The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early America

In Chapter 5, Demos gives a more focused overview of the efforts made by the British government—both in New England and abroad in Europe—to have Eunice Williams returned to her family in Massachusetts. John Williams made pitches to the French directly, but the English government drove numerous efforts independently as well.

At the outset, Demos explains that primary source material explaining how John Williams might have felt about the news of Eunice’s marriage is very sparse: “How John Williams took the ‘melancholy news’ of Eunice’s marriage in Canada is not known, for no single writing of this survives from the relevant period” (100). However, one can infer from his intense, multi-year, concerted efforts to get her back, alongside the letters from other Williams family members about the “melancholy” news, that John Williams was immeasurably saddened that his daughter had so completely transformed.

The Governor of Massachusetts at the time—Joseph Dudley—led many efforts to retrieve British captives held by Native Americans by pressuring the Native Americans’ French allies. In 1712, when the war was starting to die down, Governor Dudley hoped that captives would be returned as part of the natural course of things. Indeed, many would return through Albany: “This strategy would soon take specific effect, but by way of Albany rather than Boston” (100). Eunice, however, was not among them.

Very few outsiders had contact with Eunice in her new Mohawk home. One of the few to see her was a New York trader by the name of John Schuyler:

Among these [New York traders] were the several Schuylers, Peter, David, John, and Myndert; it is John who concerns us here. Sometime in the early spring (of 1713), he began a “Journey to and from Canada.” Probably he had personal affairs to look after (the renewal of commercial contracts?), but he seems to have had official business as well (101).

At the behest of Governor Dudley, John Schuyler is sent to visit Eunice in her village. When he is finally granted a visit with her, Schuyler is surprised that she appears with her new husband: “Perhaps Schuyler was hoping to see her alone. If so, he is disappointed; they come as a pair” (105). At the visit, Eunice refuses to speak; she only communicates through her husband. When asked if she will consider returning to Deerfield, Eunice responds in Mohawk with the phrase “jaghte oghte.” Demos explains the meaning of these words: “Jaghte oghte. Peut-etre que non. Maybe not. It comes to the same thing: one word really. A word the Indians would rather soften. But, to be blunt about it: no. Not to stay, not for a visit either. Eunice won’t go” (107). Schuyler is frustrated at the encounter and returns home without positive news for either Governor Dudley or John Williams.

Demos examines Schuyler’s written account of that encounter between he and Eunice, hoping to answer two questions: First, what was it that Eunice felt in that moment? Secondly, what can we infer about Eunice’s new husband, Arosen? Demos summarizes as follows:

Here is Eunice, coming of age in her adoptive community, secure, and increasingly well integrated, yet still a trifle “strange” given her unusual origins. And here is Arosen, known to her from childhood, as a visitor to the village: an outsider […]. Marriage will bind them here—to each other and to the place they have made their own (111).

After Schuyler, there are several other attempts to see Eunice and convince her to return, including one by a whole team of British officials sent by Governor Dudley to see if they might convince the Mohawks to turn over Eunice, along with any other captives they are holding. The commissioners arrive in Canada from Massachusetts after a journey that lasts a little over two weeks: “In just over two weeks they reach Chambly, where they transfer to a ‘carryall’ (sleigh) supplied by French officials. They stop briefly in Montreal, then push on over the snow to Quebec, arriving on February 16” (113). The commissioners have very little luck in Quebec, and while they successfully negotiate the release of certain captives, the Mohawk tribe remains steadfast about keeping Eunice. Months pass: “By now it is mid-June. The commissioners have been in Canada, and about their task, through four full months” (118). Meanwhile, John Williams is still distraught about Eunice, and he will be for years to come: “Years later it was said that ‘he was scarcely ever known to utter a prayer, however short, of which some petitions did not make a part, in behalf of his beloved and unfortunate daughter Eunice, who was in captivity among the Indians” (119).

Chapter 6 gives further background on the culture and customs of the Native American tribe that held Eunice Williams captive. The Kahnawake tribe—also known as “French Mohawks”—populated Quebec and the surrounding area at the time, and Demos explains the Kahnawake’s social and religious practices as a means of understanding the conditions into which Eunice was received; Demos also situates (and differentiates) the Kahnawake from other tribes that populated the region.

