"Guns on the early frontiers is concerned particularly with the arms used in the West during the first half of the nineteenth century, but since the guns used in the earlier settlement of the eastern half of the continent were the antecedents of the western arms, these too are discussed. And in order that the story of guns in the West may be better understood, the roots of the gun trade are traced to their seventeenth-century origins on the eastern seaboard and on the St. Lawrence. Dutch, French and English traders, especially, laid the groundwork for the gun trade in the New World two hundred years before the Americans started to trade in guns. Consequently, European arms and European influences are given some attention"--Page viii.

DIVThoroughly documented reference identifies guns used in America during eastern settlement and westward expansion. The highly readable survey describes those who used and sold weapons as well as those who made them. 58 rare illustrations. /div

"Here is a book for the historian, the student, the gun collector or aficionado. . . . It approaches understatement to call Guns on the Early Frontiers an outstanding contribution to firearms literature. It sets its own standard."--New York Times. "A Glossary of Gun Terms, ample footnotes most skillfully arranged and illustrations beyond the dreams of avarice complement the text, which achieves the miracle of scholarship without tedium."--W.H. Hutchinson, San Francisco Chronicle. "Not the least interesting portions of the book are the notes and glossary and the excellent bibliography. Here [is] a book designed primarily for the serious collector or gun historian, but whose readable style should appeal even to the casual amateur. The collecting of old guns, whether privately or by a public institution, involves a certain responsibility. These guns, whose history is inextricably linked with the history of settlement, require something more than careful preservations. They require--and the present volume goes far to supply--accurate documentation."--Canadian Historical Review. Carl P. Russell, a leading authority on firearms of the American frontier, was coordinator of planning for the science and history museums and other interpretive facilities of the National Park Service in the Western United States.

The adoption of firearms by American Indians between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries marked a turning point in the history of North America’s indigenous peoples—a cultural earthquake so profound, says David Silverman, that its impact has yet to be adequately measured. Thundersticks reframes our understanding of Indians’ historical relationship with guns, arguing against the notion that they prized these weapons more for the pyrotechnic terror guns inspired than for their efficiency as tools of war. Native peoples fully recognized the potential of firearms to assist them in their struggles against colonial forces, and mostly against one another. The smoothbore, flintlock musket was Indians’ stock firearm, and its destructive potential transformed their lives. For the deer hunters east of the Mississippi, the gun evolved into an essential hunting tool. Most importantly, well-armed tribes were able to capture and enslave their neighbors, plunder wealth, and conquer territory. Arms races erupted across North America, intensifying intertribal rivalries and solidifying the importance of firearms in Indian politics and culture. Though American tribes grew dependent on guns manufactured in Europe and the United States, their dependence never prevented them from rising up against Euro-American power. The Seminoles, Blackfeet, Lakotas, and others remained formidably armed right up to the time of their subjugation. Far from being a Trojan horse for colonialism, firearms empowered American Indians to pursue their interests and defend their political and economic autonomy over two centuries.

It was the age of exploration, the age of empire and conquest, and human beings were extending their reach—and their numbers—as never before. In the process, they were intervening in the world's natural environment in equally unprecedented and dramatic ways. A sweeping work of environmental history, The Unending Frontier offers a truly global perspective on the profound impact of humanity on the natural world in the early modern period. John F. Richards identifies four broadly shared historical processes that speeded environmental change from roughly 1500 to 1800 c.e.: intensified human land use along settlement frontiers; biological invasions; commercial hunting of wildlife; and problems of energy scarcity. The Unending Frontier considers each of these trends in a series of case studies, sometimes of a particular place, such as Tokugawa Japan and early modern England and China, sometimes of a particular activity, such as the fur trade in North America and Russia, cod fishing in the North Atlantic, and whaling in the Arctic. Throughout, Richards shows how humans—whether clearing forests or draining wetlands, transporting bacteria, insects, and livestock; hunting species to extinction, or reshaping landscapes—altered the material well-being of the natural world along with their own.