The heritage of the North American Indian tribes has always been passed down through storytelling as well as rituals of
dance and song. Few written histories today can recount the past as well as the tribal elders who once served as the historical, philosophical, and cultural educators of the entire community. Mary Louise Clifford's When the Great Canoes Came recreates this lost practice for young readers as the setting for telling the history of the Virginian Indians following their first contact with European explorers at Jamestown.

The storyteller is Cockacoeske, the...