Anyone out there who has subscribed to the myth that Native Americans lived 'only seasonally to hunt' in Vermont, disabuse yourselves of it immediately and forever. For the Western tribes of the Abenaki Vermont was home for millenia. Although I have known (somewhat) better for twenty or thirty years I've never read the story of the dispossession of these tribal people from their lands, and it is a sorry one indeed - of betrayal, genocide and woe. I had underestimated the extent of the struggle, in Vermont, often violent and ugly, of the white people to take the land for themselves and ignore the native claims. This is 'history' in its traditional form and, to paraphrase what a character says in a novel I've been reading: history is the story of people killing each other in various ways. It is a necessary part of the story to tell and it doesn't make for comfortable or easy reading. Calloway carefully builds the picture of the incidents, battles, confrontations, withdrawals and returns, putting together the information that he has gleaned out of British, American and French documents, mostly military. He is adamant in his descriptions of the bewilderment and confusion and heartbreak of the Abenaki as, no matter what choices they make or who they ally themselves with promises are broken outright or ignored once the desired outcome is achieved. After the formation of the United States and the entry of Vermont as the 14th state, the 'red men' claims to lands for their own are dismissed. They are called vagrants and gypsies and the myth of their seasonal use of Vermont was born. In truth they did move around seasonally, but not over large areas. Family bands lived on hunting lands that were traditionally theirs and did so for a thousand years and more. And yet the pressures of immigration from a restless population in Europe and the explosive burst of growth in population already here, doomed the Eastern tribes ultimately. It was never going to be fair, and Calloway doesn't have to say it. His goal is to outline how it came about. Many many Abenaki have never left, but quietly live and lived in communities they may be aware of as 'theirs' but do not make themselves known. Like the Spanish marrano, they have learned to live one way, while cherishing another way in their hearts. I can't in good conscience give more stars as it is dry dry reading, but it is 5 star scholarship. **** ( )