Review: "Covered with Night," Nicole Eustace

By Paul Carrier

 

In 1722, a Native man named Sawantaeny was killed in Conestoga, Pennsylvania, by two colonists during a trading dispute. Colonial officials quickly arrested brothers John and Edmund Cartlidge, pending further investigation, a possible trial for manslaughter or murder and the risk of execution.

As Nicole Eustace points out in Covered with Night, her Pulitzer-winning account of the case, the stakes were high.

Sawantaeny was a Seneca, one of the tribes comprising the powerful Five Nations of the Haudenosaunee, known to us as the Iroquois Confederacy. Colonial officials feared that the Iroquois or their Native allies in the Susquehanna Valley might wage war against Pennsylvania if the colony  failed to secure justice for Sawantaeny.

But what form would justice take? Eustace explains that the Iroquois opposed executing the Cartlidges, or even placing them on trial, preferring that Pennsylvania provide reparations and ritualistic condolences, to strengthen the damaged bonds between Natives and colonists.

The Iroquois essentially insisted that Pennsylvania release the brothers, because execution would be needlessly vengeful and unproductive. Thus, it is the Iroquois, and not the elitist colonials, who displayed the most progressive and advanced conception of justice.

A fascinating cast of characters fills these pages, including multilingual Native diplomats, the victim's widow, a scheming Pennsylvania governor, and feuding Quaker and Anglican Philadelphians jockeying for political power in the colony.