Excerpt from True Stories of New England Captives: Carried to Canada, During the Old French and Indian Wars As often as I have read in the annals of the early settlers of New England the pathetic words, "Carried captive to Canada whence they came not back," I have longed to know the fate of the captives. The wish has become a purpose, and I have taken upon myself a mission to open the door for their return. It is just fifty years since that indefatigable Antiquary, Mr. Samuel G. Drake, published at Boston his "Tragedies of the Wilderness." I offer these narratives as a modest sequel to the work of my illustrious predecessor. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

This Is A New Release Of The Original 1897 Edition.

"A study of popular representations of women and the creation of hierarchies of race and gender in the Canadian Prairies in the late 1800s, Capturing Women fits into a growing body of literature on the question of women, race, and imperialism. Sarah Carter argues that images of Native and European women were created and manipulated to establish boundaries between Native peoples and white settlers and to justify repressive measures against the Native population." --

Nominated for the National Book Award and winner of the Francis Parkman Prize. The setting for this haunting and encyclopedically researched work of history is colonial Massachusetts, where English Puritans first endeavoured to "civilize" a "savage" native populace. There, in February 1704, a French and Indian war party descended on the village of Deerfield, abducting a Puritan minister and his children. Although John Williams was eventually released, his daughter horrified the family by staying with her captors and marrying a Mohawk husband. Out of this incident, The Bancroft Prize-winning historian John Devos has constructed a gripping narrative that opens a window into North America where English, French, and Native Americans faced one another across gilfs of culture and belief, and sometimes crossed over.

The author reconstructs the lived experience of both captors and captives to show that captivity was always intertwined with gender struggles, providing a novel perspective on the struggles over female authority pervasive in colonial America.

This is a compilation of accounts of colonists being captured by Native Americans during the French & Indian War.

Enthralling generations of readers, the narrative of capture by Native Americans is arguably the first American literary form dominated by the experiences of women. The ten selections in this anthology span the early history of this country (1682-1892) and range in literary style from fact-based narrations to largely fictional, spellbinding adventure stories. The women are variously victimized, triumphant, or, in the case of Mary Jemison, permantently transculturated. This collection includes well known pieces such as Mary Rowlandson's "A True History" (1682), Cotton Mather's version of Hannah Dunstan's infamous captivity and escape (after scalping her captors!), and the "Panther Captivity", as well as lesser known texts. As Derounian-Stodola demonstrates in the introduction, the stories also raise questions about the motives of their (often male) narrators and promoters, who in many cases embellish melodrama to heighten anti-British and anti-Indian propaganda, shape the tales for ecclesiastical purposes, or romanticize them to exploit the growing popularity of sentimental fiction in order to boost sales. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.