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Covered with Night - A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice in Early America (Paperback)
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Covered with Night - A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice in Early America (Paperback)
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Was R498
Loot Price R473
Discovery Miles 4 730
You Save R25 (5%)
Expected to ship within 12 - 17 working days
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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. As she
shows, the murder of the Indigenous man set the entire mid-Atlantic
on edge, with many believing war was imminent. Isolated killings
often flared into colonial wars in North America and colonists now
anticipated a vengeful Indigenous uprising. Frantic efforts to
resolve the case ignited a dramatic, far-reaching debate between
Native American forms of justice-centred 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 "civilised"
Europeans and "savage" Native Americans. As Eustace powerfully
contends, the colonial obsession with "civility" belied the reality
that the Iroquois, far from being the barbarians of the white
imagination, acted under a mantle of sophistication and humanity as
they tried to make the land- and power-hungry colonials understand
their ways. In truth, Eustace reveals, the Iroquois-the Six Nations
of the Haudenosaunee, as they are known today-saw the killing as an
opportunity to forge stronger bonds with the colonists. They argued
for restorative justice and for reconciliation between the two
sides, even as they mourned the deceased. An absorbing chronicle
built around an extraordinary group of characters-from the slain
man's resilient widow to the Indigenous diplomat known as "Captain
Civility" to the scheming governor of Pennsylvania-Covered with
Night transforms a single event into an unforgettable portrait of
early America. A necessary work of historical reclamation, it
ultimately revives a lost vision of crime and punishment that
reverberates down into our time.
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