Product Description

The Conquerors, the third volume in Allan Eckert's acclaimed series, The Winning of America, continues the narrative of The Frontiersmen and Wilderness Empire: the violent and monumental story of the wresting of the North American continent from the Indians. But the locale has moved westward—to the northern frontiers of Pennsylvania, to Michigan and the Green Bay area, especially the crucial outposts of Fort Pitt and Fort Detroit, Sandusky and Mackinac.

Wilderness Empire concluded with the English victory in the French and Indian War, a conquest which gave them possession of an immense North American empire. Now English soldiers and traders began the trek across the wilderness to man the former French outposts, to secure the land for the Crown and to exploit its riches. But these men were to find that the conquest of the Northwest did not end with the defeat of the French. The Indians had only resentment for the English, whom they regarded not as conquerors, but as unwelcome interlopers on their own ancestral lands. At last, provoked beyond endurance by restrictive policies, and encouraged by agents of the French, the most powerful tribes of the region united behind the charismatic Pontiac, war chief of the Ottawa, in a concerted effort to drive the English forever form the Northwest.

The Conquerors is the story of Pontiac's uprising and the men involved in it: the conquering English, both soldiers and intrepid civilians, who undertook the dangers of the Indian trade for profit and the adventure of opening a new land; and, most importantly, the Indians, who refused to accept the yoke of the conquered and were driven to violence to protect their homes and their way of life from the encroachment of an alien civilization.

Combining the accuracy of a chronicle and the spellbinding pace of a story well told, Allan Eckert evokes the high drama of the conquest of the Northwest and the breathtaking grandeur of the land itself.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #28758 in Books
• Published on: 2002-03-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 720 pages

Review
"Reading Eckert is like listening to a master storyteller:  he presents his material in vivid detail, using the novelist's technique to enhance dramatic events."-- Publishers Weekly -- Review

Review
"Reading Eckert is like listening to a master storyteller:  he presents his material in vivid detail, using the novelist's technique to enhance dramatic events."-- Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher
They had defeated the French and now the English possessed the vast North American Empire. Soldiers, traders, settlers--all began the trek across the wilderness to claim the land and its riches. Against this relentless tide Indian warriors rose up in bitter fury exploded in the bloody battle for the conquest of the Northwest territory.

"Reading Eckert is like listening to a master storyteller: he presents his material in vivid detail, using the novelist's technique to enhance dramatic events."-- Publishers Weekly

Customer Reviews

Absolutely fascinating.
Since a co-worker introduced me to Eckert's 'Narratives' series, I don't find time for much else. I finished Wilderness Empire, the Conquerer and am now into The Frontiersman. This has not only been a great learning experience, but an absolutely fascinating account of the American Indians, French, English, and early American colonists and the conflicts involved in the taking of America. Historic characters such as George Washington, Daniel Boone and Chiefs Pontiac and Tecumsah, come to life in a narrative that makes you feel that you are there. Eckert is a master of presenting an objective viewpoint of history - as opposed to presenting history in the viewpoint of the victors, usually the norm.

should be required reading for high school history students
Thank you Mr. Eckert for taking the BOREDOM out of history. The graphic (and realistic) details of the struggle on the frontier captured my attention from start to finish. I can't wait to move on to the next in the series.

Pontiac's Rebellion and the War Against the Indians
This is another of Allan W. Eckert's Winning of America series. This installment deals with the bloody Indian uprising in 1763 attributed to the Ottawa chief Pontiac in the days following the fall of New France to the British during the French and Indian War. In actuality, Pontiac was not so much the leader as the initial inspiration for a frontier-wide attempt by the Great Lakes Indians to rise up and overthrow their British conquerors and restore their French allies to control of the lands west of the Alleghenies.

The uprising was a result of agressive and arrogant British policies toward the Indians, whom the British commander-in-chief Jeffery Amherst viewed as a dangerous and barbaric race that deserved to be exterminated. Against the advice of his advisors and officers, Amherst had instituted a blatant anti-Indian policy forbidding the sale of arms and ammunition to the western tribes which had the effect of effectively starving them out as they could no longer hunt and provide for themselves, a direct result of the near-total dependence of the tribes on European trade goods. When the British assumed control of the former French forts and settlements in the Northwest, the stage was set for a terrible confrontation.

Pontiac's uprising was one of the largest and nearly successful Indian rebellions in North American history, with the Indians for a time controlling nearly all the forts in the Northwest territory and laying seige to Fort Detroit and Fort Pitt. It was only with Colonel Henry Bouquet's victory at Bushy Run and the subsequent march of Bouquet and Bradstreet's armies into the Ohio country that finally quelled the bloodshed. The failure of the rebellion ultimately showed that the British were there to stay and that not only was the power of the French in America smashed forever, but that the symbiotic relationship between the whites and the native tribes was coming to an end, and with it the Indians way of life.

Eckert brings the story alive with great historical characters like Pontiac, George Croghan, Alexander Henry, Robert Rogers, John Bradstreet, and Henry Bouquet and depicts the important events that helped shape the early western frontier that would one day become the states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana. Highly recommended.