Weetamoo: Heart of the Pocassets, Massachusetts - Rhode Island, 1653

In her first book for The Royal Diaries, Patricia Clark Smith introduces the teenage Weetamoo, who will succeed her father to become chief of the Pocassets in seventeenth-century New England.

It is 1654 in New England, native land of Algonquin tribes, among them the Pocasset, Wampanoag, and Narrangansett people. The pilgrims -- called Coat-men by the Wampanoag -- have settled here in the natives' territory at Patuxit, a place that the Pilgrims have renamed Plymouth. Weetamoo's father, Corbitant, is sachem, or chief, of the Pocassets. He is mistrustful of the colonists and imparts his beliefs about them to his daughter, who is next in line to become chief. Weetamoo must learn the fundamental values and disciplines of a true Pocasset chief, but she must also be prepared for