Cadwallader Colden was an eighteenth-century virtuoso. From 1720 until his death in 1776, while occupying high offices in the royal government of New York, Colden wrote extensively on medicine, botany, mathematics and physics, moral philosophy, and history. Next to Benjamin Franklin, Colden has been called "the most eminent scientist and philosopher in America." In fact, Franklin, his good friend and frequent correspondent, deferred to the learned New Yorker. Colden also won acclaim as a historian, publishing in 1727 the first English history of the Five Indian Nations. He later enlarged that work, and after William Smith, Jr., published his history of provincial New York in 1757, Colden wrote a lengthy commentary critiquing Smith and generally discussing the history of the colony. That commentary and several other historical essays, though, were not published until a century after his death, and Colden's major contributions as a scientist and public official have almost completely overshadowed...