The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early America

The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early America is a work of narrative, historical non-fiction written by John Demos, a professor of history at Yale University. Published in 1995, it won the Francis Parkman Prize from the Society of American Historians and was a finalist for the National Book Award.

Set in 18th-century New England, The Unredeemed Captive explores the historical events surrounding a Mohawk raid on Deerfield, Massachusetts on February 29, 1704. The early morning attack left 47 Deerfield residents dead, and 112 were taken captive. The Deerfield raid was one battle in Queen Anne’s War (1702-1713), in which French and Native American forces banded together in an attempt to oust the English from the 13 colonies that existed in North America at the time.

While recounting the story of the Deerfield massacre, Demos also tells the story of Eunice Williams, the daughter of celebrated Puritan minister John Williams. Eunice was abducted by Mohawk warriors during the raid and taken to Quebec, Canada, where she was adopted by a Mohawk (also known as Kahnawake) family and renamed A’ongonte. While many captives were eventually returned to their homes, Eunice—who was seven when she was abducted—became completely assimilated into Kahnawake culture, so much so that she completely forgot the English language, married a Mohawk man, and refused to return to Puritan life despite attempts by her father (and the colonial English government) to bring her back. Throughout the book, Demos makes use of a wide variety of primary source documents to piece together the experiences of Eunice and the Williams family; the book’s title refers to John Williams’s personal account of his own time in captivity following the Deerfield raid.

The early chapters of the book describe the politics, history, and culture of colonial New England at that time, particularly in Deerfield; a caveat in the Introduction states that no one event or influence “started” the Deerfield massacre, but that, like all of history, it came about through a composite of multiple factors. Chapter 1 details the immediate events surrounding the 1704 massacre—the months leading up to it, the event itself, and then the recuperation efforts that followed. Chapters 2 and 3 examine the immediate aftermath of the Deerfield massacre, as news of the raid and of Eunice’s capture spread throughout New England, while Chapters 4 and 5 cover the business of captive exchange that was commonplace at the time. Chapter 6 sheds light on Kahnawake customs and traditions, and Chapter 7 homes in on Eunice’s unique experience among the Kahnawake. Chapters 8 and 9 recount John Williams’ death and the last attempts by the Williams family to retrieve a now middle-aged Eunice from the Kahnawake. Chapter 10 covers the deaths of Eunice and her brother Stephen Williams around 1774. The Epilogue looks at Eunice’s legacy, including a few of her grandchildren, and asks larger questions about her “redemption.”

Eunice’s life and the story of the Deerfield massacre reveal the intertwining histories of Native American, French, Canadian, and British peoples in early America. The book explores themes of multiculturalism, European colonial influence in the United States, and the nature of what it means to be “American.”

A note on the terminology throughout the text: Demos explains at the outset of the book that he opts to use the term “Indian” to refer to Native American populations: “‘Native Americans’ we have recently come to call them. Yet the term feels strained, unfamiliar. In most of what follows I reluctantly retain the old misnomer ‘Indians’” (xi). Using the term “Indian” to refer to indigenous populations of North America is contentious and the debate over what is the most appropriate way to refer to this population—“indigenous peoples,” “Native Americans,” “American Indian”—is an active area of discussion for scholars and the general public alike.