Enjoy an online afternoon conversation Nic ole Eustace\, discussing her 2022 award winning book \;Covered With Ni ght: A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice in Early America.
\nOn the eve of a major treaty conference between Iroquois leaders and Europea n colonists in the distant summer of 1722\, two white fur traders attacked an Indigenous hunter and left him for dead near Conestoga\, Pennsylvania. Though virtually forgotten today\, this act of brutality set into motion a remarkable series of criminal investigations and cross-cultural negotiat ions that challenged the definition of justice in early America.
\nI n \;Covered with Night\, Dr. Eustace reconstructs the crime and its af termath\, bringing us into the overlapping worlds of white colonists and I ndigenous peoples in this formative period. As she shows\, the murder of t he Indigenous man set the entire mid-Atlantic on edge\, with many believin g war was imminent. Isolated killings often flared into colonial wars in N orth America\, and colonists now anticipated a vengeful Indigenous uprisin g. Frantic efforts to resolve the case ignited a dramatic\, far-reaching d ebate between Native American forms of justice&mdash\;centered on communit y\, forgiveness\, and reparations&mdash\;and an ideology of harsh reprisal \, unique to the colonies and based on British law\, which called for the killers&rsquo\; swift execution. As Eustace powerfully contends\, the colo nial obsession with &ldquo\;civility&rdquo\; belied the reality that the I roquois\, far from being the barbarians of the white imagination\, acted u nder a mantle of sophistication and humanity as they tried to make the lan d- and power-hungry colonials understand their ways. \;
\nAbout the Author: \;Nicole Eustace is a professor of history at New York Uni versity. A historian of the early modern Atlantic and the early United Sta tes\, she specializes in the history of emotion. She is author of Pulitzer -Prize winning \;Covered with Night: A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice in Early America\, as well as \;Passion Is the Gale: Emotion\, Power\, and the Coming of the American Revolution \;and of \;1812 : War and the Passions of Patriotism \;as well as coeditor of \;Wa rring for America: Cultural Contests in the Era of 1812.
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