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The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early America, by John Demos
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Nominated for the National Book Award, this book is set in colonial Massachusetts where, in 1704, a French and Indian war party descended on the village of Deerfield, abducting a Puritan minister and his children. Although John Williams was eventually released, his daughter horrified the family by staying with her captors and marrying a Mohawk husband.
- Sales Rank: #140766 in Books
- Brand: Vintage
- Published on: 1995-03-28
- Released on: 1995-03-28
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.00" h x .70" w x 5.20" l, .61 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 315 pages
Features
From Publishers Weekly
The armed conflicts of the 18th century between the English colonies in North America and the French settlements that stretched into Canada were fought with the support of Native American allies. Demos, a Yale history professor ( Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New England ), draws on primary source material to provide a perceptive analysis of the cultural encounters that occurred between combatants by detailing the experiences of the John Williams family. Williams, a Puritan minister, and his family were captured in 1704 in their Massachusetts home by a group of Frenchmen and Native Americans, and forced to march to Canada. Although he and four of his children were later released, his wife died on the march and his daughter, Eunice, became a convert to Catholicism and married a Native American. Despite the ongoing attempts of her father and brother to persuade Eunice to return to Massachusetts, she would agree only to brief visits and lived in a Native American settlement until her death at the age of 95. Illustrations not seen by PW. History Book Club main selection ; BOMC alternate .
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
From an obscure and isolated event, Demos (History/Yale), a Bancroft Prize-winning historian (Entertaining Satan, not reviewed) explodes the easy oppositions between Christian and savage, Indian and white, nature and civilization--oppositions on which the narrative of colonial American history has traditionally been built. In 1704, Mohawk Indians, converted to Catholicism by Jesuit missionaries, allied with the French settlers in Canada, attacked the frontier village of Deerfield, Massachusetts, killing 50 of the very young and old and kidnapping 112 more. They then marched the prisoners to Canada, killing 20 more women and several children along the way as acts of mercy, including the wife and infant son of John Williams, a Puritan minister and a prize hostage. While he and his surviving sons were ultimately released, his daughter, Eunice, who was seven at the time of her capture, remained with her captors, converted to Catholicism, and at the age of 16 married an Indian, with whose people she chose to spend the rest of her life. Among Demos's narrative achievements is his representation of the religious, cultural, political, economic, and psychological orientations that collided in this episode, the web of fears, justifications, and powers revealed in the process of encounter: the Puritan fear of the wilderness, the English fear of the French, the Jesuit missionary fever, the French-Canadian greed, the Indian interpretation of Christianity, and the arrogance with which Puritans interpreted a massacre as an expression of God's will, of redemption and resurrection. This thought-provoking study explores the multiple communities to which apparently simple people belonged and how their domestic lives were overtaken by political events. Fascinating, lively, and especially timely to an age struggling to understand the implications of its own cross-cultural encounters. -- Copyright �1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Review
"A masterpiece...recovering for us the poignant story of lives and families shattered and then painfully knitted together again in the complex cultural encounters between English, French, and Mohawk peoples in eighteenth-century America. There is nothing quite like it in our literature. It is a stunning achievement that should change forever the way we write and tell stories about the American past."--William Cronon
Most helpful customer reviews
41 of 41 people found the following review helpful.
Outstanding study of an early New England family
By A Customer
I enjoyed this book because I thought that Demos presented new theories about this well-known incident in Colonial history (at least to those of us who lived near Deerfield). He also does an excellent job showing all points of view (English, French, Indian) of not only the February 1704 attack on Deerfield but also the march into Canada, the subsequent redeemption of most of the captives, and, of course, why Eunice Williams chooses not to return to the English colonies and her birth family. I also thought that Demos did an great job of laying the foundation for the attack, describing the very different philosophies & policies of the French and the English (in England, France, Massachusetts Bay Colony, and Quebec) towards the Indians as well as the Indians' philosophies & policies towards the English and French. It is a tale of an "experiment" (to "help" the Indians become Christian) that resulted in a clash of cultures (English, French, and Indian), religions, societies, etc. that was doomed from conception because it never occurred to the English that the Indians might be perfectly content with their lives and their own religion and thus not welcome the English intrusion. The larger, political story woven into the personal tragedy of the Williams family shows how events thousands of miles away and often intitally having nothing to do with the victims effects ordinary people in extraordinary ways. Although Eunice Williams left no written word explaining why she chose not to return to her birth family, Demos' theories seem highly likely. He also does a nice job illustrating the Williams family's puzzlement and hurt over Eunice's "rejection" of them as well as her adopted family's concerns and fears for their newest (but not least loved) member. I liked the book because Demos treats each point of view with respect, no one side is made out to be a monster (there is no reality, only perception applies here), and tells the sad tale of an early New England family without becoming maudlin or sentimental. I highly recommend this book. If you are looking for a story about this event and family that is written in the novel form, try "Boy Captive of Old Deerfield". I do not recall the publication date on it, but be warned that it is a book written for a different generation.
