I’ve read quite a number of Pulitzer Prize winners in History over the last couple decades and they almost always get a top rating from me.  This year I read both of last year’s winners (2022).  First there was Cuba; An American History by Ada Ferrer back in March or so, and then awhile later I saw a second winner had been announced – “Covered with Night: A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice in Early America” by Nicole Eustace.  (Yes, there were two winners in 2022!)  So I had to read that. I was impressed by both and have made a resolution to keep up with this Pulitzer reading. 

Covered with Night
A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice in Early America
by: Nicole Eustace 2021 
Read by: Laural Merlington   14h 33m
Rating: 10! /  history-true crime / 
(Both read and listened) 
https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/nicole-eustace  (2022) 

  The word Murder is used in the subtitle of Eustace’s book and I fear that might be misleading.  The phrase “Covered with Night,” is the actual title which is rather ambiguous and catchy, but it’s taken from the text and is in there because it’s an important phrase in understanding the Native point of view of the whole thing. And that phrase is used within the text more than once to assure reader comprehension of its importance.  

It’s the subtitle of the volume which is telling: “A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice in Early America,” because that’s more precisely what the book is about.  What is “indigenous justice?”  Eustace’s wonder of a book delves well into that. What is “white Colonial justice”?  And the book goes there. Nicole Eustace has written a thoughtful and important academic history with all the source work, depth and nuance that entails.  (I want to go read her prior works!) 

This is in all likelihood a Dewey Decimal # 974: “General history of North America Northeastern United States.”  It’s not “true crime” either, (not in the contemporary sense of the term) either although it’s listed some places as that.

For those who don’t know (most all of the readers I’d expect) this is NOT a mystery particularly, and it never really was except that perhaps what happened between American Natives and the Pennsylvania colony 300 years ago was never as fully revealed as it is here – and then it was hidden and/or buried under a LOT of other material. But maybe the idea of “indigenous  justice” is the mystery – (it was to me!) What in the world?

This is the story of how two English fur traders, one Quaker and one Anglican, became outraged during an informal little trade meeting and killed a respected local Seneca hunter. This all happened near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1722 where William Penn, the Quaker governor and proprietor, had died only a few years prior.  And this is the story of the local Natives, the Haudenosaunee community of tribes and alliances, and their ways of dealing with tragedy and loss, trade and inter-community living in many ways and instances.  

The somewhat scholarlywork is very well sourced and written in good literary form. It’s the tale of a murder which occurred in February, 1722 in  Philadelphia and the Colony of Pennsylvania, when two fur traders bludgeoned a Seneca hunter and left him for dead.  Which he did although no one could find the body for awhile.  But there had been witnesses and the accused spent time in jail.  But!!! 

 Seneca justice was completely different from what the English understood and were bringing to their colonies – whether it be Anglican or Quaker.  In this case there was never much doubt about who did what to whom and why.  In a fit of rage the English trader smacked the Seneca  fur trapper with the butt of his gun,  the trapper fought back very briefly and then the trader’s partner landed a hard one and the first trader finished the job.  Oh-oh. The traders skedaddled.  

What happened next and next and next is what follows and who all these people were, trying to fashion justice to their own interests, liking, faiths, whatever.  There is a LOT of background here – Eustace casts her net wide and her catch is astounding – quite satisfying and a feeling I could go on reading about Seneca for many more days.