A Susquehanna Tale

It was the time of rifle, tomahawk, and knife. It was the time of plough, axe, and endurance. It was the time when blood flowed into the waters of the Susquehanna River. 1750 to 1800. Colonial Susquehanna Valley. The contested boundary between hungry settlers and Iroquois Confederacy. It was a time of hope and loss.

Alexander Tennant chooses a life as a frontier scout rather than following his family footsteps by pastoring in the Presbyterian Church. Tennant felt a different calling. Armed with a gift for languages and a Pennsylvania flintlock, Tennant faces the perils and loneliness of this wilderness, his conscience troubled and his honor tested by the tensions between settlers and natives, battling against the fury and cunning of enemies during the wars of conquest, wars of retribution, and wars of desperation fought along the banks and tributaries of the Susquehanna.

Known by the Leni Lenape, Seneca, Cayuga, and Oneida as the man with two tomahawks, Tennant relives his hard and bloody memories while sharing a decanter of rye whisky -- distilled according to George Washington's recipe -- in the parlour of the pioneer fieldstone home of his closest friend, Colonel William Montgomery, farmer and statesman celebrated for establishing the village along the Susquehanna later to be named, Danville.

Through their eyes we experience what this ancient river, the Susquehanna, has witnessed during those turbulent times, as its waters flowed downstream.