From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of William Cooper's Town comes a dramatic and illuminating portrait of white and Native American relations in the aftermath of the American Revolution. The Divided Ground tells the story of two friends, a Mohawk Indian and the son of a colonial clergyman, whose relationship helped redefine North America. As one served American expansion by promoting Indian dispossession and religious conversion, and the other struggled to defend and strengthen Indian territories, the two friends became bitter enemies. Their battle over control of the Indian borderland, that divided ground between the British Empire and the nascent United States, would come to define nationhood in North America. Taylor tells a fascinating story of the far-reaching effects of the American Revolution and the struggle of American Indians to preserve a land of their own. “A superbly researched work of history... forces us to look anew at the American Revolution from a tragic –and necessary –perspective”— The Washington Post Book World “Meticulously researched...by immersing us in its details Taylor makes us see the Iroquois as active shapers of American history, and their struggle to keep their homeland as part of our shared American past.”— San Diego Union-Tribune “In this dramatic, precise account [Taylor] describes an American Revolution with dire consequences for native peoples. . . fascinating. . . .[A] stunningly alternative American Revolution.”— The Boston Globe “Formidably researched, and display[s] a breathtaking intellectual understanding.”— The Denver Post Alan Taylor received his B.A. from Colby College and his Ph.D. from Brandeis University. He has taught at Colby College, the College of William & Mary, Boston University, and the University of California at Davis, where he is Professor of History. He is the author of Liberty Men and Great Proprietors: The Revolutionary Settlement on the Maine Frontier, 1760-1820 (1990) ; William Cooper's Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic (1996) , and American Colonies: The Settlement of North America (The Penguin History of the United States, Vol. 1, 2001) . Property In July 1761, as Joseph Brant traveled east to join Wheelock’s school, Sir William Johnson headed west, ascending the Mohawk River into the country of the Six Nations. his five boats hauled thirty-eight soldiers, their equipment, and presents for the Indians. The traveling party also included his nineteen-year-old son, John, and their cousin and secretary, Guy Johnson. In high spirits, the Johnsons anticipated a victory tour in Indian country to consolidate the recent British conquest of French Canada. With the French banished from North America, British officials expected easily to control the Indians. Instead, Johnson found pervasive Indian dread and disgust, even among the nearby Mohawks, who had so long cooperated with him. As British allies, the Mohawks had lost about 100 warriors, half of their men, during the recent war with the French. In return for that heavy sacrifice, the Mohawks expected Johnson to protect their villages against conniving land speculators and encroaching settlers. Frustrated in that expectation, the Mohawks complained bitterly to Johnson, who reported that they felt in “danger of being made slaves, and having their lands taken from them at pleasure, which they added would confirm what the French have often told the Six Nations.” Preaching patience, Johnson promised justice to the Mohawks—but New York’s leaders and settlers kept breaking his every promise. Fed up, the Mohawks threatened to move away deeper within Indian country. That possibility delighted settlers and speculators who lusted after Mohawk land, but alarmed Johnson, who relied on his special Mohawk connection to influence the Six Nations. Without nearby and content Mohawks as allies, his superintendency would become impotent. Proceeding upriver beyond the Mohawk country, Johnson reached German Flats, colonial New York’s westernmost settlement. There, Johnson met Oneidas, who also bitterly complained of encroaching settlers. The chief Conoghquieson warned Johnson that the Oneida settlers would fight rather than lose their lands. Instead of consolidating British power over the Indians, the conquest of Canada threatened to unravel the alliance with the Six Nations that was essential to frontier security. In helping the British to attack Canada, the Iroquois had miscalculated, for they had never expected such a rapid and complete collapse by the French forces. No longer could the Indians play off the French against the British to maintain Iroquois independence, to maximize their presents, and to ensure trade competition. A British general explained, “They saw us sole Masters of the Country, the Balance of Power broke, and their own Consequence at an End. Instead of being courted by two Nations, a Profusion of Presents made by both, and two Markets to tr