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"The author uses journals, letters, official reports and other first-person accounts to portray the frontiersmen and the events and conflicts in which they were involved. The stories are set mainly in the valleys of the Delaware, Juniata, Lehigh, Ohio and Susquehanna rivers"--From back cover.

Barbara Leininger and Marie LeRoy were teenage girls living along Penns Creek in central Pennsylvania in 1755 when an Indian war party captured them and carried them off to western Pennsylvania. This occurred early in the French & Indian War. For several years, the teenagers lived as Delaware Indians. Sometimes they had little to eat, and " ... we were forced to live on acorns, roots, grass and bark," they said later.After three years, they escaped from their captors and fled on foot across the forests of Ohio and Pennsylvania, eventually reaching the safety of the British fort at Pittsburgh.The first-person narrative they dictated to a Philadelphia newspaper after their 1759 escape was one of many first-person documents that author John L. Moore uses to tell the true stories of real people in this non-fiction collection of articles that is part of the Frontier Pennsylvania Series.Other accounts in the book tell how and why Native Americans took the scalps of their foes, kept written records of their wartime exploits, and employed fire as a weapon when hunting for deer.The stories are set mainly in the valleys of the Delaware, Juniata, Lehigh, Ohio and Susquehanna rivers.WHAT OTHERS SAY: "The people of 18th century frontier Pennsylvania - settlers, soldiers, and Indians alike - march across these pages in a human drama that we can understand, but more importantly feel almost 300 years later. Moore lets the actors describe themselves in their own words: the misunderstandings, conflicts, family tragedies, deaths, diseases, hunger, wars, and the simply mundane business of their everyday lives. Our storyteller takes just as much care in describing the Indians' daily slog, quarrels, family life, customs and mores as he does their sometimes friends - and sometimes rivals - the European settlers. Both groups formed intertwined threads in a single frontier web."When he describes a famous campaign in the French & Indian War, Moore deftly uses his sources to make General Braddock's doomed expedition come to life. Incidents of friendly fire, frightened European soldiers used to fighting in open spaces but never in woods, slow progress as an army builds a road (!) into the mountains - mile by mile - are all described as if patiently carved into oak to make woodcut prints." Thomas J. Brucia, Houston, Texas.Bibliophile, outdoorsman and book reviewer

In April 1753, frontier missionary David Zeisberger prepared for a month-long voyage up the Susquehanna River's North Branch by walking along the river bank at present-day Sunbury and selecting a suitable tree to fashion into a dugout canoe.Zeisberger and another missionary felled the tree, then spent two days hollowing its trunk into the shape of a canoe, before setting sail. A month later they came upon a fleet of 25 canoes carrying Nanticoke Indians upriver. "As far as the eye could reach, you could see one canoe behind the other along the Susquehanna," the missionaries wrote.Zeisberger is one of many real characters who people the pages of this non-fiction book about the Pennsylvania frontier. Others include Shikellamy, the Iroquois half-king at Shamokin; Conrad Weiser, the Pennsylvania colony's Indian agent; Teedyuscung, king of the Delawares; Benjamin Franklin, builder of frontier forts; and a Delaware war chief known as Shingas the Terrible.Author John L. Moore used journals, letters, official reports and other first-person accounts to portray the frontiersmen and the events and conflicts in which they were involved.The stories are set mainly in the valleys of the Delaware, Juniata, Lehigh, Ohio and Susquehanna rivers.WHAT OTHERS SAY: "Moore brings us an engaging treatment of Gen. Edward Braddock's ill-fated campaign in 1755 to oust the French from the Ohio Valley. His account gives us a fresh perspective of something often lost in the histories of this march through the wilderness - the troubles the British army experienced with logistics and their erstwhile Native American allies."Moore includes a later description by Moravian missionary John Heckewelder of how horses' hooves made 'dismal music' as they walked over the unburied bones of Braddock's soldiers. But Moore's book is overall about a lost world of encounters in the forest between the colonial Americans and the Iroquois and Delaware - the tree paintings along trails and the travails of a Seneca given the English name of Captain Newcastle. It's a world worth visiting." Robert B. Swift, Author of "The Mid-Appalachian Frontier: A Guide to Historic Sites of the French and Indian War.""One can't go wrong with this work. It's the kind of tale one might read aloud to one's children out in the woods at evenings while huddled around a campfire." Thomas J. Brucia, Houston, Texas, bibliophile, outdoorsman and book reviewer."As someone who despised history classes in high school and practically fell asleep during college history courses, I must admit that I immensely enjoyed this fascinating read." Catherine Felegi, Cranford, N.J., Writer, editor, and blogger at: cafelegi.wordpress.com.

