While the title includes the word Thanksgiving, David J. Silverman primarily uses that term as a hook to reel the reader into a study of New England’s Wampanoag Indians. Most of the book focuses on what happened after that legendary event and reminds readers that despite sustained efforts to eradicate them, Wampanoags still exist today. Silverman acknowledges the many difficulties associated with recovering Wampanoag voices, a challenge that all historians of Native peoples face, but he believes that “imperfect histories of Indian life are better than no histories” (18). Silverman’s book is also imperfect in places, but it does much to enlighten his readers about the Wampanoags and recover their side of this misunderstood era of history.
The strength of this text lies in its detail about the Wampanoag people, whom it puts at the center of the story while using more familiar episodes and personalities to frame that...
