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A follow-up to the collection, French Colonial Archaeology, ed. by John Walthall (CH, Feb'92). Whereas the earlier volume examined the French colonial archeological record, this volume offers a number of analyses and research reports on "historic Native American sites and related topics such as Indian interaction with French colonists." Divided into three sections, the studies cover recent findings from sites in the Lower Mississippi, the Lower Ohio, and the Western Great Lakes. What is strikingly similar in these essays is the wealth of local information on the cooperative and multicultural nature of French-Indian contact in the 17th and 18th centuries. For example, the data show that many Native American groups used native technologies to produce ceramic materials "in the French fashion" for French colonials. This collection provides additional detailed data on the complexity of North American Colonial frontier communities that supplement several recent ethnohistorical studies of the regions and time period, e.g., Richard White's The Middle Ground (CH, May'92), for the Great Lakes; Michael McConnell's A Country Between (1992), for the Ohio Valley; and Daniel H. Usner's Indians, Settlers, & Slaves in a Frontier Exchange Economy (CH, Nov'92), for the Lower Mississippi. Graduate; faculty. R. L. Haan; Hartwick College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
