In 1750 and 1751 Christopher Gist, an agent of the Ohio Company of Virginia, explored the greater portion of the region now included within the boundaries of Ohio, Kentucky, and West Virginia, along with portions of western Maryland and southwestern Pennsylvania. These explorations were the earliest made so far west for the sole object of examining the country, and the first of which a regular journal was kept. It was on these two journeys that he made his greatest contribution to history.

Few places in the United States confound and fascinate Americans like Appalachia, yet no other area has been so markedly mischaracterized by the mass media. Stereotypes of hillbillies and rednecks repeatedly appear in representations of the region, but few, if any, of its many heroes, visionaries, or innovators are ever referenced. Make no mistake, they are legion: from Anne Royall, America's first female muckraker, to Sequoyah, a Cherokee mountaineer who invented the first syllabary in modern times, and international divas Nina Simone and Bessie Smith, as well as writers Cormac McCarthy, Edward Abbey, and Nobel Laureate Pearl S. Buck, Appalachia has contributed mightily to American culture — and politics. Not only did eastern Tennessee boast the country's first antislavery newspaper, Appalachians also established the first District of Washington as a bold counterpoint to British rule. With humor, intelligence, and clarity, Jeff Biggers reminds us how Appalachians have defined and shaped the United States we know today.

This study of gifts to the Indians is an attempt to illuminate a hitherto almost obscure factor in the Colonial westward movement. These “presents,” comprising such eighteenth-century items as fabrics, hardware, munitions, food, toys, jewelry, clothing, wampum, and liquors, were a potent factor in the complex diplomatic history of Indian politics along the old Northwest frontier. Thousands of pounds sterling were expended both by the French and by the English in observing this old Indian custom that was so necessary to Indian diplomacy. Indeed, the civilizing influence of this concomitant of Western culture reached ahead of the fur trade far into the wilderness to the Mississippi Valley. These so-called presents also served as a measure of compensation for the vast areas of virgin forest that were bought by the English. The French competed with the British in securing the friendship of the powerful Indian confederacies, which, even as late as 1750, held the balance of power in North America. During the years 1748-1763, it became the policy of the colonies bordering the Ohio and Northwest frontiers to “brighten the chain of friendship” by giving presents to such influential “nations” as the members of the Iroquoian confederacy. Moreover, in some cases the Indians became so accustomed to these frequent outlays of free merchandise that they came to be almost completely dependent upon European goods.—Wilbur R. Jacobs

Reprint of the original, first published in 1880.