Date of Graduation
2001
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Type
PhD
College
Eberly College of Arts and Sciences
Department
History
Committee Chair
Mary Lou Lustig
Committee Co-Chair
Caroline Litzenberger
Committee Member
Helen Bannan
Committee Member
Ronald L. Lewis
Committee Member
Ken Fones-Wolf
Abstract
European and white American conquest and settlement of the Upper Ohio River Valley during the second half of the eighteenth century transformed the region from Indian cultural domination to white American domination. The region's inhabitants, Lenapes, Shawnees, Senecas, and various other Indian nations, settled the Upper Ohio Valley during the first half of the century and brought their cultures to the region. White settlers soon followed. During this often violent period of frontier contact, whites borrowed from, Indian culture to improve their frontier life, which created a hybrid, or frontier, culture. As the white population increased, they eventually displaced the region's Indian population. By 1810, the pervasiveness of white institutions completed the Upper Ohio River Valley's cultural transformation. White settlement, however, did not bring civilization to the Upper Ohio Valley, as Frederick Jackson Turner had asserted, because the Indians had already established a civilization. Instead, the Upper Ohio Valley frontier was a meeting place of different nations and cultures.
Recommended Citation
Anderson, Robert Thomas, "The transformation of the Upper Ohio River Valley." (2001). Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports. 8407.
https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/etd/8407