A01=Robert E. Cray
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Anglo-Native relations
Author_Robert E. Cray
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battlefield heroics and failures
battlefield memory and legend
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=HBJK
Category=HBW
Category=JBSL11
Category=JFSL9
Category=NHK
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colonial battle documentation
colonial conflict mythology
colonial defeat narratives
colonial historiography
Colonial New England warfare
colonial public perception of warfare
colonial soldier biographies
colonial war narratives
COP=United States
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
early 18th-century frontier life
early 18th-century military expeditions
early American commemorations
early American frontier violence
early American military monuments
early American militia tactics
Eastern Abenaki Nation conflicts
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forgotten New England wars
French and Indian War precursors
frontier combat in colonial America
frontier hero legends
Fryeburg Maine historic site
Hawthorne historical reflections
historic Native American clashes
historical folklore in New England
John Lovewell expedition
land grants for war survivors
Language_English
legendary frontier battles
literary references to early wars
Longfellow historical poems
Lovewell's Fight reenactments
martyrdom in colonial conflicts
Massachusetts colonial government pensions
Massachusetts colonial history
military commemoration practices
military heroism in early America
military strategy errors in colonial campaigns
Native resistance strategies
New England battle monuments
New England colonial memory culture
New England colonial militias
PA=Available
Pigwacket Maine battle
Price_€20 to €50
PS=Active
regional war stories
scalp bounty skirmishes
scalp hunting controversies
settler and Native interactions
softlaunch
Thoreau military commentary
widows of colonial soldiers
Product details
- ISBN 9781625341075
- Weight: 366g
- Dimensions: 120 x 256mm
- Publication Date: 27 Oct 2014
- Publisher: University of Massachusetts Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
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In May 1725, during a three-year conflict between English colonists and the Eastern Abenaki Nation, a thirty-four-man expedition led by Captain John Lovewell set out to ambush their adversaries, acquire some scalp bounties, and hasten the end of the war. Instead, the Abenakis staged a surprise attack of their own at Pigwacket, Maine, that left more than a third of the New Englanders dead or severely wounded. Although Lovewell himself was slain in the fighting, he emerged a martyred hero, celebrated in popular memory for standing his ground against a superior enemy force.
In this book, Robert E. Cray revisits the clash known as “Lovewell’s Fight” and uses it to illuminate the themes of war, death, and memory in early New England. He shows how a military operation plagued from the outset by poor decision-making, and further marred by less-than-heroic battlefield behavior, came to be remembered as early America’s version of the Alamo. The government of Massachusetts bestowed payouts, pensions, and land on survivors and widows of the battle, while early chroniclers drafted a master narrative for later generations to emboss. William Henry Longfellow, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau kept the story alive for later generations. Although some nineteenth-century New Englanders disapproved of Lovewell’s notoriety as a scalp hunter, it did not prevent the dedication of a monument in his honor at the Fryeburg, Maine, battlesite in 1904.
Even as the actual story of “Lovewell’s Fight” receded into obscurity—a bloody skirmish in a largely forgotten war—it remained part of New England lore, one of those rare military encounters in which defeat transcends an opponent’s victory to assume the mantle of legend.
In this book, Robert E. Cray revisits the clash known as “Lovewell’s Fight” and uses it to illuminate the themes of war, death, and memory in early New England. He shows how a military operation plagued from the outset by poor decision-making, and further marred by less-than-heroic battlefield behavior, came to be remembered as early America’s version of the Alamo. The government of Massachusetts bestowed payouts, pensions, and land on survivors and widows of the battle, while early chroniclers drafted a master narrative for later generations to emboss. William Henry Longfellow, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau kept the story alive for later generations. Although some nineteenth-century New Englanders disapproved of Lovewell’s notoriety as a scalp hunter, it did not prevent the dedication of a monument in his honor at the Fryeburg, Maine, battlesite in 1904.
Even as the actual story of “Lovewell’s Fight” receded into obscurity—a bloody skirmish in a largely forgotten war—it remained part of New England lore, one of those rare military encounters in which defeat transcends an opponent’s victory to assume the mantle of legend.
Robert E. Cray is professor of history at Montclair State University.
