Summary: A common historical myth is that Native Americans were an “oral people” and did not engage in literacy. In his new book Red Ink: Native Americans Picking Up the Pen in the Colonial Period, Drew Lopenzina (Old Dominion University) argues that Native Americans early on acquired the skills of reading and writing. Also featured: In the movies, the American frontier is a lawless place. But historian Turk McCleskey (Virginia Military Institute) studied 18th-century court records and found that the first settlers of Virginia’s frontier actually took the law very seriously. And: We have a sense of what early America looked like, but Bonnie Gordon and Emily Gale (University of Virginia) ask: What did it sound like? From bawdy tavern songs to tunes commenting on Thomas Jefferson’s relationship with Sally Hemings, Gordon and Gale are uncovering the soundscape of early America.
