A Wild Yearning (51 page)

AUTHOR'S NOTE

Cotton Mather's experiments with smallpox inoculation, and the attack on the mission at Castine and the subsequent death of the French Jesuit Sebastien Rale, have been anticipated by several months for the purposes of this story.

In 1724, the Abenaki stronghold at Norridgewock was overrun by the British, and many of the Abenaki warriors and their families withdrew to Quebec. However, there are still communities of Abenaki living on reservation lands in Maine. In 1980, the Penobscot and Passamaquoddie tribes of the Abenaki nation were granted a settlement of $81 million from the state and federal governments because their lands had been unfairly taken from them by the early settlers.