Author John L. Moore serves up a miscellany of fascinating depictions of obscure but authentic people and situations in this non-fiction book about the Pennsylvania Frontier between 1743 and 1778.We meet Sassoonan, an elderly Delaware Indian chief who lived at the Forks of the Susquehanna River. His position made him custodian of the tribal records, which consisted of belts of wampum. Wampum was also a form of currency, and Sassoonan regularly used this wampum to buy rum from the traders who brought it to town.While visiting an Indian town on an island in the Susquehanna River, the Rev. David Brainerd held his Bible as he hid in the bushes, out of sight of the bonfire and the Native Americans who danced around it. The missionary believed that the Indians were attempting to summon Satan and, as he later wrote in his journal, he intended to "spoil their sport."It was January 1756 as General Benjamin Franklin led a column of infantry soldiers and mounted troops into the Blue Ridge Mountains north of Bethlehem and Easton to erect a series of log forts along strategic forest paths. Hostile Indians watched Franklin's force as the men erected the stockade walls. Ever curious, Franklin himself used his watch to see how long it took two of his men to fell a pine tree.Mary Jameson was a 15-year-old frontier farm girl when she helped her mother cook breakfast over the hearth in the family's log house one cold morning in April 1758. The Jamesons don't know it, but by lunchtime their cabin would be on fire, and all but two of the eight members of the Jameson family would be the prisoners of an Indian raiding party.WHAT OTHERS SAY: "Moore's tales bear fascinating titles. Who could fail to be intrigued by "Camp Followers Displease Militia Chaplain," or by "Benjamin Franklin Leads Militia Into Bethlehem," or by "Chaplain's Rum Draws Troops To Daily Worship"?Some of the descriptions Moore takes from his original sources are fascinating, even 250 years later. For example, Benjamin Franklin observes: The Indians "dug holes in the ground about three feet in diameter, and somewhat deeper. ... They had made small fires in the bottoms of the holes, and we observed among the weeds and grass the prints of their bodies, made by their laying all around, with their legs hanging down in the holes to keep their feet warm. ... This kind of fire, so managed, could not discover them, either by its light, flame, sparks, or even smoke." What an image!One unusual tale is "Even Indians Become Lost, Hungry In Forest." This is the chilling story of an Indian mother who, with her three children, was trapped in an early blizzard in 1739 on a mountain near present-day Lock Haven while traveling the Great Shamokin Path. The gruesome details were recorded by Moravian missionary John Heckewelder, and Moore passes them on to the reader without comment. Thomas J. Brucia, Houston, Texas.Bibliophile, outdoorsman and book reviewer

