Chadwick Hansen's "Witchcraft at Salem" gives an interesting if controversial account of the infamous Salem Witch Trials that took place in Salem. Massachusetts in 1692. Hansen essentially claims that at least some of the accused persons who were tried and eventually hanged for witchcraft were, in fact, practicing witches.

Using contemporary accounts and the trial documents, Hansen relates the usual details of the rise and fall of the terrible dealings that took place that year in Salem Village. It chronicles how early in the year two young girls, the daughter and niece of Samuel Parris, the local minister, inexplicably fell ill and began experiencing terrible "fits" and suffering visions of nocurnal visitations by what the girls claimed were local witches. The girls had reportedly been experimenting with simple egg yolk divination, under the guide of the Parris' slave Tituba, a mixed-blood Arawak Indian from Barbados (not a full blooded African as has often been reported) to tell the identity of their future husbands. After being being accused of being a witch by the girls and beaten by Reverand Parris, Tituba confessed to not only being a witch, but having made a pact with the Devil himself. Tituba then went on to implicate two other women, Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne. From there, the trials would sprial out of control into a bloodbath as neighbor accused neighbor and old jealousies lead to vengence. In all 19 people would be executed and at least 4 others would die as a result of the trials.

There has been much written on this popular subject, much of it contrary to each other in their theories of the origins and causes of the witchcraze. Theories have ranged from hysteria, food poisoning, to outright lies and falsehood. Hensen takes the view that several of the accused, notably Tituba, Bridget Bishop, and the Rev. George Burroghs (and perhaps others) were in fact practicing some form of witchcraft. He claims that while there is no direct evidence of Diabolic witchcraft or pacts with the Devil, several of these individuals could have been practicing forms of folk magic that would have opened them up to accusations. Tituba may have helped the girls perform a harmless form of divination by floating egg yolks in a glass of water to tell the girls romantic futures, though this type of thing was probably not uncommon in 17th century New England. Bridget Bishop was said to have had "poppets" hidden in her house, which could have been used as a form of image magic, and George Burroughs, a former minister in Salem, was rumored to have studied the occult, perhaps a bit too eagerly for his fellow townsfolk. Hensen's arguements are interesting but open to debate. Most other scholars who have written on this subject tend to dispute these theories citing lack of credible evidence to sustain the belief that any such witchery truly was taking place. While some of these individuals may have had some shady dealings or secretly practiced folk magic, one thing is certain, they were not witches. Despite this, Hensen does leave the door slightly cracked to the possibility of something more sinister going on in Salem then is generally admitted, which does make for some interesting reading.

The "Saducismus Triumphatus" of Joseph Glanvill, originally published in 1681, is one of the seminal works on witches, demons, ghosts, and other paranormal happenings. Glanvill was a distinguished member of the famous Royal Society (of which Isaac Newton was a member) and was disturbed by the rising skepticism and disbelief concerning demons and witches in the late 17th century. Glanvill believed, perhaps justly, that a rising disbelief in ghosts and spirits would eventually lead to a disbelief in Christianity. Glanvill, as an active opponent to Atheism, set out to prove, using scientific means, that ghosts and demons were in fact real, and continued to be a menace to a good Christian society. In doing so, Glanvill produced what has been called the first book on psychical research and what is generally considered the most influential of all English works on witchcraft and the paranormal.

Glanvill relates a number of stories that he collected from friends and colleagues concerning witchery, demons, and other supernatural beings, though he himself witnessed one first hand. Glanvill personally visited the Mompesson house and claimed to witness the doings of the famous Demon Drummer of Tedworth, supposedly the disembodied spirit of a dead soldier who was thought to haunt the place. The other tales deal with other interesting incidents of levitations, flying witches, sabbats, and much more. It is understandable why this work was so popular in its day despite the growing disbelief in the existence of witches.

As noted below, Glanvill's works were highly influential on the Boston clergyman Cotton Mather and were referenced in his "Wonders of the Invisible World", a defence of the Salem Witch Trials published shortly after that infamous affair. Glanvill's attempt to use science and reason to empirically document the supernatural was a first and this book is a valuable addition to the literature of the paranormal.

