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Conrad
Weiser, Pennsylvania's Indian ambassador, was one of the world's
great Jack-of-all trades. Born in Germany, he grew up in the Hudson
and Mohawk valleys of New York and as a youth lived several years
in a Mohawk village where he learned the language. By the 1720's
he had moved with his family to Pennsylvania where James Logan regularly
began to employ him as an agent and interpreter. Trader, colonel
in the French and Indian War, first President judge of Berks county
and founder of Reading PA, a monk at the Ephrata Cloisters, pillar
of the Lutheran Church, statesman, linguist, diplomat, woodsman
were just a part of a long and distinguished career…but it was his
work as an Indian agent that made his fame eternal.
His career introduces us to the whole colonial scene. Everyone
knew him. Governors, churchman, and Indian chiefs all relied on
his advise. The Iroquois named him Tarachiawagon, "He Who Holds
The Heavens." He was at home on Society Hill in Philadelphia as
well as at John Harris' Ferry on the Western Frontier. He knew the
Shamokin Trail like a village main street and visited all distant
Indian towns from Onandaga to Logstown. He went everywhere, saw
everything and recorded in his journals the most important information
of his day. He was as vital to the frontier provincial governments
of the new colonies as George Washington was to Revolutionary War.
Yet, through all the excitement of his public life, he remained
a common man, who above all else, always longed for his wife, children,
and the Tulpehocken home to which he came back to finally die.
664 pages, originally published in 1944, 6" x 9" paperback, notes, index,
$29.95
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