Stewart-Smith is historian for the New Hampshire Intertribal Council and a former professor of history and cultural studies at Vermont College of Norwich University.
Among other topics, he will discuss the Pennacook Indians of the Merrimack Valley, which were the largest and most powerful coalition of native people on the northern New England frontier during the 17th and 18th centuries. They, along with their Abenaki allies from Maine and Canada, held off Europeans for almost 90 years during a succession of “Indian Wars,” culminating in the end of the French and Indian Wars in 1761. During this time, Indians and colonists exchanged and encountered each other's cultures, religions, trade goods, and even kinship.
Stewart-Smith is himself of Scottish and Pennacook descent. “My research into New Hampshire’s Indian archaeology and history began some 30 years ago,” he notes. “My grandmother’s family history comes out of New Hampshire’s frontier and Indian heritage. I frequently meet people who are on the same path of discovering their heritage and love of history and enjoy sharing stories with them.”
