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 family’s role as perpetrators." — Toronto Star