The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early America

When I started reading the Unredeemed Captive by John Demos I expected a story about Eunice Williams and her experiences with the Indians. Reading the book, I found myself constantly waiting for more narrative about Eunice's life. Instead, I read much about the family of Eunice, particularly her father, John, and her brother, Stephen. This is understandable as there are few first hand accounts of Eunice. We have to learn about Eunice mostly through the writings of others. John demos focuses on the Williams family to portray the religious and cultural differences between boundaries. Through the Williams family we can sense the fear the Puritans felt when faced with the reality that they themselves might become like the Indians. We also see the struggles they had between themselves and their own faith.The prologue and chapter one set the stage for the 1704 Raid on Deerfield, Massachusetts. We are introduced to John Williams, the minister of Deerfield, and his family, who are captured in the raid. Their journey (and the journey of many others) from Deerfield to Montreal in French Canada is described through first hand accounts of those who survived and were released. Chapter two begins to detail the reaction of the colonists to the Deerfield raid, and gives us a glimpse of what they were thinking. The religious attitudes of the Puritans are continuously expressed.Chapter three encompasses John Williams writings, of which there are many. His 25,000 word account of captivity is quoted throughout the book. In chapter three we also see letters he wrote to officials, letters he wrote to released captives, and a sermon he prepared to preach in Boston. Although these are important because they are an account of Williams' actual thoughts and experiences, I found this chapter hard to read. The religious content was boring, and I found my mind wondering. It also made think very little of Williams. He didn't strike me as an honest or caring man. I was bothered by the fact that he often referred to the captives as "they," rarely including himself in the group. This whole chapter could have been left out of the book, or cut much shorter, and I wouldn't feel as is I had missed anything.Beyond chapter three, the book becomes more interesting. The quotes from Stephen's diary are far more interesting than John's writings. His details about his life, and his visits with Eunice are intriguing. We can see the cultural differences between the Indians and the English in some of his writings. Stephen is continuously praying for Eunice's soul, and that she return and accept the Puritan faith. You can sense how conflicted (scared) he is by her unwillingness to convert from French Catholicism back to the Puritan faith. While the quotes from Stephen's diary are informative, the book as a whole uses too many quotes. It felt like putting random words and phrases together to make thoughts and at times was hard to follow. A bit more narrative would have made the book easier to read.Chapter nine included a narrative about the first reunion of John and Eunice. Demon portrays how it might have went. It would have been nice to see a little more of this throughout the book to break the monotony of the quotes, and also to imagine about Eunice's life. The last third of the book gives us details about Eunice that I found myself waiting for, including the only surviving letter form Eunice to her brother Stephen.The book doesn't end with the announcement of Eunice's death in the mission records, but Following the religious theme in the book, Demos describes the different afterlives that may have awaited Eunice upon her death. This reinforces the struggle between the faiths that is prominent throughout the book. It also continues the struggle into the next world. Was Eunice redeemed and allowed to enter heaven, or had she already been redeemed when she was taken captive by the Indians? These are the kinds of questions that played on the minds of the characters of the book.This book was meticulously researched and an interesting enough read.

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.-30-

I was looking forward to reading this book, I have read many really good accounts of the massacre at Deerfield, this book is not one of them.I can truly say I have never had a book I did not finish reading, this book I got to about the third chapter, the actual references to the massacre, capture and long journry to Canada is fleetingly taken care of in the first few pages, after this its mostly religous quotes from the bible and other information that has nothing to do with the story.If I had not stopped reading I would probably have fallen asleep through boredom, don't get me wrong there are some excellent books on this subject, just don't bother buying this one.

Very good,book

great book