Allan W. Eckert

The Frontiersman

Melody Izard

I never, ever thought I would enjoy a book about Indians and Indian fighters – but yes, I believe I did: All 665 pages of it (including extensive chapter notes and index). I re-learned some things I very foggily remembered about America’s early history. 
This book has many descriptive chapters about the brutal way the Indians massacred the early frontier families and an equal number of descriptions of the scalping and mutilation of Indians by the white invaders. The author takes great care to report what he calls history but feels much more like historical fiction, in a neutral, factual fashion. So much so that it is very difficult to decide who is the good guy and who is the bad. The only characters who consistently are portrayed as the bad guys are the British who just didn’t seem to be able to give up on claiming the US as part of the empire and paid the Indians for every American prisoner or scalp they brought. Bad, bad British.

The Frontiersman

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