Q&A with Samuel Marquis

  

 

 

Samuel Marquis is the author of the new book Empire and Frontier: Colonel Peter Schuyler and the Valiant Iroquois in King William's War: 1689-1701. His other books include Captain Kidd. He lives in Louisville, Colorado. 

 

Q: What inspired you to write Empire and Frontier?

 

A: The foundation for the research in Empire and Frontier came from writing a biography of my ninth-great-grandfather, the legendary New York privateer Captain William Kidd, entitled Captain Kidd: A True Story of Treasure and Betrayal (2025).

 

When I wrote Captain Kidd, I had so much fascinating material about King William’s War, the First French and Indian War fought over control of North America in the 1690s between the English and French, that I had to move north from New York City where Kidd lived and sailed to the Albany Indian frontier.

 

Both Empire and Frontier and Captain Kidd attempt to bring to life colonial New York, King William’s War, and Leisler’s Rebellion from 1689 to 1701, but from far different vantage points.

 

While Empire and Frontier explores the First French and Indian War and the Covenant Chain alliance between the English and the Haudenosaunee (Five Nations of the Iroquois), Captain Kidd recreates Kidd’s life in New York with his wife, Sarah, his privateering voyages fighting the French and hunting down pirates, and his political struggles with the British Crown in London.

 

The two books can, thus, be considered companion volumes since they both feature King William’s War and many of the same historical figures; yet, they have a significantly different narrative emphasis as well as distinctive primary characters as England and France battle for possession of North America during the global conflict.

 

Q: The author Scott Ellsworth said of the book, “Out of this polyglot and often brutal frontier came the beginnings of a new kind of politics, for a brand-new kind of nation.” What do you think of that description?

 

A: First, I want to extend a special thanks to Scott, author of the outstanding Midnight on the Potomac, for taking the time to read and give me an endorsement for Empire and Frontier given how frantically busy historian-authors are these days.

 

With that said, Scott has hit the nail on the head. While King William’s War was a violent time on northeastern Indian frontier, the conflict was an epic, exciting, and paradigm-shifting event in American history.

 

Both my book and the first French and Indian War are reminiscent of James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans in terms of page-turning romance and excitement. But King William’s War was politically important as well.

 

By the early 1700s, New York Province and the Iroquois frontier, or Iroquoia, were no longer defined by Mohawk, Lenape, or Mahican history, Dutch versus English, Calvinist as opposed to Anglican, or wealthy versus poor (Note: “Mahican” not “Mohican” is the correct spelling).

 

While each of these ethnic, religious, and socioeconomic strands remained important, pluralism, trading partnerships, collaboration, and cross-cultural coalitions were the new order of the day and created a brand new kind of nation.

 

By this time, social, political, and economic connections and alliances were forged in New York and the Indian frontier that cut across ethnicity, race, religion, and political affiliation, and in the process, formed a distinctive “American” character.

 

The collision of cultures, religions, and classes did not result in a “melting pot.” Rather, the major characters of my book—Colonel Peter Schuyler, the Indigenous war captain Lawrence the Mohawk, and the Mohawk-Dutch interpreter Hilletie van Olinda—and their contemporaries blazed a new trail.

 

Through their tireless efforts, they served as the building blocks for not merely the New York we know today but a new, wondrous, multiethnic, and democratic United States of America—the first nation in world history founded expressly on the principle of freedom and the first to lead a successful mass rebellion against colonialism.

 

Q: How did you research the book, and what did you learn that especially surprised you?

 

A: In all my American history books, I do a deep dive into the contemporaneous primary sources, which in this case formed the backbone of Empire and Frontier.

 

I always try to be as even-handed, meticulous, and truthful as possible, while writing in a fast-paced narrative but scholarly fashion that appeals to both general readers and academic historians.

 

The most important libraries, archives, and organizations upon which I relied in the acquisition of the extensive primary source materials were the National Archives of the United Kingdom, the New York State archives, the New York Historical Society, the Schenectady County Historical Society, and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.

 

The biggest surprise for me was the huge distances the English, French, and the allied Indigenous tribes traveled on foot, on snowshoes, on horseback, and by canoe to not only fight battles but to hold diplomatic council meetings during King William’s War.

