Captive Histories: English, French, and Native Narratives of the 1704 Deerfield Raid (Native Americans of the Northeast)
This is one of the best collections of documents I have ever read. It is rare to have a collection of disparate accounts hold together so well to create a unified story that is also full of interesting complexities and capable of addressing so many different historical problems. A classroom of students could discuss this for a week or more and still not have time to deal with all the issues it raises.(Nancy Shoemaker, author of A Strange Likeness: Becoming Red and White in Eighteenth-Century North America)A superb project.... Coming on the heels of Captors and Captives, Haefeli and Sweeney's invaluable study of the Deerfield raid, the narratives collected in this volume give life to many of the voices that informed that specific history.(Ron Welburn, author of Roanoke and Wampum:Topics in Native American Heritage and Literatures)With its careful footnotes and editing, Captive Histories is a collection that can be used by professional historians. They will welcome the general and sectional introductions that also make the collection user-friendly to the senior undergraduate.(H-France)'Captive Histories' is a follow-up to the author's well-received Captors and Captives: The 1704 French and indian Raid on Deerfield (Amherst, 2003) and, like it, aims to bring to light the complex and often completing perspectives in colonial New England.(Journal of British Studies)This outstanding collection of primary sources, each with an introduction placing the material in context stands on its own as an essential purchase for all academic libraries and should be strongly considered for acquisition by public libraries.(Library Journal)Captive Histories serves up a juicy selection of raw, primary sources offering insight into the raid on Deerfield, its origins and its aftermath from multiple perspectives. It is a work of rigorous scholarship, whose aim in essence is to purify our understanding of the event and context by detaching it as far as possible from the ethnocentrism of Puritan teleology.... Captive Histories provides another welcome counterpoint to the dominance of the Anglo-narrative -- and will be an especially useful resource for teaching at advanced undergraduate level.(French History)Haefeli and Sweeney have provided a great service in compiling this collection of primary sources.... The numerous explanatory footnotes provide excellent factual clarification and understanding for the uninitiated in the complexity of the Deerfield raid, and the introductory pieces to each individual source will give students significant explanation to understand the texts' greater significance.... [Captive Histories] will also hopefuly serve as a call for scholars to look more seriously at Native sources in order to gain a truer and more inclusive understanding of Native and European encounters of all types.(H-Net Reviews)There is much to commend in this vital and engaging book. With its preceding companion volume it would make a valuable core to any course on Euro-American and Native American relations during the mid-colonial period.(Historical Journal of Massachusetts1900-01-00)