Book excerpt: Forsaking their lives in Rutland Vermont, Nathan Perry and his young family journeyed to the Genesee River in far western New York, the heart of the Great Western Wilderness, beyond the limits of civilized America. By autumn 1790, they had built a primitive cabin, their new home surrounded by a vast primeval forest populated by thousands of truculent Seneca natives who resented their presence. So began the Nathan Perry family’s many long years as trailblazing frontiersmen in the wilds of western New York and later in Ohio, where they “went native,” befriending their tribal neighbors, adopting their habits out of convenience and necessity. As the 18th century wound down, Nathan Perry found himself at the tense interface of two cultures, one ascendant and the other in steep decline, in a time fraught with racial tension and rapid change. Respected by both white settlers and the native tribes, Nathan Perry witnessed and influenced western New York’s transformation from wilderness to settlement in remarkably few decades. It easily be mistaken for fiction, but the Nathan Perry family’s amazing true story is one of adventurism, fortitude, and endurance under challenging, changing circumstances. A family history—particularly one going back centuries—faces the difficult task of telling the stories of people who are now largely unknowable. This book focuses primarily on Nathan Perry Sr. and his family. Who were they really? What were they like? Kind or callous? Good natured or sullen? Outgoing or aloof? We cannot know. But we can draw inferences by learning more about what these long-gone people experienced. By examining shreds of evidence from aged records and linking them with the sweep of history, the dead gradually come into focus.