 | The edge of the woods Subjects: Human geography; Community life; Power (Social sciences); Spatial behavior; Social mobility; Social structure; Iroquois Indians; Iroquois Indians; Drawing on archival and published documents in several languages, archeological data, and Iroquois oral traditions, The Edge of the Woods explores the ways in which spatial mobility represented the geographic expression of Iroquois social, political, and economic priorities. By reconstructing the late precolonial Iroquois settlement landscape and the paths of human mobility that constructed and sustained it, Jon Parmenter challenges the persistent association between Iroquois 'locality' and Iroquois 'culture,' and more fully maps the extended terrain of physical presence and social activity that Iroquois people inhabited. Studying patterns of movement through and between the multiple localities in Iroquois space, the book offers a new understanding of Iroquois peoplehood during this period. According to Parmenter, Iroquois identities adapted, and even strengthened, as the very shape of Iroquois homelands changed dramatically during the seventeenth century. Jon Parmenter is Associate Professor of History at Cornell University. He has previously published article-length studies in Diplomatic History, The William & Mary Quarterly, French Colonial History, and Ethnohistory, in addition to essays contributed to edited collections. |
