Review: "The Unredeemed Captive," John Demos

By Paul Carrier

In the predawn hours of Feb. 29, 1704, a sizable force of French troops and Native warriors from New France (Canada) attacked the Puritan settlement of Deerfield in the Province of Massachusetts Bay, on what was then the frontier of English settlement in New England.

The raiders burned much of the town and killed close to 50 people, They then marched back to Montréal with more than 100 captives in tow, although some died or were killed along the way. Many of the kidnap victims were later “redeemed” and returned to the devastated town, including John Williams, the minister at Deerfield, and several of his surviving children.

But Williams’ youngest daughter, Eunice, who was seven at the time of the raid, did not return home. Eunice was adopted by a Mohawk family in New France. She changed her name and converted to Catholicism. She quickly lost her ability to speak English and eventually married a Mohawk man, making her the titular “unredeemed captive” of a 1994 book by historian John Demos. 

The Deerfield raid holds a prominent place in the lore of colonial New England. My own family was doubly touched by it. A French cousin from that era led the raid. And my eighth great-grandmother, Thankful Stebbins, was captured as a child in Deerfield. She settled in New France and married a Frenchman there.

Demos won the 1995 Francis Parkman Prize for The Unredeemed Captive, which covers a lot of territory. Subtitled A Family Story from Early America, the book explores the raid, the forced march to New France, the complex relationship between the French in Canada and their Native allies, the violent rivalry between New France and New England, the prolonged (and only partially successful) campaign to “redeem” the Deerfield captives, and the lifestyle of the Natives whose settlement near Montréal became Eunice’s home.

Perhaps most importantly, The Unredeemed Captive details what is known about the life of Eunice Williams, and combines the documented evidence about her with informed speculation by Demos about Eunice’s refusal to permanently return to Deerfield when given the opportunity to do so.

John Williams struggled mightily to “redeem” Eunice, investing a great deal of time and energy in the effort. His son Stephen, also a Puritan minister, later did so as well, over a period of decades. Although father and son were briefly reunited with Eunice from time to time, both men were too blinded by their inflexible Puritanism to accept the fact that Eunice had chosen a radically different path. 

As Demos shows, John and Stephen Williams were convinced that Eunice remained “captivated” by “savages,” and that the Jesuits of Canada had brainwashed her into embracing the heresy of “popery.” Such intolerance worked both ways, however. John Williams said that, during his time in New France, Catholic priests consistently denigrated and grossly misrepresented Protestantism, in a zealous search for converts.

It was, Demos makes clear, a tragic clash of cultures in a world torn asunder by war, divided by language, alienated by bigotry and wedded to dueling concepts of Christianity.