The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early America

Chapter 9 details the final effort made by Stephen Williams to convince Eunice to return to Deerfield, which involves a journey by him, his brother (Eleazer), and his brother-in-law (Joseph Meacham) to meet Eunice in Albany in the summer of 1740.

Once the trio arrived in Albany, the records are sparse on how it was arranged for them to meet with Eunice, until Stephen writes in his diary that “on [the] 27[th]. . . we had ye joyfull, Sorrowfull [sic] meeting of our poor Sister yt we had been Sepratd from fer above 36 years [sic]” (189). Since the event itself was not recorded, Demos offers a fictionalized account to help readers envision what the meeting in Albany might have been like: “Stephen is overcome; his eyes glisten. Arosen motions him to a small chair. Eunice sits on the ground alongside. They are silent for a time” (190). It takes another meeting with Eunice, but Stephen finally convinces Eunice and her husband to agree to a four-day trip to Longmeadow, just so she can visit relatives. On August 29, the group sets off from Albany to Longmeadow.

In Longmeadow, Joseph Kellogg, a former fellow captive who could speak several Native American languages, helped translate during Eunice’s visit. During Eunice’s visit, she attends a church ceremony (Demos speculates that a sermon was likely directed toward her), and she and Arosen dine with Stephen and his family. Stephen’s diary entries at the end of the visit suggest that the visit was a good one: “I hope we are Something Endeared to her. She Says it will hurt her to part with us” (195). Eunice leaves and Stephen’s life returns to normal.

Stephen’s diary is the primary document that Demos draws from to understand what happened during this visit by Eunice to Longmeadow. Demos acknowledges that the diary does not address Eunice’s primary motive for finally coming to visit: “One question of which the diary does not speak is the reason—the motives—for the visit. Did Stephen not think to ask his sister directly about this? Perhaps, indeed, her motives seemed unimportant to him. Or perhaps they were simply assumed: Of course, she would (eventually) choose to come back—to the land of her birth, of ‘civility,’ and of ‘true religion’” (197). Demos wonders which of these possibilities is most likely and expounds upon them in the following paragraphs.

The months following Eunice’s momentous visit to Longmeadow are largely unrecorded, although Demos notes that this period was right around the time of the Great Awakening: “In the meanwhile, New England was beginning to feel the intense religious revival known to later generations as the Great Awakening” (198). Demos describes the general effects of the Great Awakening on the New England region at the time, which include celebrated English preacher George Whitefield visiting Boston and inciting a call to spiritual action among residents of the Connecticut Valley. 

In the two years to follow, Stephen Williams’s diary is missing many entries, but Demos does manage to analyze a few fragments. From two such fragments, he gathers that Eunice returned to Longmeadow, with her family in tow, sometime around November 1742 and then again in September 1743. Eunice and her family leave in September 1743, only to return in October, when—for the first time— there is an altercation between Arosen and Stephen’s son, John. (The details are not clear, but the incident appears to have something to do with Arosen falling in an icy river while John was present.) Though they patch things up, Eunice is still unmoved by her brother Stephen’s pleas to get her to stay. It is a full 40 years after Eunice was originally abducted, but Stephen still tries his best to convince her. The chapter concludes with Eunice “positively” refusing to return to Deerfield, because she prefers the Kahnawake mode of life to the “unutterable grief” of her Puritan father and friends (213).

Chapter 10 connects Eunice’s story with the larger historical narrative of the war between England and France, which played out in the 1750s. This chapter also covers the events surrounding the death of Eunice’s brother, Stephen Williams.

The day after Eunice and her husband leave Longmeadow on March 28, 1744, war erupts between England and France, with England declaring war. Demos uses the closeness of the two events to connect Eunice’s story to a larger narrative about warfare in Colonial America: “These two events, so distant in circumstance and setting, may not have been entirely unrelated. And they serve, in any case, to shift the focus of our story. The petite histoire of particular households and villages yields to the grande histoire of colonies, kingdoms, empires” (214). The war—referred to, later, as King George’s War—pervaded nearly all of North American life at this time. The Kahnawake involvement in the wartime efforts was “deeply ambivalent,” according to Demos (217). There is some evidence that they tried to halt the fighting, at least in the beginning, but nonetheless they were caught in the middle of this dispute between the English and the French. In 1748, the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle is signed, restoring some peace in New England.

The 1750s were yet another “turbulent” era, with both English and French forces making moves to take the Ohio Valley, among many other power grabs in Colonial America. In 1760, with the war over, Eunice makes her first visit to New England in nearly 20 years; this is just her fourth visit to New England, the home of her birth. Eunice’s husband dies on January 22, 1765: “They have been married for more than half a century, through the entire span of Eunice’s adult life. And her connection to Arosen may well have run even further back, to the first years of her captivity” (229). Coincidentally, Stephen Williams’s wife would also die that year; Stephen remarried less than a year later. By 1774, Stephen and Eunice were both about 80 years old. The Revolutionary War interrupted communications between Canada and New England, so Stephen and Eunice lost touch during that time. However, they exchanged a few more letters before Stephen died in the spring of 1782.

Demos analyzes a letter Stephen Williams wrote just before his death, in which he says that he was one of the last surviving captives from the original Deerfield raid. This, however, is not true: Eunice was still alive and would outlive Stephen by three years. Demos interprets Stephen’s omission as indicating that Stephen may have had a change of heart, viewing Eunice no longer as a “captive,” but as one of the Kahnawake: “That he could simply have forgotten her seems unlikely—no, impossible—given all that have gone before. But perhaps he overlooked her for a different reason. Perhaps he had changed his long-standing view—and saw her, in the end, as captive no more” (236).

The final section is composed of two postscripts; the first is titled “Endings” and the second is the book’s Epilogue. In “Endings,” Demos describes the events surrounding Eunice’s death, and the Kahnawake view of death and the afterlife. The Epilogue looks at Eunice’s legacy through a few stories of her grandchildren. It also poses the larger question: Was Eunice ever “redeemed,” in any sense?

Eunice dies at 89 years old in 1785. She was buried in the Catholic tradition, and Demos notes that, according to this faith’s beliefs, Eunice would travel to Purgatory, then eventually come to rest in Heaven, alongside the Virgin and Christ. When news of Eunice’s death spread to Deerfield, her Puritan relatives would have seen another fate for Eunice in the afterlife: Given that she never returned to Puritanism, she would be in Hell “enduring the tyranny of Satan and the torments of the damned” (240). The traditional Native American vision of the afterlife was different still: After death, Eunice would go to the “country of souls,” where she would encounter “a sublime reward,” which was to live in a palatial version of an Iroquoian longhouse for eternity (241).

In the Epilogue, Demos examines the life of Eunice’s sole surviving grandchild, Thomas Thorakwaneken Williams. Thomas returns to Deerfield in 1800 with his two children, Ely (age 11) and John (age 7). The boys remain in New England for about seven years and ultimately drop their Native American garb and manners. While John eventually returns to the Kahnawake, Ely makes his home in New England, becoming a missionary among the Oneida Indians of upstate New York.

The Epilogue also examines an incident from 1837, when a group of Eunice’s Kahnawake descendants come to Deerfield to pay respects to Eunice’s ancestors, visiting the burial sites of numerous Williams members. The book concludes on a note of unity between the disparate (often opposing) communities of Kahnawake and English settlers. Demos then quotes from a sermon delivered by the preacher at the time with Eunice’s descendants present, highlighting themes of common blood, unity, and kinship despite cultural differences.