"The Falcon" is the autobiography of Shaw-Shaw-Wa Be-Na-Se or John Tanner, a White Indian captured by the Shawnee along the Ohio River in 1789 and later sold to an Ojibwa family in northern Michigan. He went on to live a long and fascinating life among the Indians of the Old Northwest working as a trapper for the Hudson Bay Company and serving as the interpreter at the trading post at Sault St. Marie. He spent some time searching out his white family in Kentucky before returning to Michigan to be with his Indian children, forever spurning the white way of life. He went on to write this narrative in 1830 shortly before becoming a murder suspect and disappearing into the north woods forever.

Tanner's narrative is truly amazing for it's matter-of-fact style and the wealth of information it contains on every facet of Indian life in the late 18th and early 19th century including hunting, family life, Indian-white relations, foodways, views on war and murder, even attitudes toward sexual orientation. Tanner tells a story from the point of view of a man who has lived a hard life but is determined to live it as well as he is able. He makes no romantic notions about the Indians nor does he have sentimental longings for his white family. Unlike other famous captivity narratives like those of Mary Rowlandson, James Smith, or Oliver Spencer, this story is of the unredeemed captive who willingly chooses to embrace the neo-lithic lifestyle and the hardships that such a life entails, but makes no regrets of his life choices.

The historical and ethnographical information contained here alone makes it worthwhile reading, but the pure human content the author puts into this work makes it truly great.

This is a well done account of the bloody history of the Forks of the Ohio, that little spot of ground where the Monongahela and Alleghany Rivers converge to form the Ohio at the point where Pittsburgh stands today. This area was the scene of a heated dispute which lead ultimately to the outbreak of the French and Indian War as three cultures clashed over control of the Ohio Country.

In 1753, George Washington led a party of men to demand the withdrawl of French forces from this much disputed land. Washington was one of the first to comment on the military and economic value of the site and demonstrated the English willingness to fight for control of this desirable land. The Indians, caught between the clashing French and English armies, sought only to live in peace on their own lands. Washington would go on to fail miserably at Fort Neccessity in 1754, as would General Braddock on the Monongahela a year later. It was only after the Ohio Indians were convinced to abandon their support of the French at Fort Dusquene in 1758 that Forbes' Expedition was able to successfully take the Forks.

Fort Pitt would go on to importance again during the American Revolution but would never possess the strategic value it had in prior days. This book gives an excellent account of the many men and events that helped shaped what would ultimately become the United States.

This book is an incredible account of the life and times of Mary Jemison, a white woman taken captive during the French and Indian War and adopted into the Seneca tribe of the Iroquois in western New York. This tale covers her more than 70 years living among them through many of the most vital years of the long history of the Iroquois Confederacy.

In November 1823, when she was in her 80s, Mary Jemison, at the urging of many of the friendly local inhabitants, gave her amazing life story to James Seaver to publish for posterity. Though his truthfulness in some details of that account has often been called into question, this book is one of the most important and complete of any of the Indian captivity narratives to come out of the period between the French and Indian War and the War of 1812, which most historians mark as the end of the period of influence of the Eastern Woodland tribes. This account gives unequalled insight into the Seneca Indians and their ways including religion, food, hunting, warfare, culture, etc.

Mary had many opportunities to leave the Indians and return to white civilization but chose not to do so and thus was witness to some of the most amazing events in the history of her adopted people. Her tale is important to not only historians and ethnologists, but to the general public itself as it is a truly amazing story of triumph and tragedy for a proud people struggling to survive in the face of overwhelming odds as a young United States continued to expand, forever extinguishing their way of life.

Walter Edgar's "Partisans and Recoats" purports to tell the story of the Revolutionary War in the southern colonies, and to some extent it does, but concentrates primarily on the fighting in the backcountry of South Carolina in the years 1780-1781 between the bitterly divided loyalist and patriot partisans who turned the backwoods of the colony into a bloody war zone.

