In this pioneering book Daniel Usner examines the economic and cultural interactions among the Indians, Europeans, and African slaves of colonial Louisiana, including the province of West Florida. Rather than focusing on a single cultural group or on a particular economic activity, this study traces the complex social linkages among Indian villages, colonial plantations, hunting camps, military outposts, and port towns across a large region of pre-cotton South. Usner begins by providing a chronological overview of events from French settlement of the area in 1699 to Spanish acquisition of West Florida after the Revolution. He then shows how early confrontations and transactions shaped the formation of Louisiana into a distinct colonial region with a social system based on mutual needs of subsistence. Usner's focus on commerce allows him to illuminate the motives in the contest for empire among the French, English, and Spanish, as well as to trace the personal networks of communication and exchange that existed among the territory's inhabitants. By revealing the economic and social world of early Louisianians, he lays the groundwork for a better understanding of later Southern society.

Between the early 17th century and the early 20th, nearly all U.S. land was transferred from American Indians to whites. Banner argues that neither simple coercion nor simple consent reflects the complicated legal history of land transfers--time, place, and the balance of power between Indians and settlers decided the outcome of land struggles.

A sweeping history of the cultural clashes between Indians and the British, Spanish, Mexicans, and Americans. A story of the contest for land and power across multiple and simultaneous frontiers.

In 1984, when Glenda Riley's 'Women and Indians on the Frontier' was published, it was hailed for being the first study to take into account the roles that gender, race, and class played in Indian/white relations during the westward migration. In the twenty years since, the study of those aspects of western history has exploded. Confronting Race reflects the changes in western women's history and in the author's own approach. In spite of white women's shifting attitudes toward Indians, they retained colonialist outlooks toward all peoples. Women who migrated West carried deeply ingrained images and preconceptions of themselves and racially based ideas of the non-white groups they would meet. In their letters home and in their personal diaries and journals, they perpetuated racial stereotypes, institutions, and practices. The women also discovered their own resilience in the face of the harsh demands of the West. Although most retained their racist concepts, they came to realise that women need not be passive or fearful in their interactions with Indians. Riley's sources are the diaries and journals of trail women, settlers, army wives, and missionaries, and popular accounts in ne

Looks at the Indians who survived the invasion of white settlers during the nineteenth century and integrated their lives into white society while managing to maintain their own culture