The Frontiersmen: A Narrative

Vor dem Umfang bin erst mal zurückgeschreckt, habe das Buch nun fast durch und empfehle es gerne weiter. Voraussetzung: höheres Interesse am Thema, die nötige Zeit und Freude am "Tagebuchstil". Dann liefert es jede Menge an Informationen und diese stehen im Vordergrund!

This is an amazing book! It has a high page count, but I flew through it, literally couldn’t put it down. Often I would stay up way later than I should have just to keep reading it. Great historical details, but written as a narrative making it very entertaining. An important era in the opening of Kentucky, Ohio, and further west. Highly recommended for history buffs and those who just like a great story.

Have not READ book yet, but have heard it on audio. Like other Eckert books I have read it is excellent. A fantastic insight into little heard American history.

A vast narrative following the life and career of Daniel Boone's somewhat less well known junior contemporary on the early American frontier, Simon Kenton, and the parallel life and career of the Shawnee chieftain, Tecumseh, who tried to unite the disparate Indian tribes in a last ditch effort to stem the sweep of the American Republic over native American lands, this book is rich in research and in the drama of those times. Allan Eckert has used the technique of a novelist to bring the details of historical events to life as he follows the paths of Kenton and Tecumseh and the men and women around them, from Kenton's first foray over the Alleghenies into the wilderness in colonial times to the denouement in the War of 1812 when Tecumseh makes his last ditch effort to stop the white settlers. Recounted as a series of historical vignettes around the main characters and often taking on the trappings of fiction (because Eckert purports to take us inside the heads of these people and to report conversations and some events for which there is little or no record), this book is massive and sometimes daunting to read. Nevertheless, it succeeds in breathing life into the era and, if many of the characters seem somewhat thin and almost to blend into a certain sameness, the multifaceted personality of the illiterate Kenton and the finely drawn picture of the mysterious Tecumseh, makes it all worthwhile. I found myself wondering at times just how many of the reported miraclulous prophecies ascribed to Tecumseh, from predicting an eclipse to the appearance of a comet to the occurrence of a massive earthquake, were genuine -- after all, despite all these supposed successes, his basic prediction, that he would lead a united Indian nation to drive out the whites, did not come true. But the detail about the Indian culture and relations between the various tribes and with the whites was eye-opening and all of it made me ashamed of this aspect of the American past. Of course, we could not be what we are today if we hadn't supplanted the native peoples, and pretty much every nation in existence today is where it is as a result of driving out earlier inhabitants in much the same fashion. Still, one can't help rooting for the Indian side when presented with a book like this, even if the Indians were pretty cruel in their own right and the Americans did ultimately grow into a better nation than what we started out as. SWM author of The King of Vinland's Saga

This book has been around for quite a while, along with 4 of its sequels. In this reviewer's opinion, this first book is by far the most fascinating of the 5 in the series. It is probably one of the best kept secrets as an mesmerizing depiction of the lfe and times of all North Americans during the French And Indian Wars of the mid-1700s. Virtually all of the content in this book consists of narratives based on actual historical events, documents and personal letters of those who lived and fought in those times, including the aboriginals. Hence, it is not fictional history, except for some of the dialogue the author has crafted to give life to the events. A must read for any history buff.