The book gives a brief history of the violence that threatened the stability of the colony in the years just after the French and Indian War. From the conflicts between outlaws, Regulators, and Moderators, grew the resentment and animoisty between the backwoods Scots-Irish frontiersmen and the more established Anglican Tidewater population. These political and religious differences soon carried over into the war of the rebellion as loyalists and patriots spent many years of the war butchering each other after the British invaded in 1780. Edgar goes on to emphasize his belief that, more than any other event in the war in South Carolina, that the rebel victory at Huck's Defeat was the true turning point in the war that helped to raise the patriot cause, leading to the Battle of King's Mountain and ultimate victory.

This is a short book and one that seems to eschew details of the truly momentous events during the war in the South. It gives short shrift to the Battle of King's Mountain, where major Patrick Ferguson's Tories were crushed by the Over Mountain Men in a defeat that, in my opinion, was the real decisive and psychological victory that helped turn the tide against the British in the South by depriving them of the loyalist support Cornwallis desperately needed to bolster his efforts to subjugate the Carolinas. It barely even mentions Cowpens and Guilford Courthouse. This book is interesting for its attention to the little known events that shook the Carolina backcountry during the bloodiest years of the war, but leaves out too much detail and seems to provide little more than introductory material on a complex subject.

This is a short collection of some of the most famous Indian captivity narratives written during the late 18th and 19th centuries when warfare raged between white settlers and the native Indian inhabitants of North America. These narratives are not only interesting and entertaining as drama, but are invaluable to historians and ethnographers as they provide some of the best first-hand accounts of life among the native tribes of the United States at a time when they were being wiped out by white expansion.

These narratives show what life was like as an Indian, including all the blood and horror as well as the genuine kindness and devotion inherent in any human society. You will note that many captivity accounts were in many ways positive experiences for the captives who were adopted into a tribe and treated with the love and respect they would accord any of their own people. Such is the case with men like James Smith who spent five years living with the Ohio Indians along Lake Erie. These tales were popular in their own time for providing an entertaining escape for people who were both fearful yet fascinated by the Indians and their "savage" ways. From these accounts we learn much about Indian lifeways, food, culture, and religion. We also learn of the cruel barbarities that the Indians could inflict on their enemies, as we see in the tale of Dr. John Knight who witnessed the horrific torture and death of Col. William Crawford in 1782, or the daring escape of John Slover, who had spent many years among the Shawnee and Wyandot as a captive and who later escaped and returned to wage war against his former captors, only to be retaken after the Battle of Sandusky. A slow and terrible death awaited any escaped captive who fell back into Indian hands. But what is really interesting is the number of captives who spent many years living, happily in many cases, with the Indians, showing that they were not the totally savage heathens protrayed in many boosk and movies, but a society of human beings who could love and hate as equally as any other.

This is a valuble introduction to a fascinating genere of litereature and is an important part of history that should not be overlooked. To anyone interested in delving deeper into this subject I would also recommend checking out Archibald Loudon's "Indian Narratives" as well as "A History of Jonathan Alder".

Downes "Council Fires on the Upper Ohio" was written in 1940 and here reprinted in paperback, making it accessible to a modern audience. It is concerned with the wars of empire that took place in the Ohio Country from 1700-1795, a time when the land that is today the states of Ohio and western Pennsylvania were part of a vast untamed wilderness inhabited by numerous Indian tribes who fought to keep the land from the encroaching white settlers. It shows the interdependant nature of the early white settlers and their Indian neighbors and how slowly, the Indians came to be so dependant on trade items like guns and liquor, that they lost their ability to keep themselves seperate from the alien European culture that threathened to envelope them, and in the end, they could not resist the overwhelming tide that would displace them forever.

