Relive the Clashes that Shaped Colonial America    Today Americans remember 1776 as the beginning of an era. A nation was born, commencing a story that continues to this day and that we ourselves are a part of. But the War of Independence also marked the end of another era--one in which many nations, Native American and European, had struggled for control of a vast and formidable wilderness. That saga, though separated from us now by a gulf of time that makes it seem strange and even alien, was the history out of which our own emerged.             This book returns to that long-ago age, traveling through land that now forms part of the United States but that once knew a reality in which the clash between America's first peoples and the newcomers from Europe was still new. Focusing on events that are all but forgotten today, author Cormac O'Brien's masterful storytelling reveals how actors as diverse as Spanish conquistadores, Puritan ministers, Amerindian sachems, mercenary soldiers, and ordinary farmers traded and clashed across a landscape of constant, often violent, change--and how these dramatic moments, though largely lost to memory, helped to shape the very world around us.             From the founding of the first permanent European settlement in North America (1565) to the bloody chaos of the British frontier in Pontiac's War (1763), this vividly written narrative spans the two centuries of American history before the Revolutionary War. These lesser-known conflicts of the past are brought brilliantly to life, showing us a world of heroism, brutality, and tenacity--and also showing us how deep the roots of our own time truly run. Illustrated with more than 100 archival images.