Recommended Reading

  
      Being familiar with the historiography of early Tennessee is imperative. Understanding the broader context of imperial imagination, kinship, trade, Native peoples, and the new United States is just as important, if not more so, to understanding the trans-Appalachian frontier of the late 18th century.

But as a former professor of mine once said: "If you think you understand the 18th century, you weren't paying attention".

The works listed below are what I consider essential to understanding (or not understanding) the 18th century trans-Appalachian frontier. I will update it from time to time.

Monographs:

Aron, Stephen. How the West was Lost: The Transformation of Kentucky from Daniel Boone to Henry Clay. Baltimore: John Hopkins Univ. Press, 1996.

Hinderaker, Eric. Elusive Empires: Constructing Colonialism in the Ohio Valley, 1673-1800. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1997.

Silver, Peter. Our Savage Neighbors: How Indian War Transformed Early America. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2008.

Griffin, Patrick. American Leviathan: Empire, Nation, and Revolutionary Frontier. New York: Hill & Wang, 2007.

Ray, Kristofer. Middle Tennessee, 1775-1825: Progress and Popular Democracy on the Southwestern Frontier. Knoxville: Univ. of Tennessee Press, 2007.

Ray, Kristofer, ed. Before the Volunteer State: New Thoughts on Early Tennessee, 1540-1800. Knoxville: Univ. of Tennessee, 2015.

Barksdale, Kevin. The Lost State of Franklin: America's First Secession. Lexington: Univ. of Kentucky Press, 2009.

Rohrbough, Malcolm J. The Trans-Appalachian Frontier: People, Societies, and Institutions, 1775-1850. New York, Oxford Univ. Press, 1978.

Usner Jr., Daniel H. Indians, Settlers, & Slaves in a Frontier Exchange Economy: The Lower Mississippi Valley Before 1783. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992.

Cumfer, Cynthia. Separate Peoples, One Land: The Minds of Cherokees, Blacks, and Whites on the Tennessee Frontier. Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina, 2007.




        Older "standard" works. These are of little interpretive value but can be useful for determining actual events and dates as parts of them, and most of Haywood, were written from first-hand interviews with frontier settlers.

Putnam, Albigence W. History of Middle Tennessee or Life and Times of General James Robertson, 1859. (Various printings available)

Haywood, John. Civil and Political History of Tennessee, 1823 (Various printings available)

Arnow, Harriette Simpson. Seedtime on the Cumberland. Lexington: Univ. of Kentucky Press, 1983

Arnow, Harriette Simpson. Flowering of the Cumberland. Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1996.

Abernathy, Thomas Perkins. From Frontier to Plantation in Tennessee: A Study in Frontier Democracy. Tuscaloosa: Univ. of Alabama, 1967.




        Understanding the role of Native peoples and their world and culture is essential. We must learn to think of Native peoples in proto-Tennessee, especially the Cherokee and Chickasaw, as a primary determiner in the way that English and French thought about the Old Southwest. These are some of the best books out there that can help in furthering that understanding.


Boulware, Tyler. Deconstructing the Cherokee Nation: Town, Region, and Nation among Eighteenth-Century Cherokees. Gainesville: Univ. of Florida, 2011.

DuVal, Kathleen. The Native Ground: Indians and Colonists in the Heart of the Continent. Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 2006.

Gallay, Alan. The Indian Slave Trade: The Rise of the English Empire in the American South, 1670-1717. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 2002.

Waselkov, Gregory, et. al., ed. Powhatan's Mantle: Indians in the Colonial Southeast. Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska, 2006.

Ethridge, Robbie, ed. Mapping the Mississippian Shatter Zone: The Colonial Indian Slave Trade and Regional Instability in the American South. Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska, 2009.

Ethridge, Robbie, ed. The Transformation of the Southeastern Indians, 1540-1760. Jackson: Univ. Press of Mississippi, 2002.