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Crane later took direct aim at Swanton's theory that equated the predatory Indian band known as the "Westos" with a contemporary migratory group known as the "Yuchis." Crane's more meticulous research revealed instead that the Westos were not Yuchis but a displaced Erie group known as the "Rickaheckrians," who had been driven south from Virginia in the 1650s. 6 Though Swanton himself refused to accept Crane's argument, most today recognize that Crane got it right, and anthropologists now understand that historical method has much to recommend it. It would therefore be no stretch to say that Crane's work foreshadows the work of Charles Hudson and other ethnohistorians, who over the course of the last forty years have developed a research strategy that employs both ethnographic and historical methods.

And though [Verner] Crane was not trained as an ethnographer, his scholarship has had a lasting influence on anthropology, as he demonstrated the benefits of applying rigorous historical research methods to the anthropological study of the southeastern tribes. That Crane was interested in the anthropology can be seen in his contribution to a leading journal in that field, in which he sought to teach the anthropologists a thing or two about the historical method. Chief among Crane's targets of criticism was his contemporary John R. Swanton, an expert on southeastern Indians and among the leading anthropologists of that era. While Swanton pioneered the use of historical documents in his ethnographic works, his research methods were often less than meticulous and his reading of the historical record was colored by his profession's devotion to the "ethnographic present," a methodology that assumes tacitly the historical continuity of any given culture. 5 Crane, by way of contrast, assumed more explicitly the historical development of the southeastern tribes and utilized a broader spectrum of the documentary record at his disposal. By doing so, he was able to pinpoint precisely the emergence of the use of the term "Creek Indians," which came into use only in the early eighteenth century, leading Crane in The Southern Frontier to describe the Creek Confederacy as an "amalgamation of tribes" more recent in origin, perhaps, than Swanton had allowed.

If Crane unwittingly helped to give birth to several recent trends in historical writing, he can be more explicitly credited with championing the neglected history of the colonial Deep South, a South that existed long before cotton became king. Crane's belief that the southern frontier merited closer historical attention appears to have derived from his admiration of the work of Herbert Bolton and his students at the University of California at Berkeley. Whereas Turner's frontier progressed from east to west, the "Bolton School," as it is often termed, called attention to the frontier of New Spain, which stretched from Florida to California and progressed from south to north. Though Crane did not attempt to duplicate the Spanish archival work of the Bolton School, he drew extensively upon its research and credited Bolton as being the catalyst of a "renaissance" of interest in the history of the Old Southeast. Throughout the pages of The Southern Frontier, Crane dropsINTRODUCTION xxv subtle and not-so-subtle hints intended to correct the nation's historical myopia. He expresses a thinly veiled disdain for Francis Parkman, author of classic works on Anglo-French rivalry in the North, who, in Crane's words, "has been permitted to say almost the last word upon the colonial frontier in its international aspects." The roots of Anglo-French rivalry for control of the Mississippi Valley did not, in Crane's view, begin in the Ohio Valley in the mid-eighteenth century. "It was on the southern frontier [during Qyeen Anne's War]," Crane wrote, "that the conflict was first clearly joined for the control of the valley of the Mississippi." British imperial tactics devised to counteract French influence, Crane maintained, were also southern in origin.

Crane also does not overlook the fact that Carolina's Indian allies played a central role in destroying the Florida missions and did much of the fighting during Queen Anne's War (1702-1713). The "middle ground," in many respects, is easy to find on Crane's southern frontier. Also evident in recent scholarship on Native American history and in The Southern Frontier is an emphasis on Indian perspectives and the agency of Native American peoples, that is, the ability on the part of the Indians to act and to shape the course of their own history, albeit not always in conditions of their own choosing.

Indians also figure prominently in the triangular struggle between Britain, Spain, and France for mastery of the South. Though all three empires asserted their dominion over the territory in question, Crane rightly recognized the Creek Confederacy, masters of the "play-off" system of politics, as the true "custodians of the wilderness balance of power" following the Yamasee War.

Nowhere is this [Indian free agency] more apparent than in Crane's discussion of the Yamasee War, a pan-tribal revolt against the Carolina begun in 1715. Far from a typical revolt against land-hungry colonists, the Yamasee War was sui generis in origin, as Crane describes it, aINTRODUCTION XXUl revolt directed against the abuses of the traders, who had sold their women and children into slavery, abused the Indian women, and used debt as a tool of coercion. "Indian resentment," as Crane termed it, becomes understandable as do the targets of Indian vengeance in light of Crane's discussion. ...As with new approaches to frontier and Native American history, Crane's work might be said to foreshadow the recent emergence of yet another genre, the so-called New Imperial History, seen in the work of scholars such as J. Russel Snapp, Michael McConnel, Timothy Shannon, Eric Hinderaker, and Gregory Evans Dowd. 8 Whereas the "old" imperial history emphasized the study of imperial institutions from a decidedly metropolitan perspective, the New Imperial History places the frontier at the center of the story of the development of the British Empire in North America. Integral to that story, of course, are Native American peoples, whose actions shape the policies developed in the colonial capitals and in London. Again, Crane's discussion of the Yamasee War might serve as a model. The Indian uprising of1715, Crane demonstrated, directly influenced Carolina frontier policy, as colonial officials abolished (temporarily, as it turned out) the system of trade founded on private enterprise and solidified the Carolina frontier with a string of forts. ...On a final note, while there is much work to be done in reconstructing the history of the region, suffice it to say that thanks in large part to Crane and his admirers, the colonial Deep South occupies a less marginal place in American history than it did even a generation ago. We might imagine that Crane would be happy to know that Parkman has not had the ((last word" on the subject of the colonial frontier. In the twenty-two years since the last release of The Southern Frontier, highly esteemed-indeed, prize winning-books by Daniel Usner,]ames Merrell, and Claudio Saunt, to name but a few, have placed the Deep South more at the center of the story of American development. 9 Anthropologists have done their fair share, too, in reconstructing the early social history of the southeastern Indians. A cottage industry ofYamasee War studies seems to have emerged, as evidenced by the proliferation of dissertations on the subject. And many a college-level U.S. history textbook contains at least brief mention of the unique origins of the South Carolina colony, if not the Yamasee War. Crane's work, once described as the ((opening chapter" to the study of the region, can no longer be described as the only one. 10 May that other chapters be written to honor the man, Verner Crane, and the book, The Southern Frontier.xxvi INTRODUCTION NOTES 1. The best concise summary of Crane's life can be found in Peter Wood's preface to the 1981 Norton edition.

The shock of the Yamasee War was felt even in London, as the Carolinians ousted the proprietary regime in 1719 largely on the grounds that it was ill suited to confront adequately the real or potential threat of Indian uprisings.

Fort King George, erected on the Altamaha River (in present-day Georgia) in 1721, represented the first implementation of a new frontier fortification strategy. "In fact," Crane argued, "it was intended, as was Georgia later, in large measure as a strategic move in the Anglo-French conflict for the west.'''(Not Oswego [New York] in 1727," Crane was quick to add, ((but Altamaha, in 1721, saw the inception of the British eighteenth-century scheme of frontier posts to counteract French . " expansion.

Fort King George, erected on the Altamaha River (in present-day Georgia) in 1721, represented the first implementation of a new frontier fortification strategy. "In fact," Crane argued, "it was intended, as was Georgia later, in large measure as a strategic move in the Anglo-French conflict for the west.'''(Not Oswego [New York] in 1727," Crane was quick to add, ((but Altamaha, in 1721, saw the inception of the British eighteenth-century scheme of frontier posts to counteract French . " expansion.