Pioneers of the Old Southwest: A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground

Chronicles of America #18

by Constance Lindsay Skinner

This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

Genres: History

330 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1919

About the author

Skinner was a Canadian born writer and historian who moved to New York in her early 20s and worked in the publishing industry at Macmillan, while writing children's books. She freelanced as a theatre critic for the New York Herald Tribune. She assumed editorial responsibility for a major nonfiction series, The Rivers of America, and edited the first six volumes. Primarily self-educated, she told one reader she had never attended a "school or a college."

Known for wearing bright colors, particularly red dresses, along with beads, bracelets, and bangles. She was also an early environmentalist; her father had worked for the Hudson Bay Company and she retained deep fondness for the remote British Columbia region where she had grown up.

Reviews

[Peter Bringe · Rating 4 out of 5]

I got this book (the 1921 Edition) from an antique shop in Ivoryton, CT as I love reading about Daniel Boone and his contemporaries (the "Old Southwest" refers to Kentucky, Tennessee, western North Carolina, etc...). Over all, I really enjoyed the book and read it in one day. The parts about the Presbyterian Scotch-Irish and Scot Highlanders were pretty interesting. The author would occasionally make a comment revealing an Enlightenment "noble savage" perspective (e.g. talking about the purity of the primitive), but she seemed pretty balanced over all. She painted a stirring picture of these men and women who worked so hard to establish our country, seeing themselves as Daniel Boone saw himself as an "instrument in the hand of God to open the wilderness to settlement."

She did make a mistake–a big one if you are from Missouri–in the end of the book when she said that Daniel Boone was buried alongside Rebecca and then was re-buried with her in Kentucky. Everyone knows that the Kentuckians dug up the wrong guy with Rebecca, leaving Daniel buried in Missouri. :)

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

An Informative book bur.....

I found this to be an informative but somewhat dull book to read. I think those interested in history will enjoy it.