Years before Jamestown was settled, European adventurers and explorers landed on the shores of Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts in search of fame, fortune, and souls to convert to Christianity. Unbeknownst to them all, the "New World" they had found was actually a very old one, as the history of the native people spanned 10,000 years or more. This work is a compilation of old and new essays written by present-day archeologists, by explorers and missionaries who were in direct contact with the Indians, and by scholars over the last three centuries. The essays are in three sections: Prehistory, which concentrates on the Paleo-Indian, Archaic, and Woodland phases of the native heritage, the Contact Era, which deals with the explorers and their experiences in the New World, and Collections, Sites, Trails, and Names, which focuses on various dedications to the native population and significant names (such as the Massabesic Trail and the Cohas Brook site).

Information concerning New England Indian artifacts and ways of life.

In contrast to most accounts of Puritan-Indian relations, "New England Frontier "argues that the first two generations of""Puritan settlers were neither generally hostile toward their""Indian neighbors nor indifferent to their territorial rights.""Rather, American Puritans-especially their political and""religious leaders-sought peaceful and equitable relations""as the first step in molding the Indians into neo-Englishmen.""When accumulated Indian resentments culminated in the""war of 1675, however, the relatively benign intercultural""contact of the preceding fifty-five-year period rapidly declined.""With a new introduction updating developments in""Puritan-Indian studies in the last fifteen years, this third""edition affords the reader a clear, balanced overview of a""complex and sensitive area of American history.""