The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early America

Chapter 8 returns to John Williams and probes historical records to determine how he dealt with Eunice’s continued refusal to return to Deerfield. Demos also examines the events just before and after John Williams’s death in June 1729, with regards to Eunice and efforts to bring her home. After John’s death, Eunice’s brother, Stephen, takes up his father’s mission and continues the attempts to convince Eunice to return to Deerfield.

All the time Eunice lived among the Kahnawake, the sole focus for the Williams family regarding Eunice was her “redemption”—that is, returning Eunice to Deerfield and to her Puritan faith: “Indeed, all comment by Williamses on Eunice and her Indians was narrowed to a single track: Could she, would she, yet be ‘redeemed’?” A visit John Williams paid to her in 1714, that like the others ended in disappointment, “markedly cooled their hopes” (167). Even outside the family, due to the Williamses’ prominence in the community, the government undertook a larger effort to have Eunice returned to Massachusetts (168). There was a period of relative peace starting in 1715, due to a treaty between the English and the French, but in 1723 war resumes:

The Abenaki Indians of (what is today) northern New England grew increasingly alarmed by the advance of colonial settlement, and by 1723 native warriors were again found “skulking” near the frontier.