Winning of America/Narratives of America Books

The frontiersmen were a remarkable breed of men. They were often rough and illiterate, sometimes brutal and vicious, often seeking an escape in the wilderness of mid-America from crimes committed back east. In the beautiful but deadly country which would one day come to be known as West Virginia, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, more often than not they left their bones to bleach beside forest paths or on the banks of the Ohio River, victims of Indians who claimed the vast virgin territory and strove to turn back the growing tide of whites. These frontiersmen are the subjects of Allan Eckert's dramatic history. Against the background of such names as George Rogers Clark, Daniel Boone, Arthur St. Clair, Anthony Wayne, Simon Girty and William Henry Harrison, Eckert has recreated the life of one of America's most outstanding heroes, Simon Kenton. Kenton's role in opening the Northwest Territory to settlement more than rivaled that of his friend Daniel Boone. By his eighteenth birthday, Kenton had already won frontier renown as woodsman, fighter and scout. His incredible physical strength and endurance, his great dignity and innate kindness made him the ideal prototype of the frontier hero. Yet there is another story to The Frontiersmen. It is equally the story of one of history's greatest leaders, whose misfortune was to be born to a doomed cause and a dying race. Tecumseh, the brilliant Shawnee chief, welded together by the sheer force of his intellect and charisma an incredible Indian confederacy that came desperately close to breaking the thrust of the white man's westward expansion. Like Kenton, Tecumseh was the paragon of his people's virtues, and the story of his life, in Allan Eckert's hands, reveals most profoundly the grandeur and the tragedy of the American Indian. No less importantly, The Frontiersmen is the story of wilderness America itself, its penetration and settlement, and it is Eckert's particular grace to be able to evoke life and meaning from the raw facts of this story. In The Frontiersmen not only do we care about our long-forgotten fathers, we live again with them. Researched for seven years, The Frontiersmen is the first in Mr. Eckert's "The Winning of America" series.

For over two hundred years no Indian force in America was so powerful and feared as the Iroquois League. Throughout two thirds of this continent, the cry of "The Iroquois are coming!" was enough to demoralize entire tribes. But these Iroquois occupied and controlled a vast wilderness empire which beckoned like a precious gem to foreign powers. France and England secured toeholds and suddenly each was claiming as its own this land of the Iroquois. Alliance with the Indians was the key; whichever power controlled them could destroy the other. Wilderness Empire is the gripping narrative of the eighteenth-century struggle of these two powers to win for themselves the allegiance of the Indians in a war for territorial dominance, yet without letting these Indians know that the prize of the war would be this very Iroquois land. It is the story of English strength hamstrung by incredible incompetence, of French power sapped by devastating corruption. It is the story of the English, Indian and French individuals whose lives intertwine in the greatest territorial struggle in American history--the French and Indian War.

The Conquerors, the third volume in Allan Eckert's acclaimed series, The Winning of America, continues the narrative of The Frontiersmen and Wilderness Empire: the violent and monumental story of the wresting of the North American continent from the Indians. But the locale has moved westward—to the northern frontiers of Pennsylvania, to Michigan and the Green Bay area, especially the crucial outposts of Fort Pitt and Fort Detroit, Sandusky and Mackinac. Wilderness Empire concluded with the English victory in the French and Indian War, a conquest which gave them possession of an immense North American empire. Now English soldiers and traders began the trek across the wilderness to man the former French outposts, to secure the land for the Crown and to exploit its riches. But these men were to find that the conquest of the Northwest did not end with the defeat of the French. The Indians had only resentment for the English, whom they regarded not as conquerors, but as unwelcome interlopers on their own ancestral lands. At last, provoked beyond endurance by restrictive policies, and encouraged by agents of the French, the most powerful tribes of the region united behind the charismatic Pontiac, war chief of the Ottawa, in a concerted effort to drive the English forever form the Northwest. The Conquerors is the story of Pontiac's uprising and the men involved in it: the conquering English, both soldiers and intrepid civilians, who undertook the dangers of the Indian trade for profit and the adventure of opening a new land; and, most importantly, the Indians, who refused to accept the yoke of the conquered and were driven to violence to protect their homes and their way of life from the encroachment of an alien civilization. Combining the accuracy of a chronicle and the spellbinding pace of a story well told, Allan Eckert evokes the high drama of the conquest of the Northwest and the breathtaking grandeur of the land itself.

The Wilderness War is the eagerly awaited fourth volume in Allan W. Eckert’s acclaimed series of narratives, The Winning of America, the violent and monumental description of the wresting of the North American continent from the Indians. Two hundred fifty years had elapsed since the Five Nations, the greatest of the Indian tribes, ceased their continual warfare among themselves and banded together for mutual defense. Their union had created the feared and formidable Iroquois League; their empire stretched from Lake Champlain, across New York to Niagara Falls. Theirs was a remarkable form of representative government that presaged our own, and their wealth lay in the vast, beautiful lands abundant with crops. As warriors they were unsurpassed—even the depredations of the recent French and Indian War could not diminish their prowess. But by 1770 the white men living in their land were fighting among themselves again, and war came once more to the Iroquois land. The Wilderness War begins in 1763 (where the second book in this series, Wilderness Empire, concluded with the English victory over the French in the French and Indian War) and continues through the American Revolution to 1780, by which time the Iroquois League had been ruptured and the Indians dispossessed of their homelands. Their defeat and humiliation occurred despite the valor of their famous war chief Thayendanegea, better known as Joseph Brant, who had allied his tribes with the one man the Iroquois loved and trusted, Sir William Johnson, Colonial Superintendent of Indian Affairs, and subsequently with Johnson’s son and nephew, leaders of the Tory forces in New York. Based on an abundance of primary sources: original letters and notes, diaries and journals, deeds, wills, military records, Indian tribal records, logbooks, newspapers and magazines and government reports, and dominated by the compelling character of Chief Joseph Brant, The Wilderness War gives a factual account (sustained with the suspense and pace of first-rate fiction) of the last years of the Iroquois Empire and the first years of the American nation. Allan W. Eckert has molded the raw facts of history into a moving, perceptive and penetrating narrative. It is filled with the pathos and action, humanity and savagery which were all a part of survival on the expanding American frontier.

With his unmatched ability to bring our vibrant early history to life, Allan W. Eckert now presents his latest saga of the battle for the North American wilderness.  Here, in all its fascinating human drama, is the struggle to control the "gateway to empire"--Chicago Portage, the vital link between the East and the untapped riches of the west.  Caught up in the turbulent sweep of events are two men--John Kinzie, a successful trader with a heroic taste for a new frontiers who fought to live in mutual respect with the Indians, and Tecumseh the  Shawnee leader, a man of unparalleled wisdom and courage who would see his dream of a united Indian empire betrayed.  As the British move toward the war 1812 both men and their people would be trapped in a tragic conflict that would threaten the land they so passionately loved.

One of the premier chroniclers of our nation's turbulent frontier history, Allan W. Ecker now presents another spellbinding chapter in the conquest of the American wilderness.  Here is the powerful, compellingly human story of the white man's struggle to claim the rich land of the Northern Mississippi--ancestral home of the Fox and Sac tribes--from the legendary war chief Black Hawk.  Having killed his first enemy at sixteen.  This proud, brooding warrior extends a hand in friendship to the Spanish and the British, but harbors a lifelong hatred for the Americans, who once burned his home village.  Now charged by the president himself, the ambitious governor of Illinois Territory leads a brave and illustrious group of settlers and soldiers to wrest the beautiful land from a nation of destiny and a noble chieftain fated to be betrayed by his own kind.