The Kahnawake were a relatively new tribe compared to others in the area: “Less than four decades old when Eunice Williams came to them, their community was already known—some said ‘renowned’—on both sides of the imperial border, and across the ocean as well” (120). The Kahnawake came into contact with many different cultures and, as such, went by many different names: The French colonists referred to them as “les Iroquois du Sault,” the English settlers called them “French Mohawks,” the Abenakis (another neighboring tribe) referred to them as the “praying Iroquois” (120). The “varied nomenclature directly reflects the ambiguity of their cultural, and geographical, placement—and the extraordinary complexity of their history” (120). Demos goes on to describe the unique cultural and social features, as well as the social history, of the Kahnawake.

Among the first outsiders to come into contact with the Kahnawake were Jesuit missionaries, after a priest named Rafeix was tasked with developing a tract of land near the city Mont Royale (now Montreal) in 1667. Rafeix’s new settlement was called LaPrairie. LaPrairie, according to Jesuit legend, was a place of social harmony, where Native Americans and the French missionaries co-existed in peace, exchanging and mixing cultures. However, Demos takes care to expose the bias of the Jesuit legend: “The legend stresses the social ‘harmony’ achieved at LaPrairie. […] But even within the legend there are, on this point, hints to the contrary” (124). Demos finds evidence that even at LaPrairie there were conflicts between the Native Americans and the French. Still, the Kahnawake tribe offered a vision of a kind of “spiritual innovation” not seen with other tribes at the time.

Demos also explains how the Kahnawake tribe’s culture was affected not only by spiritual forces (of Jesuit and Christian missionaries) but by commercial forces as well: “None would prove more important in the long run than participation in the intercolonial fur trade. From small, ad hoc beginnings this enterprise grew to become the mainstay of the local economy” (131). Furs would be harvested and collected by Kahnawake in their annual hunt, then transferred and stashed in hideouts around Montreal, finally making their way to Albany, down the Hudson River, and across the ocean to England. The intercolonial fur trade was illegal at the time, with the French government wanting to impose tight controls over the lucrative trade operation.

Warfare between the English and the French greatly affected the Kahnawake at this time:

Trade was, for the Kahnawake, a point of entry into the larger world of the European colonizers; and, once begun, it led rapidly to other involvements. Above all, there was warfare—virtually continuous warfare—spanning almost three decades (134).

The Kahnawake were allies to the French “almost immediately” (134). War-related violence reached a pinnacle in 1689 with a series of raids and counterstrikes—a “rehearsal for Deerfield,” according to Demos (135).

The demographics and geographical location of the Kahnawake also changed greatly during this period. The population dropped from 700 to 485 from the mid-1680s to 1695, but at the turn of the century (coinciding with peacetime in the region) it grew to 800. At its peak in 1760, the population had reached 1,200. Geographically speaking, the tribe moved from LaPrairie to Kahnawakon to Kanatakwenke, and then finally, in 1716, to a location “two leagues further up the river,” just outside of modern Montreal (138). That was their final relocation: “The 1716 removal was also their last. Kahnawake—with its original name restored—has remained a fixed place from that day to this” (139).

In Chapter 7, Demos homes in on Eunice’s experience as a captive at LaPrairie. Historical records from the Kahnawake community are very sparse, so Demos explains his methods for recreating a narrative of her life there: “About Eunice Williams inside this strangely positioned community we know only a very few, very bare facts. But because Kahnawake was so often described by visitors, it is possible to reconstruct at least the outlines of her experience there” (140). Joseph François Lafitau, a resident priest at Kahnawake from 1712 to 1717, authored the text Customs of the American Indians Compared with the Customs of Primitive Times, which can be read as an ethnography of the Kahnawake. Demos uses Lafitau’s writing to understand and contextualize what Eunice’s life among the Kahnawake must have been like. Demos organizes Chapter 7 as a series of “bare facts” about Eunice’s experience (largely taken from mission records), each one followed by a paragraph offering a reasonable speculation based on Lafitau’s ethnography to elaborate upon that fact.

