Council Fires on the Upper Ohio

Told from the viewpoint of the Indians, this account of Indian-white relations during the second half of the eighteenth century is an exciting addition to the historical literature of Pennsylvania. From the beginning, when the white traders followed the first Shawnee hunters into Pennsylvania, until the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794, the region's history was the history of the relationship between the Indians and the whites. For nearly half a century the Indian maintained a precarious hold upon Western Pennsylvania by playing one white faction off against the anther, first the French against the British, then the British against the Americans.