Distant Relations: How My Ancestors Colonized North America

In this fair-minded and highly readable book, Victoria Freeman traces her European ancestors involvement in settling lands occupied by indigenous peoples in what would become New England and Ontario. It is a story of land fraud, broken treaties, displacement, massacre, and warfare, yet Freeman portrays her forebears with compassion and understanding. The result is a meticulously researched history, filled with photos and maps and a passionate discussion of how whites and American Indians have worked with, fought, courted, befriended and, too often, killed one another over four centuries. Among other memorable characters, readers meet Thomas Stanton, a fur trader who participated in a genocidal war against the Pequots and later became one of the most trusted intermediaries between the colonists and the Native Americans. [Freeman] puts a uniquely personal spin on 400 years of ethnic cleansing by tracing her own familys role as perpetrators. Toronto Star