1977, Time-Life Books, NY, 240 pages
At the time of the release of The Old West series of frontier histories in the mid 1970s Time-Life Books were considered excellent graphically with a wealth of art, but a little below par in terms of literary content. I still have my father’s set which I use for reference. I have noticed over the decades that these books compare more and more favorably to current offerings on early America in terms of content, period artifacts, and bias.
I will survey the first illustrations as an example of the lack of political bent which would be unthinkable from such a large publisher today.
Cover: ‘A Fight for his Life’ by Otto Sommer pictures a frontiersman fighting a black bear which has tackled him and knocked his gun aside. Today the editors would feel duty bound to cite World Wildlife Foundation evidence for the innocuous nature of bears.
Frontispiece: ‘Thomas Hughes,’ an illustration of a solitary homesteader armed with flintlock, tomahawk and scalping knife, killed by Indians in western Virginia in 1778.
Page 6-7: A chalk illustration of road builder James Smith being taken prisoner by Indians while his partner is scalped in 1758 in the Pennsylvania wilderness.
Page 8-9: Drunken Indians in 1720 prepare to burn John Harris at the trading site that became Harrisburg Pennsylvania, because he had refused to sell them rum. His slave Hercules fetched friendly Indians who rushed in to save him just before the pyre was ignited.
Pages 10-11: In 1782 in Gnadenhutten Pennsylvania, Christian Indians beseech God as their cabins burn and they are slaughtered with cooper’s mallets, hatchets and axes. One man was overheard by a white missionary after felling 14 unarmed men, women and children as he handed over his mallet, “My arm fails me. Go on in the same way. I think I have done pretty well.”
Pages 12-13: Well-dressed upper class white men murder helpless Conestoga Indians outside the Lancaster County jail. The author provides a quote from Ben Franklin about the actions of this ‘mob’ from Pastang Pennsylvania in 1763, “Guilt will lie on the whole Land, till Justice is done,” and the caption continues to inform the reader that justice was not done.
The Frontiersmen is a comprehensibly illustrated and balanced look at the Old Frontier of Daniel Boone, Simon Kenton, Simon Girty, Lewis Wetzel, Pontiac, Blue Jacket and Tecumseh. The author offers balanced portrayals of the people and events of the time and the editors do not just select the best looking art, but mine the entire period down to dreadfully amateurish sketches, in order to show the time and the place in the way that it was imagined by those who lived it. A particularly nice touch is the inclusion of hand written letters and documents of the period.
This is history without agenda published in that unique period of American letters that occurred during the Cold War, which in many ways was a dark time, but in terms of nonfiction and fiction marked a period after American hegemony was no longer justified with glaring omissions and intellectual back flips and before political correctness and divisive agendas poisoned the editorial waters.
