Dr. Samuel A. Forman
“Ill-Fated Frontier” is at once a pioneer adventure and a compelling narrative of the frictions that emerged among entrepreneurial pioneers and their sixty enslaved African Americans, Natives fighting to preserve their lands, and Spanish colonials with their own agenda. Here is a turbulent and visceral portrait of the wild American frontier in the Revolutionary era that begins with an optimistic plan and ends with the body of one of the expedition’s leaders returning East pickled in a barrel of rum. North becomes South by choice of some, compulsion of others, over fierce Native resistance, and with the encouragement of Spanish colonials.
Dr. Samuel A. Forman (illfatedfrontier.com, @DrSamForman) is an independent historian of non-fiction, writing compelling stories of national import on a base of authoritative and new scholarship.