Years before Jamestown was settled, European adventurers and explorers landed on the shores of Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts in search of fame, fortune, and souls to convert to Christianity. Unbeknownst to them all, the "New World" they had found was actually a very old one, as the history of the native people spanned 10,000 years or more. This work is a compilation of old and new essays written by present-day archeologists, by explorers and missionaries who were in direct contact with the Indians, and by scholars over the last three centuries. The essays are in three sections: Prehistory, which concentrates on the Paleo-Indian, Archaic, and Woodland phases of the native heritage, the Contact Era, which deals with the explorers and their experiences in the New World, and Collections, Sites, Trails, and Names, which focuses on various dedications to the native population and significant names (such as the Massabesic Trail and the Cohas Brook site).
Almost 13,000 years ago, small groups of Paleoindians endured frigid winters on the edge of a river in what would become Keene, New Hampshire. This begins the remarkable story of Native Americans in the Monadnock region of southwestern New Hampshire, part of the traditional homeland of the Abenaki people. Typically neglected or denied by conventional history, the long presence of Native people in southwestern New Hampshire is revealed by archaeological evidence for their deep, enduring connections to the land and the complex social worlds they inhabited. From the Tenant Swamp Site in Keene, with the remains of the oldest known dwellings in New England, to the 4,000-year-old Swanzey Fish Dam still visible in the Ashuelot River, A Deep Presence tells their story in a narrative fashion, drawing on the author's thirty years of fieldwork and presenting compelling evidence from archaeology, written history, and the living traditions of today's Abenaki people.
The native tribes collectively known as the Abenaki once thrived along the Granite State's great rivers. Comprised of the Penacook, Winnipesaukee, Pigwacket, Sokoki, Cowasuck, and Ossipee tribes, influences of these "men of the east" abound even today, from the boiling of sap for maple syrup to the game of lacrosse, and even traditional corn-and-bean succotash. Historian Bruce Heald has mined, curated, and saved the real story of this land's first people. Learn unwritten laws of hospitality, respect for the aged, honesty, independence and courtesy evident among the Abenaki. Discover celebrations and innovations in the good times, and later, epidemics caused by European diseases, hostilities, and a culture's enduring legacy.
Dawnland Voices calls attention to the little-known but extraordinarily rich literary traditions of New England’s Native Americans. This pathbreaking anthology includes both classic and contemporary literary works from ten New England indigenous nations: the Abenaki, Maliseet, Mi’kmaq, Mohegan, Narragansett, Nipmuc, Passamaquoddy, Penobscot, Schaghticoke, and Wampanoag. Through literary collaboration and recovery, Siobhan Senier and Native tribal historians and scholars have crafted a unique volume covering a variety of genres and historical periods. From the earliest petroglyphs and petitions to contemporary stories and hip-hop poetry, this volume highlights the diversity and strength of New England Native literary traditions. Dawnland Voices introduces readers to the compelling and unique literary heritage in New England, banishing the misconception that “real” Indians and their traditions vanished from that region centuries ago.
Before European incursions began in the seventeenth century, the Western Abenaki Indians inhabited present-day Vermont and New Hampshire, particularly the Lake Champlain and Connecticut River valleys. This history of their coexistence and conflicts with whites on the northern New England frontier documents their survival as a people-recently at issue in the courts-and their wars and migrations, as far north as Quebec, during the first two centuries of white contacts. Written clearly and authoritatively, with sympathy for this long-neglected tribe, Colin G. Calloway's account of the Western Abenaki diaspora adds to the growing interest in remnant Indian groups of North America. This history of an Algonquian group on the periphery of the Iroquois Confederacy is also a major contribution to general Indian historiography and to studies of Indian white interactions, cultural persistence, and ethnic identity in North America Colin G. Calloway, Assistant Professor of History in the University of Wyoming, is the author of Crown and Calumet: British-Indian Relations, 1783-181S, and the editor of New Directions in American Indian History, both published by the University of Oklahoma Press. "Colin Calloway shows how Western Abenaki history, like all Indian history, has been hidden, ignored, or purposely obscured. Although his work focuses on Euro-American military interactions with these important eastern Indians, Calloway provides valuable insights into why Indians and Indian identity have survived in Vermont despite their lack of recognition for centuries."-Laurence M. Hauptman, State University of New York, New Paltz. "Far from being an empty no-man's-land in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the western Abenaki homeland is shown in this excellent synthesis to have been an active part of the stage on which the events of the colonial period were acted out. -Dean R. Snow, State University of New York, Albany. "At last the western Abenakis have a proper history. Colin Calloway has made their difficultly accessible literature his own and has written what will surely remain the standard reference for a long time."-Gordon M. Day, Canadian Ethnology Service. "Although they played a central role in the colonial history of New England and southern Quebec, the western Abenakis have been all but ignored by historians and poorly known to anthropologists. Therefore, publication of a careful study of western Abenaki history ranks as a major event.... Calloway's book is a gold mine of useful data."-William A. Haviland, senior author, The Original Vermonters.
