Covered with Night

A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice in Early America

De: Nicole Eustace

Narrado por: Laural Merlington

Duración: 14 h y 33 m

Resumen del Editor

On the eve of a major treaty conference between Iroquois leaders and European colonists in the distant summer of 1722, two White fur traders attacked an Indigenous hunter and left him for dead near Conestoga, Pennsylvania. Though virtually forgotten today, this act of brutality set into motion a remarkable series of criminal investigations and cross-cultural negotiations that challenged the definition of justice in early America.

In Covered with Night, leading historian Nicole Eustace reconstructs the crime and its aftermath, bringing us into the overlapping worlds of White colonists and Indigenous peoples in this formative period. Frantic efforts to resolve the case ignited a dramatic, far-reaching debate between Native American forms of justice - centered on community, forgiveness, and reparations - and an ideology of harsh reprisal, unique to the colonies and based on British law, which called for the killers' swift execution.

In charting the far-reaching ramifications of the murder, Covered with Night - a phrase from Iroquois mourning practices - overturns persistent assumptions about "civilized" Europeans and "savage" Native Americans. A necessary work of historical reclamation, it ultimately revives a lost vision of crime and punishment that reverberates down into our own time.

©2021 Nicole Eustace (P)2021 Tantor

amazing piece of scholarship

A land treaty that still stands today is a result of the subject of this book - yet the moving story behind it has been forgotten for 200 years; perhaps forgotten within a couple years after the treaty itself was signed - the only seeming concern of colonists was the land that was ceded to them. The author uncovers and ties together from court documents, land records, correspondence, newspaper articles, merchant records and papers of numerous individuals - the divergence of thought and lack of understanding of colonists toward indigenous tribes beliefs and practices. The refusal to accept or unwillingness to see another group’s perspective about life, death and community is so disheartening. Who was truly the more “civil” and wishing to maintain community during these treaty negotiations - and who ultimately saw it as another way to acquire more land rights under the guise of mourning for an Indian man’s loss of life at the hands of a colonial. The narration (for me) marred to some degree what was otherwise an outstanding book - I needed to up the speed to 1.2x to make the audio sound less robotic.

YES! I GET IT! I've read history before - JUST STOP!!!!! British settlers were arrogant jerks!! Aaaaaaaargh

REALLY - the story speaks for itself - as do most from this age - The settlers coming over from Britain were (for the most part, by far) arrogant, egotistical, violent idiots. The Indians, despite their ritual violence (which was quite apalling) were by FAR more humane and more cIvilized. The snarky comments are annoying and insulting to the reader.

Good GOD.

Anyone too stupid to understand this just by listebibg tp a chronological account is not going to bother reading this.

I'm really really really regretting getting the audiobook. I would be far happier skimming....

Driving me nuts.

One or two tongue in cheek comments are fine - Guelzo does this well, even Gordon Wood and Baylin gets their shots in here and there...

I feel like if you took out the snark and the repetitive foreshadowing (i get it. Things will not go down as the settlers expect. 6 DARN CHAPTERS of color commentary interspersed with "even now... John doesn't grasp the severity of his situation ..."

***sigh*** I want to know what happens and it's npt even organized in a way that allows me to skip forward because there's sooooo much sidetracking.

All interesting info that I want to learn, but it feels like for each sentence of actual content there are 3 sentences of attitude.....

Reads like a text book

I was looking forward to reading this, but I didn't like the 3rd person style and the character names became a distraction for me---it felt like a text book. I was having difficulty getting into and following the story. SO, I switched to listening to the book... the narrator was monotonous and so metered I wanted to scream! It may be a great bit of history, but it's so tedious with details is not enjoyable. Sadly, not what I thought it would be.