Raid On Deerfield - Captivity and Ransom

Captivity and Ransom

For the 109 English captives, the raid was only the beginning of their troubles. The raid’s significance for colonial New Englanders cannot be understood without considering the normalized culture and commoditization of captivity in frontier culture as well as the settler’s fear of captivity under either pagan or Catholic masters. The raiders intended to take them to Canada, a 300 miles (480 km) journey, in the middle of winter. Many of the captives were ill-prepared for this, and the raiders were short on provisions. The raiders consequently engaged in a common practice: they killed those captives when it was clear they were unable to keep up. While Williams comments on the savage cruelty of the Indian raiders, most killings were “not random or wanton.” Most of the slain were the slow and vulnerable who could not keep up with the party and would likely have died less quickly en route. Only 89 of the captives survived the ordeal. Survival chances correlated with age and gender. Infants and young children fared the worst. Older children and teenagers faired the best. Indeed, all 21 teenagers survive the trip to Canada. Adult men fared much better than adult women especially pregnant women and those with small children.

In the first few days several of the captives escaped. Hertel de Rouville instructed Reverend Williams to inform the others that recaptured escapees would be tortured; there were no further escapes. (The threat was not an empty one — it was known to have happened on other raids.) The French leader's troubles were not only with his captives. The Indians had some disagreements among themselves concerning the disposition of the captives, which at times threatened to come to blows. A council held on the third day resolved these disagreements sufficiently that the trek could continue.

According to John Williams' account of his captivity, most of the party traveled up the frozen Connecticut River, then up the Wells River and down the Winooski River to Lake Champlain. From there they made their way to Chambly, at which point most of the force dispersed. The captives accompanied their captors to their respective villages. Williams' wife Eunice, weak after having given birth just six weeks earlier, was one of the first to be killed during the trek; her body was recovered and reburied in the Deerfield cemetery.

Calls went out from the governors of the northern colonies for action against the French colonies. Governor Dudley wrote that "the destruction of Quebeck and Port Royal put all the Navall stores into Her Majesty's hands, and forever make an end of an Indian War", the frontier between Deerfield and Wells was fortified by upwards of 2,000 men, and the bounty for Indian scalps was more than doubled, from £40 to £100. Dudley promptly organized a retaliatory raid against Acadia (present-day Nova Scotia). In the summer of 1704, New Englanders under the leadership of Benjamin Church raided Acadian villages at Pentagouet (present-day Castine, Maine), Passamaquoddy Bay (present-day St. Stephen, New Brunswick), Grand Pré, Pisiquid, and Beaubassin (all in present-day Nova Scotia). Church's instructions included the taking of prisoners to exchange for those taken at Deerfield, and specifically forbade him to attack the fortified capital, Port Royal.

Deerfield and other communities collected funds to ransom the captives. French authorities and colonists also worked to extricate the captives from their Indian masters. Within a year's time, most of the captives were in French hands, a product of frontier commerce in humans that was fairly common at the time on both sides. The French and converted Indians worked to convert their captives to Roman Catholicism, with modest success. While adult captives proved fairly resistant to proseltizing, children were more receptive or likely to accept conversion under duress.

Some of the younger captives, however, were not ransomed, as they were adopted into the tribes. Such was the case with Williams' daughter Eunice, who was eight years old when captured. She became thoroughly assimilated, and married a Mohawk man when she was 16. Other captives also remained by choice in Canadian and Native communities such as Kahnawake for the rest of their lives.

Negotiations for the release and exchange of captives began in late 1704, and continued until late 1706. They became entangled in unrelated issues (like the English capture of French privateer Pierre Maisonnat dit Baptiste), and larger concerns, including the possibility of a wider-ranging treaty of neutrality between the French and English colonies. Mediated in part by Deerfield residents John Sheldon and John Wells, some captives (including Noel Doiron) were returned to Boston in August 1706. Governor Dudley, who needed the successful return of the captives for political reason, then released the French captives, including Baptiste; the remaining captives who chose to return were back in Boston by November 1706.

Some of the younger captives, however, were not ransomed, as they were adopted into the Indian tribes or French Canadian society. Thirty six Deerfield captives, mostly children and teenagers at the time of the raid, remained permanently. Those who stayed were not compelled by force, but rather by newly formed religious ties and family bonds. Captive experience was largely dictated by gender as well as age. Young women most easily and readily assimilated into Indian and French Canadian societies. Nine girls remained as opposed to only five boys. These choices reflect the larger frontier pattern of incorporation of young women into Indian and Canadian society. These young women remained, not because of compulsion, fascination with the outdoor adventure, or the strangeness of life in a foreign society, but because they transitioned into established lives in new communities and formed bonds of family, religion, and language. In fact, more than half of young female captives who remained settled in Montreal where “the lives of these former Deerfield residents differed very little in their broad outlines from their former neighbors.” Whether in New France or in Deerfield these women generally were part of frontier agricultural communities where they tended to marry in their early twenties and have six or seven children. Other female captives remained in Native communities such as Kahnawake. Again, these women remained because of bonds of religion and family. While European males castigated the “slavery” of Indian women, captive women from this time commonly chose to remain in Native society rather than return to colonial English settlements. Such was the case with Williams' daughter Eunice, who was eight years old when captured. She became thoroughly assimilated even forgetting the English language, and married a Mohawk man when she was 16.

John Williams wrote a captivity narrative, The Redeemed Captive Returning to Zion, about his experience, which was published in 1707. Williams’ narrative was published during ongoing ransom negotiations and pressed for greater activity to return the Deerfield captives. Written with assistance from prominent Boston Puritan minister Reverend Cotton Mather, the book framed the raid, captivity, and border relations with the French and Indians in terms of providential history and God’s purpose for Puritans. The work was widely distributed in the 18th and 19th centuries, and continues to be published today (see Further Reading below). Williams' work was one of the reasons this raid, unlike similar others of the time, was remembered and became an element in the American frontier story. William's archeype changing work transformed the captivity narrative into a celebration of individual heroism and the triumph of Protestant values against savage and Popish enemies.