 

They would travel roundtrip distances of between 200 and 450 miles without using wagons or other horse- or ox-drawn conveyances. In the middle of winter, the English and French and their Indigenous allies didn’t think twice about tromping more than 400 miles on snowshoes through waist-deep snow to fight in blinding blizzards.

 

To say that the Euro-American and Native American men and women of the late-17th-century northeastern frontier were tough is a major understatement.

 

Q: What do you hope readers take away from the book?

 

A: I want readers to know that Empire and Frontier is the quintessential American tale of people of different cultural and ethnic backgrounds working together as one—just like WWII that was won by Yankee soldiers from New York, Colorado, California, and Virginia and the Navaho code talkers of the U.S. Marine Corps hailing from Arizona.

 

With King William’s War and the Grand Settlement of 1701, Colonel Peter Schuyler, Lawrence the Mohawk, Hilletie van Olinda, and the other characters of my book truly did bring about a new kind of politics for a brand-new kind of nation. In the process, they forged a distinctive “American” character.

 

We are a nation of multicultural immigrants coming together as one democratic entity, and while Native Americans are our proud “First Nation” Americans, no group’s identity is more important than any another in America and the sum of what we are together is much greater than any individual group.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: My newest book, Franklin’s Sea Warriors: The Founding Father and his Patriot-Pirate Navy That Won the American Revolution, will be published in May 2027.

 

The book is the true story of Benjamin Franklin and his formidable squadron of Continental Navy seamen and American privateers who fought in the European theater of operations attacking British shipping and coastal cities. In the process, they played a decisive but largely unknown role in winning the American Revolution.

 

Our rebellion against Mother England was not merely a colonial uprising, but a global conflagration with many key battles waged in European waters.

 

Through masterful diplomacy and daring exploits, Franklin and his Patriot-Pirate Navy helped ensure that imperial France became an ally, took the fight to the goliath British Empire, turned the British people against their government, and won the epic struggle.

 

In the process, they changed human history for the better by unleashing a new spirit of political freedom, one that led to the French Revolution, abolitionist societies, and widespread slave revolts.

 

Franklin’s Sea Warriors reminds us that the seaboard of Western Europe was a theater of operations during the Revolution that was every bit as critical to ultimate victory as Bunker Hill, Trenton, Saratoga, and Yorktown.

 

This major historical work finally puts these Continental Navy seamen and privateers on equal footing with Washington’s Continental Army and America’s State militias, where they properly belong.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: Book readers might be interested to know that in addition to being a direct descendant of the legendary Captain Kidd, I am second cousin of Indian rights activist, historian, and reputable author Dr. Thomas B. Marquis (1869–1935).

 

It is through this family connection that I have been interested in Native American history since I was a young boy playing with toy cowboys and Indians.

 

Dr. Marquis was a physician on the Tongue River-Cheyenne Indian reservation following his military service in WWI and a key chronicler of the Battle of Little Bighorn from the Lakota and Cheyenne point of view.

 

What makes him particularly fascinating is that he was fluent in Indian sign language and conducted the most important interviews with the male and female Cheyenne combatants who took part in the defeat of Custer.

 

Because of my family connection to Thomas B. Marquis and from growing up in Colorado, I have always been interested in Native American history and the Indian Wars and have now written three books built around Native American protagonists (Cheyenne and Iroquois).

 

The Northern Cheyenne loved the Indian rights activist Dr. Marquis like a brother and he loved them back, and the Iroquois had a similar relationship with Colonel Peter Schuyler, who served as both liaison and protector of the Five Nations.

 

Because of his dedicated public service, the Iroquois bestowed upon Schuyler the honorable moniker “Brother Quider,” the council title for the government of Albany based on a Mohawk pronunciation of Schuyler’s given name, “Peter.”

 

Like Thomas B. Marquis and Peter Schuyler, I greatly admire Indigenous peoples, especially the Cheyennes, the finest horse people of the Great Plains along with the Comanche, and the Haudenosaunee, the most militarily powerful and diplomatically successful Native American confederation throughout the 17th and 18th centuries.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Samuel Marquis.