Eunice Kanenstenhawi Williams

Eunice Kanenstenhawi Williams

Eunice Williams, also known as Marguerite Kanenstenhawi Arosen, (17 September 1696 – 26 November 1785) was an English colonist taken captive by French and Mohawk warriors as a seven-year-old girl from Deerfield, Massachusetts in 1704. Taken to Canada with more than 100 other captives, she was adopted by a Catholic Mohawk family at Kahnawake and became fully assimilated into the tribe. She was baptized Catholic under the name Marguerite and named Kanenstenhawi as an adult. She married François-Xavier Arosen, a Mohawk man, had a family with him, and chose to stay with the Mohawk for the rest of her life. Although never returning to Massachusetts to live permanently, she did visit her family in 1741 and on two later occasions. Her father, the Puritan minister John Williams and her brother Samuel made continuing efforts to ransom and to persuade her to return to Massachusetts. Hers was one of the more famous Indian captivity stories.