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Native Carrying Captive, Eunice Williams

(c) Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, Deerfield MA. All rights reserved.
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A historical pageant photographed by Frances and Mary Allen shows Deerfield's most infamous and repeated story, the 1704 Deerfield Raid, where French and Native American forces attacked the town taking 111 Deerfield, Massachusetts, captives to Canada. The most notorious of these was Eunice Williams, the minister's daughter who was adopted into a Kanien'kehaka (Mohawk) family where she chose to remain for the rest of her life. Eunice Williams is portrayed here with her Kanien'kehaka captor. The darkly painted face on the "Indian" contrasts sharply with the white Puritan cap and innocent face of little "Eunice," drawing a firm symbolic line between the sinister "savage" and the helpless child.

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