Review of Jane T. Merritt's At the Crossroads: Indians and Empires on a Mid-Atlantic Frontier

Abstract

It has been more than a decade since White published The Middle Ground,a monumental study of the shared world of colonists and Indians in the Great Lakes region during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.1The middle ground, argued White, was called into existence by the mutual dependence of Indians and colonists. So long as Britain and France contested control of North America, a pragmatic accommodation prevailed. The persuasiveness and significance of White’s work is reflected by the abundance of middle grounds that scholars have since brought to light. Among the most recent contributions is Merritt’s At the Crossroads,which weds the middle ground to the transatlantic world of empires and subjects. Drawing largely on the wealth of sources in the Moravian mission archives, Merritt’s study provides a richly detailed look into the complex relations of Indian and white individuals and communities on the mid-Atlantic frontier from 1700 to 1763. At the Crossroads is one of a string of recent works—starting with Jon Sensbach ,A Seperate Canaan: The Making of an Afro-Moravian World in North Carolina, 1763–1840(Williamsburg, 1998)—that draws on the vast but virtually untapped sources of the relatively obscure Moravian communities to explore issues of race, culture, and religion in colonial and revolutionary America.