What do you think?
Rate this book
Fire Ant Books
The Packhorseman
In April 1735, twenty-year-old William MacGregor, possessing little more than a bottle of Scotch whiskey and a set of Shakespeare’s plays, arrives in Charles Town, South Carolina, to make his fortune in the New World. The Scottish Highlands, while dear to his heart, were in steep economic decline and hopelessly entangled in dangerous political intrigue. With an uncle in Carolina, the long ocean voyage seemed his best chance for a new start. He soon discovers that the Jacobite politics of Scotland extend to Carolina, and when his mouth gets him in trouble with the Charles Town locals, dimming his employment opportunities, he seizes the one option still open for him and takes a job as a frontier packhorseman.
Soon young MacGregor is on the Cherokee trail to Indian country, where he settles in as a novice in the deerskin trade. Along the way William learns not only the arts of managing a pack train and trading with the Indians, but of reading the land and negotiating cultural differences with the Cherokee—whose clan system is much different from the Scottish clans of his homeland. William also learns that the Scottish enlightenment he so admires has not made much headway in the Carolina backcountry, where the real challenges are to survive, day to day, during the tense times after the Yamasee War and to remember that while in Indian country . . . it is their country.
A scholar of the native Southeast, Charles Hudson has turned his hand to this work of historical fiction, bringing to life the packhorsemen, Indian traders, and southeastern Indians of the early 18th-century Carolina. With a comfortable and engaging style, Hudson peoples the Carolina frontier with believable characters, all caught up in a life and time that is historically well-documented but little-known to modern popular readers.
Soon young MacGregor is on the Cherokee trail to Indian country, where he settles in as a novice in the deerskin trade. Along the way William learns not only the arts of managing a pack train and trading with the Indians, but of reading the land and negotiating cultural differences with the Cherokee—whose clan system is much different from the Scottish clans of his homeland. William also learns that the Scottish enlightenment he so admires has not made much headway in the Carolina backcountry, where the real challenges are to survive, day to day, during the tense times after the Yamasee War and to remember that while in Indian country . . . it is their country.
A scholar of the native Southeast, Charles Hudson has turned his hand to this work of historical fiction, bringing to life the packhorsemen, Indian traders, and southeastern Indians of the early 18th-century Carolina. With a comfortable and engaging style, Hudson peoples the Carolina frontier with believable characters, all caught up in a life and time that is historically well-documented but little-known to modern popular readers.
336 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2009
About the author
Charles M. Hudson
20 books7 followersCharles Melvin Hudson, Jr. (1932–2013) was the Franklin Professor of Anthropology and History Emeritus at the University of Georgia, and a leading authority on the history and culture of Native Americans in the Southeastern United States.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles...
Librarian note:
There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles...
Librarian note:
There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
January 10, 2018
Very easy and quick read full of interesting historical facts.
April 10, 2014
I read this as part of my research for my own series of historical novels. Written by an historian it has a wealth of details which are interesting and useful to me. Unfortunately the author is a little too eager to fit all this information in - and his preferred method of doing so is a long-winded and improbable 'conversation' in which one character relates it in straight history-book fashion. The plot is interesting enough and it's not a bad book, but if you're looking for a story that really grabs you by the throat and drags you in to another world this isn't it.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews