James Merrell's brilliant book is an account of the "go-betweens," the Europeans and Indians who moved between cultures on the Pennsylvania frontier in efforts to maintain the peace. It is also a reflection on the meanings of wilderness to the colonists and natives of the...
On the Pennsylvania frontier they were Germans and Irish, Delawares and Iroquois, with names like Weiser, Croghan, Shickellamy and Osternados. These were the wood's men, at home in the woods, knowledgeable in the ways of the other, able to negotiate the thickets of cultural misunderstanding...