The last program for One Book One Valley will be presented at Cook Memorial Library on Wednesday, November 12th at 7 pm. A NH Humanities Council presentation. David Stewart-Smith, presents “Native American History of NH: Alliance and Survival, circa 1400-1700.”
David Stewart-Smith begins this program with the last part of the Woodland Period, when Indians in northern New England were faced with several challenges. By the time of French and English exploration in the region, strong tribal alliances were forming, centered along southeastern Maine, coastal and central New Hampshire, and the north shore of Massachusetts. These relationships became known as the Pennacook alliance, a confederacy of about 16 tribal and family groups that held together through severe climate change, European colonization, devastating epidemic disease, and intertribal warfare. This was when Passaconaway, the chief of the Pennacook, rose to power and placed his family in the mainstream of colonial interaction.
The program concludes with King Philip’s War – possibly the deadliest war in American history – and subsequent events just prior to the turn of the 18th century, when the non-native European colonizers started forging greater alliances amongst themselves.
David Stewart-Smith’s program relates to the events depicted in our book-of-choice for the 2014 One Book One Valley Community Read, Amy Belding Brown’s Flight of the Sparrow, a novel of Early America. Brown’s book is based on a true narrative by Mary Rolandson, a Puritan minister’s wife captured by Native Americans in 1676. Stewart-Smith’s NHHC program is sponsored by the Friends of Cook Memorial Library.
NHHC program: Native American History of NH: Alliance & Survival, circa 1400-1700 on Wednesday, November 12 at 7 pm