indian captivities

Survey of narratives chronicling the unpredictable encounters between Native Americans and newcomers.

"Once it was one of the most famous events in early American history. Today, it has been nearly forgotten. In an obscure, two-hundred-year-old museum in a little village in western Massachusetts, there lies what once was the most revered but now totally forgotten relic from the history of early New England-the massive, tomahawk-scarred door that came to symbolize the notorious Deerfield Massacre. This impregnable barricade-known to early Americans as "The Old Indian Door"-constructed from double-thick planks of Massachusetts oak and studded with hand-wrought iron nails to repel the flailing tomahawk blades of several attacking native tribes, is the sole surviving artifact from the most dramatic moment in colonial American history: Leap Year, February 29, 1704, a cold, snowy night when hundreds of native Americans and their French allies swept down upon an isolated frontier outpost and ruthlessly slaughtered its inhabitants. The sacking of Deerfield led to one of the greatest sagas of adventure, survival, sacrifice, family, honor, and faith ever told in North America. 112 survivors, including their fearless minister, the Reverand John Williams, were captured and led on a 300-mile forced march north, into enemy territory in Canada. Any captive who faltered or became too weak to continue the journey-including Williams's own wife and one of his children-fell under the knife or tomahawk. Survivors of the march willed themselves to live and endured captivity. Ransomed by the King of England's royal governor of Massachusetts, the captives later returned home to Deerfield, rebuilt their town and, for the rest of their lives, told the incredible tale. The memoir of Rev. Williams, The Redeemed Captive, became the first bestselling book in American history and published a few years after his liberation, it remains a literary classic. The old Indian door is a touchstone that conjures up one of the most dramatic and inspiring stories of colonial America-and now, finally, this legendary event is brought to vivid life by popular historian James Swanson"--.

Explores the little-known true story of the kidnapping of thirteen-year-old Jemima Boone, Daniel Boone's daughter, by a Cherokee-Shawnee raiding party and the ensuing battle with reverberations that nobody could predict.

A biography of Mary Jemison, the daughter of Irish immigrants who arrived in America in 1743, was captured by a Shawnee war party at the age of twelve, and was subsequently given to the Seneca tribe with whom she chose to remain the rest of her life.

Tells the story of frontiersman Daniel Boone's capture in 1778 by Shawnee warriors who adopted him into the tribe where he remained until, fearing for the safety of his family and friends, he staged a daring escape.

A fictional retelling of the early life of Mary Jemison who was captured during the French and Indian War and lived for most of her life with the Seneca Indians.

Profiles Cynthia Ann Parker, who was captured in 1836 at the age of nine and lived as a Comanche for more than twenty years.

On March 15, 1697, Abenaki warriors, in service to the French, raided the English frontier village of Haverhill, Massachusetts. They killed twenty-seven men, women, and children and took thirteen captives, including thirty-nine-year-old Hannah Duston and her week-old daughter, Martha. Her daughter was murdered a short distance from the village, and Hannah resolved to get even. Two weeks into their captivity near present-day Concord, New Hampshire, Hannah Duston, and two of her companions, moved among the sleeping Abenaki with tomahawks and knives, killing two men, two women, and six children. Hannah and the others then escaped down the Merrimack River in a stolen canoe and returned to English civilization. Her courageous story gave hope to the English settlers, whose domain the French hoped to occupy, as the French and English continued to battle over dominance in the new world.

A Quaker girl's diary reflects her experiences growing up in the Delaware River Valley of Pennsylvania and her capture by Lenape Indians in 1763.