The Invasion Within: The Contest of Cultures in Colonial North America (Cultural Origins of North America)

The best introduction now available to the problem of cultural conversion in the New World. (The New York Times Book Review)

Offers an impressive array of insights. (The Historian)

Axtell is one of the finest practitioners of this history of real persons, and his style makes him one of its most graceful writers. (The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography)

The most ambitious and sophisticated contribution to early American ethnohistory to date. (Alden T. Vaughan, Columbia University, in William and Mary Quarterly)

A stimulating and important contribution to our understandingd of cultural relations in colonial America. (Pacific Historical Review)

[Axtell's] scope, pace, and clarity are unprecedented....Readers new to the field can use this volume as a reliable introduction and guide. (The Catholic Historical Review)

This work summarizes current scholarship regarding many topics. The author focuses on the mutual impact that French, English, and Indian cultures made on each other from earliest contact to the beginning decades of the eighteenth century. He stays largely within the northeast culture area and describes ways in which indigenous tribes confronted Jesuit and Puritan representations of Christian civilization. This synthesis combines broad coverage with balanced judgements to produce a gratifying, solid narrative. It is, moreover, a delight to read....Because its scope, pace, and clarity are unprecedented. It brings disparate voices of the time together in splendid synthesis. (The Catholic Historical Review)

Lucid, packed with detail...the book stands as a provocative study of the psychology and consequences of missionary work, and of the resistance to it. (Times Literary Supplement)

Colonial North America was not only a battleground for furs and land, but also for allegiances and even souls. In the three-sided struggle for empire, the English and French colonists were locked in heated competition for native allies and religious converts. Axtell sharply contrasts the English efforts to "civilize" the Indians with the French willingness to accept native lifestyles, and reveals why the struggle for control over the continent became a fascinating contest of cultures between shrewd opponents lasting nearly 150 years.