1. This article is about devils and fairies and crap. But it’s really, really good.
2. This article is, in part, about the tensions between Bloody Fellow and John McDonald over whether the Cherokee were going to trade with the U.S. and therefore harass the Spanish (Bloody Fellow) or trade with the Spanish and therefore harass the USians (McDonald).
Tiny Cat Pants 
What I’m hoping the book Bridgett recommended about Indian traders in the area will shed some light on is this: is it as simple as Finnelson working for Bloody Fellow?
“Hey Boss, I’ve been running around doing these favors for our friends, the Spanish so that we can trade with them.”
“Oh, shit, I’ve been running around making friends with the Americans so we can trade with them.”
“But we’re about to wipe the Americans off the face of Tennessee.”
“Fuck. Go tell them to arm themselves.”
Why did you post that first article? I’m not going to get anything else done today!
Unlikely that Finnelson was working directly for Bloody Fellow, though it’s completely possible (if they have some female kin ties) that they’d be trying to get on the same page. And since you’re reading up on the Cherokee and the market revolution, you’ve just GOT to read this one. http://uncpress.unc.edu/browse/page/295
And by the way, I think that the “e-book shorts” strategy of UNC Press (advertised on the page I linked to) is a damn good idea. The editorial work is already done on the piece so there’s not much extra cost involved, maybe you don’t want the whole book, but you want something smart to read…is this a trend in academic publishing that I’ve missed or are they positioned (because of their monster US history list) to take off on this tangent when no one else is doing so?
Coble, I know! I kept waiting for it to get boring so I could TLDR it, but no! It just keeps being interesting.
Bridgett, both. Well, kind of both. Selling things in smaller chunks is definitely already happening and will become moreso. But most of us had just been thinking of this in terms of coursepacks. UNC is the first–if not the only–to sell stand alone smaller chunks for the reason you mention.
It seems to me that this would be a great way to get academic history back into the hands of interested readers at an attractive (even impulse!) price point, just a little branch off the narrow lane represented by the Barnes and Noble single-shelf of Great Man political bios and umpteeleven treatments of Gettysburg. I’d love to see Overdrive (to tie into Kat’s morning post) pick up this series — the author list (including one of my former profs, Johanna Schoen) is awesome.