HISTORY / United States / Colonial Period (1600-1775)

The conflict that historians have called King Philip’s War still ranks as one of the bloodiest per capita in American history. An Indian coalition ravaged much of New England, killing six hundred colonial fighting men (not including their Indian allies), obliterating seventeen white towns, and damaging more than fifty settlements. The version of these events that has come down to us focuses on Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay—the colonies whose commentators dominated the storytelling. But because Connecticut lacked a chronicler, its experience has gone largely untold. As Jason Warren makes clear in Connecticut Unscathed, this imbalance has generated an incomplete narrative of the war.

In Junípero Serra: California, Indians, and the Transformation of a Missionary, Beebe and Senkewicz focus on Serra’s religious identity and his relations with Native peoples. They intersperse their narrative with new and accessible translations of many of Serra’s letters and sermons, which allows his voice to be heard in a more direct and engaging fashion.

In the wake of Braddock’s defeat at Fort Duquesne in 1755, the British army raised the 60th, or Royal American, Regiment of Foot to fight the French and Indian War. Each of the regiment’s four battalions saw action in pivotal battles throughout the conflict. And as Alexander Campbell shows, the inclusion of foreign mercenaries and immigrant colonists alongside British volunteers made the RAR a microcosm of the Atlantic world. Not just a potent, combat-ready force, it played a key role in trade, migration, Indian diplomacy, and settlement.

The story of Cherokee statesmanship in terms of Indian institutions provides fresh insight into this era of colonial and American Indian history.

In Miera y Pacheco, John L. Kessell explores each aspect of this Renaissance man’s life in the colony. Beginning with his marriage to the young descendant of a once-prominent New Mexican family, we see Miera transformed by his varied experiences into the quintessential Hispanic New Mexican. As he traveled to every corner of the colony and beyond, Miera gathered not only geographical, social, and political data but also invaluable information about the Southwest’s indigenous peoples. At the same time, Miera the artist was carving and painting statues and panels of the saints for the altar screens of the colony.

Boscawen, an experienced soldier and sailor, and a direct descendant of Admiral the Hon. Edward Boscawen, who commanded the Royal Navy fleet at Louisbourg, examines the pivotal 1758 Louisbourg campaign from both the British and French perspectives. Drawing on myriad primary sources, including previously unpublished correspondence, Boscawen also answers the question "What did the soldiers and sailors who fought there do all day?" The result is the most comprehensive history of this strategically important campaign ever written.

This is the story of a legendary expedition across four thousand miles of the future United States, led by an explorer searching for an illusionary empire of gold. Formerly the second-in-command in Francisco Pizarro’s conquest of the Incas in 1531, Hernando de Soto arrived in the country he called La Florida in 1539, leading a glittering, armored Renaissance-era army of six hundred men on the first major exploration of North America.

Little has been written about the colonists sent by Spanish authorities to settle the northern frontier of New Spain, to stake Spain’s claim and serve as a buffer against encroaching French explorers. “Los Paisanos,” they were called—simple country people who lived by their own labor, isolated, threatened by hostile Indians, and restricted by law from seeking opportunity elsewhere. They built their homes, worked their fields, and became permanent residents.