The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early America
51 pages • 1-hour read
John Putnam DemosThe Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early America
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Speculation and the Historical Record
In the study of colonial American history, particularly where it intersects with Native American history, historians do not always have surviving written records to draw from. Thus, the modern-day researcher may have an incomplete picture of what life was like in the era. Demos, however, takes great liberties when it comes to speculation and will often fill in the gaps where the historical records are sparse with his own educated guesses about what must have transpired.
This kind of speculation happens throughout the book, but in Chapter 9, on the momentous occasion when Stephen Williams, brother to Eunice, goes to meet her in Albany in 1740, Demos goes into an extended rumination on how those events must have happened. Demos first acknowledges that the historical record (Stephen Williams’s diary) will not give the full scope of events: “The words are Stephen’s and they leave much to our imagination. Where, for example, did the meeting take place? And who else was present, besides the principals?” (189). Demos then goes into a lengthy, largely fictionalized account (noted in italics) of how the events might have gone: “The message comes at dusk, as the three of them—guests these several days, of Mr. Cuyler—are together at prayer. A young Indian, pausing by their open window, says simply: ‘She has come now; you will see her tomorrow at our house outside the walls.’ Our house? He must mean the ‘Indian house,’ kept by the people of Albany for the use of native traders” (189). Demos believes that this kind of fictive speculation actually enhances our understanding of history, by filling in gaps that would otherwise remain mysteries to modern-day readers, and ultimately deepening our understanding of colonial New England.
Historical Research as “Detective” Work
John Demos uses extensive amounts of primary source documents to reconstruct Eunice’s story in The Unredeemed Captive. However, he acknowledges the limitations when it comes to working from primary sources, often telling the reader why a certain source material might require further interpretation. In this way, Demos frames his historical research as a kind of “detective work,” using it as another force that draws the reader into Eunice’s story.
In Chapter 3, for instance, the central question Demos asks is: What was the experience of the Deerfield captives when they were taken prisoner by the Kahnawake? Piecing together that narrative is difficult as so many of those stories have been lost. So, before answering this question, Demos emphasizes the importance of John Williams’s near-complete record of experiences in captivity: “Most of the Deerfield captives are beyond the reach of historians. […] But in only one case is it possible to go further—to feel the twist of the thread, to catch the meaning of the experience. To know the thoughts and feelings behind the events” (55). Demos draws out the importance even further with an added call to study:
Only one: John Williams. Which is all the more reason to take what Williams wrote and study it with the utmost care and patience. Williams, of course, was no more likely than the rest of us to say exactly what he felt. Or even to know exactly what he felt. His words are the words of his own time and place and people: strange to us, routine to him and them (55).
Demos, however, acknowledges that, even with a complete record, there are still barriers to our full understanding (John Williams may have withheld certain thoughts/feelings, and the colonial language and lifestyle must be contextualized for modern readers).
Demos will occasionally give a line-by-line analysis of certain historical documents to show the gaps and pieces of data that require interpretation. For example, in Chapter 4, Demos walks the reader through a report sent by a British government official who had recently seen Eunice in 1707 in her Kahnawake village. The report states that: “She [Eunice] is in good health but seemes [sic] unwilling to Returne [sic], and the Indian not very willing to part with her, she being (as he says) a pritty girll [sic]….” Demos unpacks this report in the following way:
A puzzling—and disturbing—report. Good health: all right, thank God for that. The Indian who owns her: her master? Her adoptive father? It just isn’t clear. Not willing to part with her: they’d heard as much already; still, painful to have it confirmed. A pretty girl: ambiguous qualifier. Clever? Skillful? Pleasing to look at? (All are acceptable eighteenth-century meanings.) (85).
Demos’s discussion of his source material, and how it affected his study of Eunice, makes the reader a more active participant in the historical research process. While most of the true narrative revolves around Eunice, the story is enhanced, and the urgency increased, by Demos’s explanations of the historical research process.
Physical Metaphors
Demos often uses physical metaphors to describe the best possible historical records. He often invokes the senses of sight and touch, writing that modern-day readers can “see” or “feel” the historical person/event when full, accurate, and legible historical records are available. For example, in Chapter 8, Demos mentions that Stephen Williams kept many years’ worth of diaries, which provide a very clear picture of his thoughts and life at the time. As such, Demos uses the word “approachable” to describe Stephen, as if the reader could physically approach Stephen: “Of all these younger Williamses, Stephen is most fully approachable now—thanks to his years of assiduous diary-keeping” (172).
In Chapter 10, Demos uses the metaphor of sight to describe Eunice’s reemergence in writings of the era: “With the decade ended, and the war as well, Eunice came back into view from New England. In autumn 1760, Stephen received a succession of reports on her welfare” (226). Demos also describes letters written by Stephen Williams that mention Eunice’s well-being at the time: “Their footprints (figurately speaking) remain to this day scattered through the diaries, and other contemporaneous writings, of various New Englanders” (185). Diaries and other written records are equivalent to “footprints” in Demos’s view—that is, a traceable step that the reader can follow in order to understand the trajectory of the story. In this way, Demos makes the study of history come alive: When we read the writings of the past, we can “see” and “feel” those individuals and events.
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