Fans pick 100 books like Wilderness War on the Ohio

This superb book provides deep insights into the relationship between Indigenous peoples and encroaching European settlers and convincingly emphasizes that the striving of land developers, such as George Washington, Ben Franklin, and Patrick Henry, was a major cause of the American rebellion. He describes in detail the Native societies, their customs, interactions, and political alliances. The early chapters provide accounts of settlers of both sexes who were captured, adopted, nurtured, and trained by the Natives. In the case of the Girty brothers, their seizures led to their wartime careers as accomplished, multi-lingual interpreters and as fighting partisans in the British Indian Department. In addition to an amazing array of Native tribes, two companies of Butler’s Rangers operated out of Detroit assisted by the Girtys. 

This book features another extremely active British partisan of the mid-west war. Alexander McKee was of mixed blood, his mother Shawnee. He grew up in her people’s society and became a trader across the Ohio country. When war broke out, he was appointed a captain in the Detroit Indian Department and, over the ensuing years, campaigned throughout the Ohio region and Kentucky territory as a cultural mediator between the Natives and the British administration. Postwar, he settled in southern Ontario and became one of the settlement’s elite citizens with the rank of colonel in the Indian Department. Governor Carleton referred to him as “an old Servant universally spoken of for his merits.” In 1794, he was appointed deputy superintendent of Indian Affairs and inspector general for Upper and Lower Canada, positions he held until his death in 1799. 

Here is an excellent biography of another British partisan who operated in the American midwest. Elliott emigrated from Ulster in 1760 and served under Bouquet at Fort Pitt two years later. He took up the Indian trade in the Shawnee country, married a Shawnee, and earned their nation’s confidence. After much prevarication, he joined the British resistance to the rebellion in the spring of 1778 and became a significant officer in the Indian Department. In 1778, he attended Governor Hamilton’s expedition against rebel-held Vincennes, and in 1780, supported Captain Henry Bird’s invasion of Kentucky, and fought in the battle of Blue Licks in 1782. 

Elliott’s notable career continued long after the war. Incredibly, the old veteran served in a senior Indian Department role in the early days of the War of 1812.

Lofaro portrays the other side of the coin, describing the amazing career of an American legend – the restless, fearless Daniel Boone, who took the settlers’ side during the relentless expansion westwards onto Native lands. After a personal exploration of Kentucky territory, Boone raised a large body of settlers, guided them to the territory, and created a community guarded by forts he helped to construct. Boone took the lead in fighting the Natives who objected to the intrusion.

To the American mind, this man is the epitome of the American frontiersman and Lofaro’s book reveals all sides of his complex personality while describing the Revolutionary War conflict in the mid-west. Notably, Boone was not without sympathy for the Natives’ plight. Of course, he crossed paths with many British partisans and their Native allies who vigorously attacked the Kentucky settlements. (Appropriately, this book was published in Kentucky.)

Osprey books are often the best place to start when researching a new historical topic. While writing my novel, Many Sparrows, I relied on this slender volume more than any other. Richly illustrated, packed with maps, vivid without getting bogged down in detail… if you want to begin delving into the topic of Dunmore’s War (Point Pleasant being its single notable battle), this is the book for you.

If, perchance, you have yet to encounter Private Joseph Plumb Martin’s classic memoir, stop right now and get hold of a copy. With wit, charm, and telling detail, this common soldier from the Continental Army will take you on a personal journey through the Revolutionary War. Lest we forget, “history” is composed of individual experiences, and JPMs are memorable. “Great men get great praise; little men, nothing,” he wrote. “It always was so and always will be.” No, not always. This “little man” earns praise not only for himself, but for all those men and boys who put their lives on the line in the Revolutionary War.

This book is also part of a series. It’s packed with illustrations and also contains a timeline of women and the American Revolution. I liked that the book features seven women – writers, warriors, negotiators, and caretakers – and their contribution to how they helped shape our nation. Plus there are mentions of other founding mothers, including Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton, so that kids can be introduced to more women in history and follow up by reading other books about them. 

You might or might not have read about Alexander McGillivray, the controversial Creek diplomat, but how about Payamataha, Oliver Pollack, Petit Jean, Amand Broussard, or James Bruce? They were, respectively: Chickasaw leader who tried to keep his people out of the war; merchant and the Continental Congress’s agent in Louisiana; slave from Mobile who spied for Spain; Cajun militiaman seeking revenge against the British for deporting his people; member of His Majesty’s Council for West Florida. Weaving her narrative around this diverse cast and little-known cross-cultural encounters in the Gulf region, DuVal explores “the changing power dynamics of the entire continent, not just the thirteen British colonies that eventually rebelled.”

The story of the mostly urban radicals – the unknowns -- who began the Revolution, and how they and their democratic passions were gradually but inevitably “tamed” to create a Constitution and a governable country.

The other books I am recommending focus on pieces of the Revolution; American Revolutions is a sweeping history of the American Revolution.

This is the book I recommend to anyone who wants the whole story, from the Revolution’s causes coming out of the Seven Years’ War, through protests, declaring independence, fighting a war across the continent, to Jefferson’s postwar visions of American expansion.

Most big picture histories of the Revolution are still stuck in the old Founding Fathers and generals model, but American Revolutions manages to tell all of this history without focusing solely on men like John Adams and George Washington. We learn about them but also about ordinary men and women—rebelling and loyalist; British, French, and Spanish; enslaved and free—caught up in it all.