Johannes van der Zee

Follow a crow's nest view on an ocean-going ship 400 years ago. Here, a youthful Johannes van der Zee -- leaving his home in Holland and heading for the "New World" -- is filled with joyful excitement. Share with him the alternating boredom and terror along the way. Then, spend a winter in an upriver trading cabin with quarrelsome shipmates, and in the spring, get to know a native youth as the new friends make their way to a Mohawk village in the Adirondacks. Explore the social customs and technologies of two vastly different worlds, all from the perspective of youthful innocence. The experiences bring together young men of wholly different ways of life. Johannes, despite misadventures and misunderstandings, finally realizes that his home-grown prejudices about native people in "the colonies" are wrong.