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1 " Since much of American taxes prior to 1763 went to support the local clergy, one humorist suggested the opportunity to vote on that. If the minister was turned out, he could open a tavern and preach to his customers if he served them liquor. "
― Colin G. Calloway , The Scratch of a Pen: 1763 and the Transformation of North America
2 " Americans in 1763 lived always in the shadow and presence of death. Death was not yet romanticized as it would be in the 19th century, nor yet sanitized as it would be in the 20th century. "
3 " In histories and memories of the Old West, the Shawnees often featured as frontier terrorists. They burned cabins, killed and scalped settlers, routed American militia, and like the whites they fought, sometimes committed unspeakable atrocities. They were infamous for capturing Daniel Boone’s daughter, and for capturing Daniel Boone himself on more than one occasion. Long after the fighting was over, pioneer families put children to bed with warnings that if they did not go to sleep the Shawnees would get them.7 In their own minds, of course, Shawnees were freedom fighters, not terrorists. At a time when American patriots were urging colonists to unite against British imperialism, Shawnees urged Indians to unite against American expansion. They fought to keep the heartland of America free from aliens who threatened to steal the land and destroy the world. Thomas Ridout, an Englishman who was taken captive by the Shawnees in 1788, found that when he walked into Shawnee lodges, “The children would scream with terror, and cry out ‘Shemanthe,’ meaning Virginian, or the big knife.”8 "
― Colin G. Calloway , The Shawnees and the War for America: The Penguin Library of American Indian History series
4 " Indians are supposed to be silent in the Records written by history’s winners, but Shawnees speak from the Records kept by the British, French, Spaniards, and Americans. Shawnee orators explained that for them the struggle for America was not only a contest for resources but also a clash between two ways of life and between two different worldviews. They fought for a different vision of America. "
5 " Shawnees moved so often and dispersed so widely that they sometimes seemed like a people without a homeland of their own. "
6 " Women as well as men had war and civil chiefs. The Shawnee Prophet said the principal duty of the female peace chief was to prevent unnecessary bloodshed: She would exert her influence to restrain the war chiefs and ensure that conflict occurred only as a last resort. The female chiefs also had oversight of women’s affairs in the village, such as directing the planting and the arrangement of feasts.14 A Quaker who was surprised to see an old woman speaking in an Indian council near the Susquehanna River in 1706 and asked his interpreter why was told “that some women were wiser than some men, and that they had not done anything for many years without the council of this ancient, grave woman.”15 "
