The Indian World of George Washington: The First President, the First Americans, and the Birth of the Nation

This is "not another biography of Washington," as Calloway (history, Dartmouth Coll.; A Scratch of the Pen) writes in the introduction. In fact, it is much more important than that. Calloway masterfully executes a journey down a path through history that links George Washington's own military and presidential history with the Native tribes who were vital to his success, whose stories are rarely told. Calloway acknowledges that Washington can be both a paragon of Republican virtue and a man who knew that expanding America's frontier would come at the expense of Native lives. The author does not seek to separate those two images of Washington, but rather to combine them in a way that illuminates a more complete picture of early America as well as the untold story of Native leaders such as Shingas, Bloody Fellow, and Little Turtle, in addition to leaders from the Iroquois Confederacy, Lenape, Creek, and Delaware tribes.