John Demos' book The Unredeemed Captive examines the story of "Reverend Mr." John Williams, the minister of the church of Deerfield (a town of approximately 300 in the Massachusetts Bay Colony), and his family. The reverend and his wife had many connections to important figures of the time. His father was a shoemaker, farmer, and "ruling elder" in the church at Roxbury. Reverend John Eliot, the minister of the Roxbury church, created many of the "praying towns" in which converted Native Americans worshipped and was New England's "Apostle to the Indians." Reverend Williams' wife, originally named Eunice Mather, was the daughter of Reverend Eleazer Mather, the minister of the church of Northampton in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Increase and Cotton Mather, two of Boston's most famous ministers, were her uncle and first cousin, respectively. Eunice Mather's grandfather, Reverend John Warham, was one of the founders of Conneticut (p. 8-9). The many connections of Reverend John Williams and his wife enabled him to become the leader of Deerfield and one of the town's most important symbols of Puritanism.
At the start of John Demos' book, a group of Native Americans attacked the English town of Deerfield, kidnapped a few of its people, and took them to Canada. Thirteen days after the attack, on October 21, 1703, Reverend John Williams, the town's leader, wrote to Joseph Dudley, the Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, for tax relief, funding to rebuild the fort, a prisoner exchange to free the captured residents, and soldiers to protect the town. Governor Dudley agreed to fulfill the reverend's requests, and stationed 16 soldiers at the town's fort (p. 11-13). In response to English counterattacks against the French colonies,...
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...cession led to many wars, such as the War of the Spanish Succession, which lasted from 1702 to 1714. The Deerfield raid depicted in Demos' The Unredeemed Captive was one of many confrontations in the Americas that were part of the war.
Works Cited
Verner W. Crane, “A Lost Utopia of the First American Frontier,” The Sewanee Review 27, no. 1 (January 1919): 48-61
J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer (Chatto & Windus, 1904)
Gary B. Nash, Red, White, and Black: The Peoples of Early America, 1st ed. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J: Prentice Hall, 1974)
James Watson Gerard, The Peace of Utrecht: A Historical Review of the Great Treaty of 1713-14, and of the Principal Events of the War of the Spanish Succession (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1885)
John Putnam Demos, The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story of Early America (New York: Vintage Books, 1995)
Smith, Carter. Daily Life, A Sourcebook on Colonial America: The Millbrook Press, Brookfield, Connecticut 1991
On September 9, 1739, as many as one hundred African and African American slaves were living within twenty miles of Charleston, South Carolina. This rebellious group of slaves joined forces to strike down white plantation and business owners in an attempt to march in numbers towards St. Augustine, Florida where the Spanish could hopefully grant their freedom. During the violent march toward Florida, the Stono Rebellion took the lives of more than sixty whites and thirty slaves. Ranking as South Carolina’s largest slave revolt in colonial America, Peter Charles Hoffer, a historian at the University of Georgia and author of Cry Liberty: The Great Stono River Slave Rebellion of 1739 tries to reinterpret the Stono Rebellion and challenges the reader to visualize what really went on to be a bloody uprising story in American History.
This historical document, The Frontier as a Place of Conquest and Conflict, focuses on the 19th Century in which a large portion of society faced discrimination based on race, ethnicity, and religion. Its author, Patricia N. Limerick, describes the differences seen between the group of Anglo Americans and the minority groups of Native Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanics Americans and African Americans. It is noted that through this document, Limerick exposes us to the laws and restrictions imposed in addition to the men and women who endured and fought against the oppression in many different ways. Overall, the author, Limerick, exposes the readers to the effects that the growth and over flow of people from the Eastern on to the Western states
Eibling, Harold H., et al., eds. History of Our United States. 2nd edition. River Forest, Ill: Laidlaw Brothers, 1968.
