Held Captive by Indians in The Unredeemed Captive by John Demos

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The Unredeemed Captive published by Vintage on March 28, 1995. The Unredeemed Captive - A Family Story by John Demos was about Eunice Williams’ being held captive by the resident Indians and the fight her family endured in order to go home. Eunice was captured together with her family along with hundreds of other residents in and around Deerfield. Demos, seems very knowledgeable of the Deerfield raid. He also uses impeccable detail on the captives’ march to Canada. Demos, also does a great job of depicting the experience of being a captive. It also helped to understand the story better when Demos explained further why the Indians were victorious in capturing the villagers. As well, he described the Kahnawake Indian village where Eunice lived with her husband and her new founded way of living. Historically there is very little is known about Eunice. Demo’s tries to describe how he thought her life would have been like. In my opinion I think this adds confusion to the story because he tries to add twenty-first century ideas to an eightieth century girl. The Deerfield raid was an important thing because it was the largest raid implement by the French and Indians. The Indians manage to take largest number of captives. The forces for the raid had begun gathering near Montreal as early as May 1703. However, two incidents intervened that delayed execution of the raid. The first was a rumor that English warships were on the Saint Lawrence River, drawing a significant Indian force to Quebec for its defense. The second was the detachment of some troops, critically including Jean-Baptiste Hertel de Rouville, who was to lead the raid, for operations in Maine (including a raid against Wells that raised the frontier alarms at Deerfield). Her... ... middle of paper ... ...horrid. It takes awhile to get use to reading the sentences. However, after I got use to the theme of his writing it became a little easier to understand. Even though the title of the book implied that the story was about Eunice, it was misleading. It was misleading because Eunice doesn’t actually come into play until half the book is finished. I found several events interesting one being that many captives were captured more than once, talk about karma. Another being how attached the Indians where to their captives “the Indians would rather cut out their hearts than part with their adoptive captives.” And the last thing is how old Eunice and Stephen live to be. I found this story to be good. It wasn’t captivating. Over all I give this book 6 out of 10, due to the difficulty of understanding of the authors’ theme. and the lack of consistency throughout the book.

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