A review by jwinchell
Journey into Mohawk Country by Harmen Meyndertsz Van Den Bogaert

3.0

I've become a fan of George O'Connor, so it was interesting to read this pre-Olympians title. His general idea is intriguing: to illustrate a primary document and bring to life one Dutch trader's diary of his journey into "Mohawk Country." I had lots of questions while I was reading: what's the value of this? why should I believe his pictorial deviations from the text? is this really what the Mohawk looked like? I guess the best use of this text would before history students to use it is an alternate history, to read the actual journal, to do other research into the era. Because as just a straight narrative, this was not a very good read. The drawings of Native Americans seemed to me to be dangerous caricatures, and I was uncomfortable with O'Connor's basic purpose of exalting this early era in colonialist history.