12 of 13 people found the following review helpful.
The extraordinary tale and religious journey of a New England girl
By Donald M. Bishop
A walk through the shady streets of Old Deerfield, Massachusetts, presents many fine views -- the stately old homes, the colonial doorways, the lonely Union Army sentinel atop the town's sandstone monument, and Frank Boyden's splendid prep school, Deerfield Academy. A stroller then comes to the stone markers that recall moments of terror and bravery. On February 29, 1704, the tiny settlement at Deerfield was attacked by the French and the Indians. Many inhabitants, and not a few attackers, met their deaths from musket, tomahawk, blade, and fire.
Eunice Williams, 7, daughter of the settlement's minister, was one of the 112 captives seized by the raiding party. They were taken in an eight-week forced march through the snow across Vermont and south Quebec. Only 92 reached Canada; Eunice's mother was one of those killed along the way.
In Canada, many of the Deerfield children were placed with French Canadian families. They were ultimately ransomed ("redeemed") by the Massachusetts Bay Colony and returned home a few years later. Eunice, however, was one of those given to the Kahnawake Indians in a village not far from Montreal. The French could not peremptorily order the tribe to return her, so talks were delayed. When at least she sat face to face with a delegate from New England, in 1713, she refused to return to Massachusetts, for she had become a member of the tribe, been baptized a Catholic at the Kahnawake mission, and married. Her name was now Marguerite.
It was the lifetime work of her father and brother Stephen to seek her return to New England. Despite his prayers and exertions on her behalf, Eunice's father was never reconciled that his daughter had become an Indian and a Catholic. Stephen was in time accomodated to her decision, her marriage, and her honored station among the Kahnawake as the mother-in-law of a chief, and perhaps her conversion.
Professor Demos's book helps us recall that in the eighteenth century, immense chasms of national loyalty, religion, and form of government divided New England from Canada. One was English, Puritan, and congregational; the other French, Catholic, and feudal. The settlers in both colonies regarded the Indians as "savages." Even the modern reader can feel the agonies involved when Eunice crossed these great cultural divides.
Demos's scholarship is extraordinary. The primary source materials on the massacre, the exchanges, Eunice's life in Canada, and the efforts of her relatives to retrieve her -- the documents, the letters, the diaries -- would probably fit on the top of a desk. Yet from these spare materials, Demos has fleshed out an amazing human story. His use of the sociological and ethnographic materials on the Canadian tribes -- some relying on the Jesuit Relations -- is masterful.
Eunice's story ends with a notation in a Canadian parish register in 1785 -- Father Ducharme buried Marguerite, the mother-in-law of the chief Annasetegen. Demos then movingly portrays her death and her passage to another life through the lenses of the three faiths that touched her life -- Puritan, Catholic, and Indian.
There is an epilogue. In 1837, a group of Indians that included some of Eunice's grandchildren visited Deerfield to pay respects at the graves of her parents. Deerfield's pastor, John Fessenden, preached a sermon to his congregation and the visitors. Just a generation before the great struggle over slavery, Fessenden pondered the "gloomy, repulsive view" that races have fundamental differences. The view engenders in turn jealousy and aversion, enmity, and finally warfare, he said. Looking over the Indian and New England cousins seated before him, he blessed the "workings of that mysterious providence, which as mingled your blood with ours, and which ... admonishes that God ... hath made of one blood all nations of men."
Thanks to John Demos, Eunice Marguerite's soul -- like the stones at Deerfield -- reaches across the centuries with a message.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful.
A story of Colonial New England.
By fbm@northnet.com
This book is a fine example of petite histoire, the account of particular households and villages, set in the larger context of early colonial New England. Demos tells the story of an Indian raid in 1704, in Deerfield, Massachusetts, and its aftermath. In the raid, prominent minister John Williams, his family, and many others are taken captive and transported to Quebec, near Montreal. Some die in transit; many others are returned or "redeemed" to their homes. Williams' daughter, Eunice, remains "unredeemed", a convert to Catholicism and a new way of life, now married to a member of the capturing tribe. Demos does a marvelous job in reading and explicating the meager original sources which survive, and applying a judicious historical imagination to reconstruct the story, both in the larger context of time and place and the smaller context of the Williams family. As a resident of Northern New York, living close both to Quebec and the St. Regis Mohawk Indian Reservation, I found significant significant local interest in the book. Nonetheless, I found my interest often wandered, I think because Demos tried too hard to be writerly, with the result that his narrative devices (ellipsis, enjambment, etc.) getting in the way of the story. For this reason, I have qualified my recommendation. I must say, however, that my wife loved the book, stayed up late reading it, and enthused about it for weeks after a late night conclusion.
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