You&rsquo\;re invited to explore early-Ame rican history during an online afternoon conversation with Pulitzer Prize winning historian Nicole Eustace as she discusses her 2022 award winning b ook \;Covered With Night: A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice in Early America.
\nOn the eve of a major treaty conference between Iro quois leaders and European colonists in the distant summer of 1722\, two w hite fur traders attacked an Indigenous hunter and left him for dead near Conestoga\, Pennsylvania. Though virtually forgotten today\, this act of b rutality set into motion a remarkable series of criminal investigations an d cross-cultural negotiations that challenged the definition of justice in early America.
\nIn \;Covered with Night\, Dr. Eustace reconstr ucts the crime and its aftermath\, bringing us into the overlapping worlds of white colonists and Indigenous peoples in this formative period. As sh e shows\, the murder of the Indigenous man set the entire mid-Atlantic on edge\, with many believing war was imminent. Isolated killings often flare d into colonial wars in North America\, and colonists now anticipated a ve ngeful Indigenous uprising. Frantic efforts to resolve the case ignited a dramatic\, far-reaching debate between Native American forms of justice&md ash\;centered on community\, forgiveness\, and reparations&mdash\;and an i deology of harsh reprisal\, unique to the colonies and based on British la w\, which called for the killers&rsquo\; swift execution. As Eustace power fully contends\, the colonial obsession with &ldquo\;civility&rdquo\; beli ed the reality that the Iroquois\, far from being the barbarians of the wh ite imagination\, acted under a mantle of sophistication and humanity as t hey tried to make the land- and power-hungry colonials understand their wa ys. \;
\nAbout the Author: \;Nicole Eustace is a professor o f history at New York University. A historian of the early modern Atlantic and the early United States\, 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 \;Passi on Is the Gale: Emotion\, Power\, and the Coming of the American Revolutio n \;and of \;1812: War and the Passions of Patriotism \;as wel l as coeditor of \;Warring for America: Cultural Contests in the Era o f 1812.
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