American Confluence

About this book

"In the heart of North America, the continent's three greatest rivers come together. As the crow flies, only about 135 miles separate the point where the Missouri and Ohio Rivers join the Mississippi. Together, the three rivers drain a vast portion of North America, uniting waters from west, north, and east on a journey southward. This is the region that Stephen Aron calls the "American Confluence."" "This study examines the history of that region - a home to the Osage, a colony exploited by the French, a new frontier explored by Lewis and Clark. Focusing on the last two-thirds of the eighteenth century and the first third of the nineteenth, the book explores the meetings of peoples, or frontiers that evolved within the area where the rivers met. This history of multiple frontiers accents the region's transition from a place of overlapping borderlands to one of oppositional border states." "American Confluence is a look at the history of the region where the American West begins"--Jacket.