Covered with Night

By Nicole Eustace,

Book cover of Covered with Night: A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice in Early America

Book description

In the winter of 1722, on the eve of a major conference between the Five Nations of the Haudenosaunee (also known as the Iroquois) and Anglo-American colonists, a pair of colonial fur traders brutally assaulted a Seneca hunter near Conestoga, Pennsylvania. Though virtually forgotten today, the crime ignited a contest…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Covered with Night as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

The central story of this Pulitzer Prize-winning book is the murder of a Seneca man by two white settlers in the backwoods of Pennsylvania in 1722.

It reads like a thriller, while also revealing profound insights about European colonization in North America during the early 18th century. Ironically, the English authorities were inclined to punish the white settlers severely for the crime in order to appease the Five Nations of the Haudenosaunee. The Native American leaders felt differently, however, preferring to forgive the two men.

“Native peoples,” Eustace writes, “subsume issues of guilt and punishment beneath efforts to redress anguish…

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