The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early America

In the Introduction, John Demos poses the broad question: “Where does the story [of the Deerfield massacre] begin?” (3). He goes on to provide a sweeping outline of various characters and events, spanning multiple countries and time periods, whose stories culminate in the Deerfield massacre on February 29, 1704.

Deerfield’s story is intertwined with that of colonialist England, and so Demos offers up Cambridge as a possible starting point for the tale of the Deerfield massacre: “Perhaps it [the place where the story begins] is in the old university town of Cambridge, England. In the summer 1629” (4). That summer, a group of English Puritans decided to form a new settlement somewhere “overseas.” Knowing that this new community would be populated with “savages” (referring to the Native Americans) (4), the Puritans feared: Instead of their civilizing the wilderness (and its savage inhabitants), the wilderness might change, might uncivilize, them” (4). Demos alludes to the fact that certain Puritans would become “uncivilized” by Puritan standards. He also explains, in broad strokes, that the Native American practice of taking English Puritan captors was a major threat in early America: “Certain colonists will be captured and physically removed from the ‘abodes of civilized life’” (4).