Journey into Mohawk Country by George O’Connor

The journals of a young Dutch barber/surgeon traveling through what is now New York State in the 1630s to inquire with local indigenous communities about why trading at Fort Orange was dwindling may not make thrilling reading for anyone but a colonial history buff.  That was before George O’Connor got his pencils and inks on them.  O’Connor has managed to transform these informative, if inaccessible, primary documents into a dynamic graphic novel.  O’Conner’s comic illustrations bring Harmen Meyndertsz van den Bogaert’s nearly four-hundred-year-old words to life, making them far more understandable and adding a bit of comic relief to the travelogue.   Teachers of Social Studies may find it a useful teaching aid in teaching about the fur economy of colonial North America and early relationships between Native inhabitants and European newcomers. --Regan Schwartz

O’Connor, George. Journey into Mohawk Country. New York: First Second, 2006. Print.