Fellow Travelers

Indians and Europeans Contesting the Early American Trail

Philip Levy author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:University Press of Florida

Published:17th Jun '07

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Fellow Travelers cover

When Europeans first arrived on North American shores, they came to a continent crisscrossed by a well-trodden network of native trails. The traders, missionaries, diplomatists, and naturalists who traveled these trails depended in no small measure on the skills, knowledge, and goodwill of the native people who were squarely in colonization's crosshairs. This study of 16th- to 19-century native and European travel companions, or ""fellow travelers,"" as Levy calls them, draws on anthropological studies and applies ethnohistorical methodology. Examining the writings of European travelers who took to trails and rivers from the Rio Grande to the Arctic, Levy argues that travel relationships evolved from patterns of coercion and miscommunication to partnerships based on careful and constant negotiation. The shared trail was an arena of contested meanings. Levy explores the many forms such contests took and how they contributed to the larger shape and course of colonial travel. Dispelling the simplistic image of European travelers and explorers as heroes, Levy stresses the contingent and dependent nature of these endeavors, noting that natives were vital to the Europeans and vice versa; many natives came to rely on their fellow travelers as well. The realities of the trail potentially blurred distinctions among people eating the same food, treading the same path, and often wearing similar clothes, yet travelers worked hard to maintain distinctions between them. In sharing the rigors and burdens of the trail and relying on one another in a variety of ways, Indian and European travelers entwined their fates.

Levy takes a broad canvass and examines relations between native and non-native travelers... as well as the different understandings, experiences, and perspectives they brought to the trail. This book is a contribution to 'trail studies,' but... more than that, the lessons of the encounters discussed here have much wider application and relevance to the larger collision of cultures that is early American history. - Colin G. Calloway, Dartmouth College

ISBN: 9780813030586

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 462g

256 pages