Histories can be two-dimensional; these contain information strung along timelines. Other histories are three-dimensional, fleshing the basics out with descriptions and explanations. And then there are the four-dimensional histories, best savored slowly. 'Pioneers, Prisoners, and Peace Pipes' falls in this last category.John L. Moore's four-dimensional tales draws the reader into a world long gone in such a way that the reader gets lost in a distant place - with no desire to leave. This master story teller has discovered hidden eddies of history. He artfully weaves original source material into accounts that still touch the heart. There is the couple coming home to find their children kidnapped and their home ransacked ... There is a husband searching for a lost wife, and - years later - finding and being reunited with her. There is a 16-year old man/boy lost in a military adventure, captured by the enemy, and spilling all he knows during polite but businesslike interrogations. The settings are all over Pennsylvania; the times are the late 1700s. All true stories. And if these stories all seem weirdly contemporary; it's simply because people have always been - people.Readers will have their favorites in this collection of 11 true American historical vignettes. Among mine: 'Boy soldier nearly starves in the woods' ... This tale starts, "Michael La Chauvignerie was a 16-year-old French soldier who left his home in Canada during the summer of 1756, bound for the Ohio Country. Michael didn't know it as he left Montreal and sailed up the St. Lawrence River, but he had embarked on the first leg of a prolonged and complicated adventure that would take him to Philadelphia and, ultimately, to the Caribbean Sea." Maybe you could stop reading at this point - but I had to continue. And rest of La Chauvignerie's true story delivers!Elsewhere in "Pioneers, Prisoners, and Peace Pipes" the words of chastened but wise Ackowanothie ring true today, almost 250 years after they were uttered: "Your nation always showed an eagerness to settle our lands. Cunning as they were, they always encouraged a number of poor people to settle upon our lands. We protested against it several times, but without any redress or help. We pitied the poor people; we did not care to make use of force, and indeed some of those people were very good people, and as hospitable as we Indians ... but after all we lost our hunting ground, for where one of those people settled, like pigeons, a thousand more would settle, so that we at last offered to sell it ... and so it went on 'til we at last jumped over (the) Allegheny hills and settled on the waters of Ohio. Here we thought ourselves happy." Poor deluded Delawares!Good history, in my opinion, makes one think. And think. And think. It also makes one feel. And emotion is the secret of "Pioneers, Prisoners and Peace Pipes." Moore brings one face to face not just with facts (as important as they are), but with a larger and richer four-dimensional reality infused with feelings. He gently reminds us that humans without emotions have never existed, and that history without that dimension is not history, but simply a cheap cardboard imitation. "Pioneers, Prisoners and Peace Pipes" is four-dimensional work crafted with love. Enjoy it!Thomas J. Brucia is a bibliophile who lives in Houston, Texas. His favorite subjects include European and Asian history. Many of his reviews appear on Amazon.com

As the Delaware Indians moved west through Pennsylvania during the 1700s, they carried with them tribal memories of the day they first met people from Europe. Their ancestors had lived along the Atlantic Ocean, and, according to tradition, which a missionary eventually wrote down, a group of Indian men in canoes had ventured out into New York Harbor to fish. Suddenly they saw a strange object floating in the ocean far to the east. When it got very close, they saw that it was a large floating house with people on it.There are remarkable similarities between this legend and journal entries written in September 1609 by an officer of Henry Hudson's ship, the "Half Moon," as it sailed into the harbor and up the Hudson River. Author John L. Moore explores the differences and similarities of the European and Native American versions of this fateful meeting.A work of non-fiction, "Rivers, Raiders, and Renegades" provides colorful details of the 1600s, an obscure era in colonial history. Among the many people it depicts is Etienne Brule, a young Frenchman who lived with the Indians after arriving in Canada in 1608 and who in 1615 became the first European to travel the entire length of the Susquehanna River;Moore draws upon written observations of early colonists who described the Native Americans they encountered. Peter Lindestrom, a Delaware River colonist, reported that Indians occasionally cut themselves all over their bodies, then rubbed special ointments into the wounds so that "blue streaks" remained when the wounds healed. This made "the savages appear entirely striped and streaky," Lindestrom said. Another Delaware colonist, Johann Printz, said, "They walk naked with only a piece of cloth ... tied around their hips." In the Hudson Valley, Dutch colonist Isaack De Rasiere reported: "In the wintertime they usually wear a dressed deerskin; some have a bear's skin about the body; some a coat of scales; some a covering made of turkey feathers."The descendants of these natives eventually passed through Pennsylvania as they migrated farther west to the Ohio River Valley or north to central and western New York. These stories are set mainly in the valleys of the Delaware, Hudson, and Susquehanna rivers.