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Unredeemed Captive

What does it mean to be taken captive? According to Webster's dictionary

a captive is one who is forcibly confined, subjugated, or enslaved. It is obviously

not a desire for anyone to become a captive of war, however this was the case

for hundreds of colonists both French and English during the colonization of the

"New World". John Demos, author of "The Unredeemed Captive", describes

many of these prisoner's stories and their new lives with their captors. The book

however is centralized around one family in particular, and their still captive

daughter; Eunice Williams. When a child becomes captive it is almost

unbearable for their family who can only fear the worst. But when a child is

unwilling to return home after they have been captive for quite some time,

it brings a whole new aspect of grief, like a nightmare, a situation that can only

leave the captive's family in complete confusion. For John Williams, this was

reality, his daughter Eunice, was unwilling to come home after being given the

choice to go back or stay with her Indian captors. Indian culture was so foreign

so frightening, and so unusual to the New England colonists, that a situation like

Eunice's could only bring tremendous fear to her family and leave New

Englanders asking, "What will these heathens teach and do to our people?"

Turning back the clock to the late seventeenth century, we find America in

a state of clashing empires; New England and New France. Two Empires who

take their religion so seriously that both are willing to shed blood in order to keep

their religion spread amongst the world. France's Catholic beliefs did not

coincide well with the Protestant beliefs of the English; creating a religious battle

between two neighboring empires in the "new world". A third group, the natives

of this new world, play somewhat of a neutral group. However their role in this

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