Covered with Night: A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice in Early America - Hardcover

Eustace, Nicole

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1631495879 ISBN 13: 9781631495878

Publisher: Liveright, 2021

Synopsis

WINNER • 2022 PULITZER PRIZE IN HISTORY
Winner • Francis Parkman Prize (Society of American Historians)
Finalist • National Book Award for Nonfiction
Best Books of the Year • TIME, Smithsonian, Boston Globe, Kirkus Reviews

The Pulitzer Prize-winning history that transforms a single event in 1722 into an unparalleled portrait of early America.

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 between Native American forms of justice―rooted in community, forgiveness, and reparations―and the colonial ideology of harsh reprisal that called for the accused killers to be executed if found guilty. In Covered with Night, historian Nicole Eustace reconstructs the attack and its aftermath, introducing a group of unforgettable individuals―from the slain man’s resilient widow to an Indigenous diplomat known as “Captain Civility” to the scheming governor of Pennsylvania―as she narrates a remarkable series of criminal investigations and cross-cultural negotiations. Taking its title from a Haudenosaunee metaphor for mourning, Covered with Night ultimately urges us to consider Indigenous approaches to grief and condolence, rupture and repair, as we seek new avenues of justice in our own era.

About this title

About the Author

Nicole Eustace is professor of history at New York University. She is the author 1812: War and the Passions of Patriotism and Passion Is the Gale: Emotion, Power, and the Coming of the American Revolution. She lives in Mamaroneck, New York.

Edition details

• Publisher: Liveright
• Publication date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1631495879
• ISBN 13: 9781631495878
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 464