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Evening Plenaries:Heart of American Darkness
October 25, 2025 @ 5:00 pm – 6:30 pm
The Friday & Saturday evening plenaries are open to the public and FREE for 2026 conference registrants, Colonial Williamsburg passholders, staff and volunteers, and William & Mary faculty, staff and students. Seating will be available on a first come, first served basis, and the recorded programs will be available online on both William & Mary and Colonial Williamsburg supported pages following the event.
Heart of American Darkness
A lecture by author Dr. Robert Parkinson
Saturday, October 25, 2025
Glenn Close Theatre, PBK Memorial Hall, Campus of William & Mary
Seating begins at 4:30pm | Program begins at 5pm
On April 30, 1774, something very terrible happened where Yellow Creek empties into the Ohio River, which led to the deaths of eight Indigenous people. That incident spiraled into a bloody war between Virginia and Native peoples in the Ohio Country at the same time that the First Continental Congress sat in Philadelphia. This talk will explore how the Yellow Creek Massacre happened, who did it, and what it means – and how we narrate it.
Robert Parkinson is professor of history at Binghamton University, and the author of two books published with the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, including Thirteen Clocks: How Race United the Colonies and Made the Declaration of Independence. He held an NEH postdoctoral fellowship at the Omohundro Institute. His most recent book, Heart of American Darkness: Bewilderment and Horror on the Early Frontier, was published by W.W. Norton in 2024. He has another book with W.W. Norton forthcoming in 2026 called Tyrants and Rogues
