Anthropologist and preservationist Robert S. Grumet has created this up-to-date, well-written overview of historic contact with Native Americans on the colonial frontier from a vast array of documentary, archaeological, and ethnographic data never assembled before. This is a definitive history of early Indian-white relations in an area extending from Virginia to Maine and from the Atlantic coast to the upper Ohio River. It will be read by specialists and Indian-studies buffs alike.
Historic Contact divides native northeastern America into three subregions where the histories of thirty-four Indian Countries are described and mapped in detail, including all National Historic Landmarks. In the North Atlantic Region are the Eastern and Western Abenaki, Pocumtuck-Squakheag, Nipmuck, Pennacook-Pawtucket, Massachusett, Wampanoag, Narragansett, Mohegan-Pequot, Montauk, Lower Connecticut Valley, and Mahican Indian Countries; in the Middle Atlantic Region, the Munsee, Delaware, Nanticoke, Piscataway-Potomac, Powhatan, Nottoway-Meherrin, Upper Potomac-Shenandoah, Virginian Piedmont, Southern Appalachian Highlands, and lower Susquehanna Indian Countries; and in the Trans-Appalachian Region, the Mohawl, Oneida, Cayuga, Seneca, Niagara-Erie, Upper Susquehanna, and Upper Ohio Indian Countries.
Readers interested in Indian history and colonial America will value this basic reference, which originated as a National Historic landmarks Survey Theme Study. Federal agencies, state and local preservation officers, and Indian communities will use it as an excellent planning tool in making evaluations protection decisions.