In the Shadow of the Steel Cross: The Massacre of Father Sebastién Râle, S.J. and the Indian Chiefs

he last of the great Wabanaki tribes, the Norridgewock tribe during the 1600 to early 1700 era, in what is now Maine was wiped out on August 23, 1724, after years of struggle with the Colonial Boston English government under the rule of the English Crown.

The author, a descendant of survivors of that massacre, uses her personal experience having grown up on the Penobscot tribal land to write her book. She tells her family story passed onto her through oral tradition.

The story centers around the documented, thirty years of Father Sebastien Rale's life while serving the Norridgewock Indians. His diaries and journals are preserved today.

After three years of research, the author provides the reader with a little known period of time of early French and English encounters with the indigenous people of the northeast, Atlantic part of the country. The people see through their eyes the one who comes to live with them as their teacher and giver of Sacraments. By 1700 the first school in Maine is established. The tribal leaders begin to deal with the Colonists as they learn to read and write English.

Following Orders from England, the Colonists must conquer those in their way to take Quebec, Canada, and all lands and natural resources that abounded in those lands. With a bounty of silver on his head, Father Rale and the Indian Chiefs were massacred by the English soldiers in a surprise attack at the Norridgewock village ending years of conflict.