaty of Paris, peace finally came to the Lycoming Valley, after which the Susquehanna Indians were forced from the region and the republic of Fair Play was folded into the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.Declarations of Independence draws attention to a region rarely included in histories of the American Revolution. It also highlights Indigenous peoples and leaders, as well as the curious republic of Fair Play, which are often overlooked by historians. However, Pearl’s approach is uneven. The book is strongest when it focuses on the Susquehanna Valley, but weaker when it wanders farther afield, such as when Pearl devotes an entire chapter to the intricacies of the Treaty of Fort Stanwix of 1768 negotiations.The violent competition for land along the Revolutionary frontier is a terrible part of American history, but it is not entirely unknown. Pearl’s analysis would have benefitted from closer conversation with the work of Richard White, Peter Silver, and Alan Taylor; specifically, how what transpired in the Susquehanna Valley compared to other sites of interracial conflict along the New York and Pennsylvania frontiers.1Taken together, Defending Fort Stanwix and Declarations of Independence demonstrate the complexities and contradictions of the American Revolution in the northern backcountry. Both books highlight voices not typically part of the story, and for this reason, both make an important contribution to the scholarship. For anyone who thinks that everything has already been written about the Revolution, these two books prove that there are many new stories hiding in plain sight for the skilled historian willing to look for them.The two books also demonstrate that Native Americans are now a central part of the history of the America’s fight for independence. Twenty years ago, Colin G. Calloway’s The American Revolution in Indian Country served as an intervention, inserting stories that had long been kept separate from accounts of the nation’s founding.2 That is no longer the case. Instead, the historical analysis has matured and diversified such that there are now multiple perspectives. This can be seen in the language of the two authors. Kidder uses Indian to describe Native Americans, while Pearl prefers Indigenous. Similarly, while Pearl refers to the Six Nations of the Iroquois with the present-day demonym Haudenosaunee, he nevertheless uses the historical term Delaware to denote people who today call themselves Lenape.Further work is needed on Native Americans in the Revolutionary era, although future historians may stick to an Indigenous chronology rather than an American one. Kidder investigates the Oneidas, and Pearl the Susquehanna Nations, at points when they intersected with white power struggles. While this certainly complicates the story of the Revolution, it also risks relegating Indigenous peoples to supporting actors or noble victims. Future scholars might ask how the Revolution fits into Native stories rather than only the other way around.Both books also suggest that the peoples who lived along the northern borderland in the eighteenth century had things in common. Both natives and newcomers found themselves at the crossroads of empires, far from the power centers that determined their fate. The Susquehanna Nations had their lands given away by the more powerful Haudenosaunees, similar to how white settlers saw their promised lands doled out to the governor’s friends and speculators. For this reason, both the Susquehannas and the residents of Fair Play had as much reason to be angry with people of their own race as anyone else. Perhaps the Oneidas understood this when they aided the soldiers at Fort Stanwix. There was a desperation on the frontier that Indians and squatters shared.Although the American Revolution began as a contest for power in Boston and London, it reverberated throughout the world, including the backcountry of New York and Pennsylvania. Defending Fort Stanwix and Declarations of Independence offer fresh accounts of what this looked like.
John Gilbert McCurdy (Thu,) studied this question.