Free (Kindle) Way Through the Wilderness [Southwest Trade Route & Community History]

[ATDrake]

A Way Through the Wilderness: The Natchez Trace and the Civilization of the Southern Frontier by William C. Davis (Wikipedia), an award-winning historian specializing in the Civil War and former Professor at Virginia Tech is his place and community cultural history of a portion of the US Southwest frontier in the period between the Revolutionary War through the 1830s, focusing upon the development of the titular trail (Wikipedia; apparently still maintained as a hiking trail) which eventually became an important migration and trade route from its earliest beginnings, and the people who used it in various ways, drawing upon colourful anecdotes as well as dispelling factual misconceptions, free for a limited time courtesy of publisher Endeavour Press's Pioneering imprint.

This was originally published in 1995 by HarperCollins and was later reprinted by the Louisiana State University Press.

Currently free @ Amazon (available to Canadians & in the UK and pretty much everywhere else Amazon sells worldwide, since this is being done via their KDP Select exclusive-or-else program)

Description
Merchants, bankers, planters, soldiers, Kaintucks and gamblers, all were tied in one way or another to that enchanting, storied, and often mysterious highway of the American Frontier: the Natchez Trace.

Beginning life as a shadowy Indian trail, the road became the means by which almost everything made its way to the Old Southwest as European and American explorers arrived.

From the pioneers journeying south after the Revolutionary War through to the 1830s, Davis uses the Natchez Trace to weave a history of life in the Old Southwest.

The danger and adversity faced on the Natchez Trace shaped the communities as much as the education, religion and enlightenment that radiated from it.

In A Way Through the Wilderness, William C. Davis uses the everyday experiences and daily struggles travellers and settlers to make a significant contribution to our understanding of the Old South West and those who inhabited it..