1742

1742: The True Story of the Nanticoke Indians' Plot to Unite the Tribes, Massacre the English, and Take Back the Eastern Shore.
 
In the spring of 1742, a Shawnee war party journeyed hundreds of miles to the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay to recruit allies for a war against the English colonists. The once-mighty but diminished Nanticokes, whose great-grandparents had greeted Captain John Smith with arrows, invited several other tribes -- the Choptank, Assateague, Pocomoke, and Askecksy Indians -- to meet at a place called Wimbesocom. A daring plan was proposed: With the help of hundreds of fierce nothern warriors, the Eastern Shore tibes would carry out a surprise raid against their English neighbors and slaughter everyone . . . men, women, and children. Meanwhile, French forces would land on the coast and help them drive the white man off the peninsula, splitting the English colonies.
 
If they succeeded, they would remake the destiny of North America. If they failed, they might lose their lands forever.
 
1742 traces the history of the Nanticoke Indians and other Eastern Shore tribes from their first contact with English colonists through decades of bloody conflict and bitter concessions, revealing a simmering resistance which boiled over during what historian C.A. Weslager called "the most important single event in Indian history on the Delmarva Peninsula."
 
Paperback. 280 pages.