Customer Reviews

Vermont: The State With the Storybook Past

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I disagree with the above review. For me -- a teacher now living in Vermont -- the book opened many, many doors. There is no racism or bias toward the Abenaki. The fact is, as Vermont settlers took the state, there was constant friction with the original inhabitants, who did not leave easily. Why would they?
Cheney's book is full of action, conflict, real life. The telling is wonderful. The author's passion is contagious. I highly recommend the book for readers of all ages.

The idea is totally great - writing Vermont history like a storybook. Don't we all wish our school history books had been like that? But I was shocked that a book written so recently, and for children, would portray the Abenaki Indians as bloodthirsty cavemen with "crude weapons" who tortured people because "that was the Abenaki way." The opening chapter is so biased against the Abenaki, it hurt me to read it. While I can't know for sure that no Abenaki ever tortured anyone, I'd just read a whole slew of Abenaki history that had not a single reference to such a thing. In the same chapter, the author talks about the French fomenting the Abenaki to massacre the English, but does not use the emotionally charged word "massacre" to describe the same types of actions by the English.

The book also seemed fairly inaccurate to me in other ways - for instance if you read the section on ancient peoples, the author says archeologists think the paleo, archaic, and woodland Indians were three completely unrelated groups, two of whom mysteriously disappeared, rather than three historic periods. My understanding is that most archeologists think the Abenaki of today are descended from the archaic Indians of Vermont's past, who were in turn descended from the paleoindians.

While I love the idea of writing history as a story so that children can enjoy it, please stick to the facts! Please be balanced, instead of portraying whole ethnic groups as somehow more barbaric and bloodthirsty. This book seems to be in every bookstore in Vermont and I'm really saddened by it, because I suppose that means scads of Vermont children are being taught Vermont history as "English good, French and Indians evil."