The book begins at the time of Queen Anne's War, showing how the growing white settlements pushed westward from Pennsylvania and Virginia, displacing numerous native tribes like the Delaware, Shawnee, and Seneca. It chronicles the outbreak of the French and Indian War in 1754 as France and England vied for control of the Ohio Country, and their attempts to manipulate the tribes to fight for their cause. It addresses the roles played by the Ohio tribes during the American Revolution, as the British, desperate to keep the Americans out of the Northwest rally the Ohio tribes to strike the western settlements with a bloody upraised tomahawk. Finally, betrayed by their British allies, the Ohio tribes, now left to fend for themselves against an unstoppable juggernaught, despite valiant resistance against Generals Harmar and St. Clair, finally succumb to Anthony Wayne's forces at Fallen Timbers in 1794. The Greenville treaty a year later will seal their fate and that of Ohio once and for all.

This book in filled with much information and is a useful reference work, but is far too dry to hold much interest as an entertaining read. However, it is effective in that it tells the story of the eastern frontier from the Indian perspective, one that in 1940 was decidedly negelected. But it is also ultimately a tragic tale, as it is a chronicle of the passing of a people and their way of life.

Contrary to popular belief, the Revolutionary War was not fought all on the East coast. Some of the hardest fought and bloodiest battles were in the western country, territory that would one day become Kentucky, West Virginia, and Ohio, but during the Revolution were considered part of Virginia.

"Virginia's Western War 1775-1786" tells the history of these interesting and important events. Beginning with the settlement of Kentucky by Daniel Boone, Richard Henderson, James Herrod, and company, the western frontier is soon engulfed in fire and blood as the Indians, opposed to white expansion into their lands and supported by their British allies who hope to attack the rebellious colonies on their vulnerable western border, launch a massive campaign to destroy the settlements. With action at Wheeling, Boonesboro, and Harrodstown, the western frontiersmen are forced to esentially fend for themselves against the hostile tribes and British rangers as the Continental forces back east cannot afford to spare money or troops to defend them. In 1778 Virginia launches a campaign led by Gen. George Rogers Clark to reduce the British posts on the Mississippi and Wabash Rivers, which ultimately, following his extraordinary victory at Vincennes, succeeds in winning virtually the entire Northwest Territory for the Americans. Despite these victories, Indian depredations would continue in this region until 1786, followed by the retaliatory strikes by expeditions under Clark, John Bowman, and Benjamin Logan, thus earning the region's macabre name of "that dark and bloody ground".

Despite the Treaty of Paris in 1783, the Revolution never truly ended in the west, with Indians continuing to fight the Virginians over the Ohio country into the 1790s. This book helps to shed some light on a little-known but fascinating aspect of the war that is too often overlooked.

"Seeds of Empire" is an account of the war for control of the New York frontier and particularly of General John Sullivan's campaign against the Iroquois during the Revolutionary War.

The book gives an excellent overview of the history of the conflict with the Indians in the upstate New York region during the war and gives a particularly good account of St. Leger's expedition against Fort Stanwix and the bloody action at Oriskany in 1777.

In 1779, George Washington, trying to cope with the British on the East Coast, was desperate to find a solution to the "Indian Problem" that had been plauging the frontier settlements in the western country of New York and Pennsylvania. Washtington realized that the best way to deal with marauding British-allied Iroquois Indians was to attack and destory their villages, crops, and supply bases. Thus, he ordered Gen. John Sullivan with a large force of troops, supported by a smaller expedition under the command of Col. Daniel Brodhead further west from Fort Pitt, to march north into Indian territory in western New York. Washinton's orders were very specific that "the immediate objects are the total destruction and devastation of their settlements." Sullivan managed to engage the Indians in battle and drive them away, laying waste to many villages and fields full of crops ready to be harvested. As a result of this example of devastating total war, the Iroquois were reduced to poverty and starvation and effectively taken out of the war. Washington's orders were fulfilled, but at a high price to the Indians. There has been much controversy regarding Sullivan and Washinton's action during this campaign as it was essentially seen as a war of extermination. There are many arguments for and against Washington's decision to subjuagate the Indians with such brutal tactics, but the historical truth is nonetheless that the once-proud and powerful Iroquois League was smashed and would never recover.

This book is an excellent history of these important events that are too often ignored by many popular and scholarly histories of the Revolutionary War. It is often forgotten that the War was fought not only on the great battlefields of the East, but on the frontier, where some of the bloodiest fighting of the war took place.