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Reviewed by:
  • Captive Histories: English, French, and Native Narratives of the 1704 Deerfield Raid
  • Laurence M. Hauptman
Evan Haefeli and Kevin Sweeney, eds. Captive Histories: English, French, and Native Narratives of the 1704 Deerfield Raid. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2006. 298 pp. Cloth, $80.00; paper, $22.95.

Evan Haefeli, assistant professor of history at Columbia University, and Kevin Sweeney, professor of history at Amherst College, have edited a companion volume to their previous Captors and Captives: The 1704 French and Indian Raid on Deerfield (2003). This new collection contains five English, two French, three Mohawk, and two Abenaki accounts of this infamous raid on the Massachusetts community. Two hundred fifty to 300 Mohawks, Abenakis, Hurons, Pennacooks, and other Indians participated in the attack. Fifty English colonists were killed and 112 were captured, of which 86 to 89 were marched off to Canada; 11 of the Indians were killed in the raid. Unlike most other collections of captivity narratives, the editors include and analyze the various Native American versions of the events. They question the reliability of both Indian and non-Indian accounts about the origins, nature, and legacies of the raid.

In an effective introduction, the editors discuss the setting for the raid. Deerfield was the closest English colonial settlement to the French base at Fort Chambly on the Richelieu River. The attack occurred because of both local grievances as well as the existing international rivalry between France and England during the War of the Spanish Succession, 1702–13. Haefeli and Sweeney make it clear that the raid had little to do with the stealing of a church bell, an interpretation that has come down to the present in Mohawk tradition. Importantly, the editors draw both from their own earlier research and that of John Demos's excellent work on the Williams family, who were captured in the raid, to produce an important contribution to the literature. Among the accounts presented is [End Page 504] one by the contemporary scholar Taiaike Alfred, a Mohawk descendant of the Williams family. Despite the excellent overall quality of the work, the editors at times rely too much on the questionable research by Geoffrey Buerger on the Williams family.

While captivity narratives are often emotionally charged, Haefeli and Sweeney present their material in a culturally sensitive way. The editors include helpful charts documenting the captives and their fates; they also contrast them with other captives seized in raids in New England in the same period.

Laurence M. Hauptman
Suny New Paltz
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