In Mary Rowlandson, “A Captivity Narrative”, Rowlandson recounts her experiences as a captive of the Wampanoag tribe. The tribe took captives from Lancaster in 1676 because of the ongoing violent altercations between the English colonists and Native Americans during King Philip’s War. Since many of the Native Americans brethren had fallen in battle, they saw it fit to take English folk captive and use them to take the place of their fallen brethren, trading/ransom pieces, or killing them in revenge. This was becoming a common practice for the Native Americans to attack villages and in result, some English started fleeing the area or started to retaliate. Rowlandson was a Puritan wife and mother, in her
Hector St. John Crèvecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer, composed in the 1770's, published 1781
Divine, Robert A. America past and Present. 10th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education/Longman, 2013. 245. Print.
Reverend John Williams’ narrative on the Deerfield raid (1704) is an informative account on what this experience entailed for him; although, while one may think that his narrative would be mostly focused on the actual raid and what occurred to him as a captive, the primary focus of Williams’ narrative was largely based on his views on Catholicism and his extreme hatred for this religion (pg. 91). In essence, most of his narrative was an anti-Catholicism rant describing how blasphemous the religion is and how though there was numerous opportunities to change his faith through forced measures while being a captive, he never faltered, choosing death over all else (pg. 91).
Roark, James L. et al., eds. The American Promise: A Compact, Vol. I: To 1877. 3rd edition. Boston and New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2007.
Brinkley, Alan American History A Survey, Volume I: To 1877, New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 2003. pg. 101-122, 209-213.
In constructing “ The Unredeemed Captive,” John Demos uses many styles of writing. One of the most pronounced styles used in this book is an argumentative style of writing. John Demos argues many points throughout the book and makes several contradictions to topics discussed previously in the work. John Demos also uses several major themes in the book, suck as captivity, kinship, negotiation, trade, regional and national development, and international relations. Each one of these themes, in my opinion, are what separate the book into its major sections.
In Thomas King’s novel, The Inconvenient Indian, the story of North America’s history is discussed from his original viewpoint and perspective. In his first chapter, “Forgetting Columbus,” he voices his opinion about how he feel towards the way white people have told America’s history and portraying it as an adventurous tale of triumph, strength and freedom. King hunts down the evidence needed to reveal more facts on the controversial relationship between the whites and natives and how it has affected the culture of Americans. Mainly untangling the confusion between the idea of Native Americans being savages and whites constantly reigning in glory. He exposes the truth about how Native Americans were treated and how their actual stories were
“Without Conscience" by Robert D. Hare is one aimed towards making the general public aware of the many psychopaths that inhabit the world we live in. Throughout the book Hare exposes the reader to a number of short stories; all with an emphasis on a characteristic of psychopaths. Hare makes the claim that close monitoring of psychopathy are vital if we ever hope to gain a hold over Psychopathy- A disorder that affects not only the individual but also society itself. He also indicates one of the reasons for this book is order to correctly treat these individuals we have to be able to correctly identify who meets the criteria. His ultimate goal with the text is to alleviate some of the confusion in the increase in criminal activity by determining how my of this is a result of Psychopathy.
In “A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson,” Mary Rowlandson, a Puritan mother from Lancaster, Massachusetts, recounts the invasion of her town by Indians in 1676 during “King Philip’s War,” when the Indians attempted to regain their tribal lands. She describes the period of time where she is held under captivity by the Indians, and the dire circumstances under which she lives. During these terrible weeks, Mary Rowlandson deals with the death of her youngest child, the absence of her Christian family and friends, the terrible conditions that she must survive, and her struggle to maintain her faith in God. She also learns how to cope with the Indians amongst whom she lives, which causes her attitude towards them to undergo several changes. At first, she is utterly appalled by their lifestyle and actions, but as time passes she grows dependent upon them, and by the end of her captivity, she almost admires their ability to survive the harshest times with a very minimal amount of possessions and resources. Despite her growing awe of the Indian lifestyle, her attitude towards them always maintains a view that they are the “enemy.”
Phillips, Charles. "December 29, 1890." American History 40.5 (2005): 16. MAS Ultra - School Edition. EBSCO. Web. 6 Apr. 2015.