The first fact is as follows: “Sometime after her arrival at Kahnawake, Eunice Williams was given an Indian name, variously spelled in the mission records as A’ongote, 8angot, Gonaongote, 8ahongote” (141). Demos explains that Iroquoian groups such as the Kahnawake attached a “singular importance” to names, as evidenced by the fact that names were commonly recycled within the tribe after the death of a community member. The new owner of the name would be expected to carry on the qualities and virtues of that individual. Eunice’s assigned name, Demos speculates, could have been the name of another captive who perished. The name she was assigned—A’ongote—translates in the Kahnawake language as “she has been planted as a person” (142).

The second fact Demos presents is this: “The still extant records are sprinkled with references to Eunice Williams’s closest Indian connections: particularly, to ‘her master’ (also called ‘the Indian who owns her’) and ‘the woman that has Mr. Williams’s daughter’” (142). The practice of adoption was common among captives, who would be incorporated into Native American families. Demos interprets the references to Eunice’s master as referring to Eunice’s adoptive family. Demos highlights how different the Native American families were compared to those of European colonists, noting, “the principles that governed membership in these households were extraordinary by European standards” (143). He describes the “matrilocal” system, in which a woman never leaves her original family, even after getting married and bearing children. The children born of these marriages “are counted as being of the wife’s lodge and family, not the husband’s”—meaning, in practice, that children would be raised in their mother’s care and household (143).

The next fact is that: “Within two years—perhaps less—of her arrival in Kahnawake, Eunice Williams had ‘forgot [how] to speak English’” (146). Demos garnered this information from a letter written to John Williams by a friend. Demos speculates that, in modern-day life, it is nearly impossible for readers to imagine forgetting their native language, and he wonders if the Native Americans coerced Eunice (and other captive children) into forgetting by forbidding them from communicating in English.

The following fact Demos offers concerns yet another name change for Eunice: “By 1713, and probably several years before, Eunice Williams had acquired a new Christian name: Marguerite. This was the official name of her rebaptism and entry into the Catholic Church” (151). Eunice’s religion at birth was Puritanism and her father was a celebrated minister of the faith. Conversion from Puritanism to Catholicism was a goal among Jesuit missionaries in Canada, who had had a number of successes converting Native Americans to the Catholic faith as well. The Kahnawake tribe, in which Eunice was raised, fervently embraced Catholicism, though the tribe’s brand of Catholicism was “blended” with Native American spirituality: “The wampum ‘collars’ decorating the mission church, the warriors’ costumes sometimes worn to mass, the special ‘feasts’ of penance”—these are all examples of a “blended, or syncretic, influence” (153).

Another fact is that Eunice was married in 1713 to a Kahnawake man who went by several different names: “In the opening months of 1713, or possibly a little before, Eunice Williams married an Indian man identified in the mission records as Francois Xavier Arosen. (He apparently had an additional name variously spelled as Tairagie, Turoger, and DeRoguers)” (154). Drawing on Lafitau, Demos describes more generally the marriage and courtship practices among the Kahnawake. Couples were paired based on mutual interest and respect, and matchmaking was a family affair that involved entire households. Weddings were typically held in midsummer (June or July) or midwinter (January or February). Females were typically married at age 14 and a half years old, while the average age for males was 18 years old.

The next fact regards Eunice and Arosen’s children: “Eunice and Arosen had children—whose arrival, in two instances, was specifically noted in the mission records. Their daughter Catherine was born 4 August 1736, and baptized the following day. Another daughter, Marie, was baptized 23 September 1739, following her birth ‘recently’ before. In addition, they almost certainly had a son—apparently named John, and born at a time and place which cannot now be determined” (157). While only two children appear in the official mission records, Demos speculates that it is highly probably that Eunice had more children than that; in other records, he finds reference to eight children. The Kahnawake had a low fertility rate compared to European standards, with an average of three years between pregnancies. Lafitau notes that Kahnawake mothers were encouraged to breastfeed their children for as long as possible (up to three or four years old), a practice that may have some bearing on the overall fertility of the mother.

In addition to A’ongote, it is fact that Eunice was given a second Native American name: “At some (undetermined) point in her life, Eunice Williams acquired a second Indian name. This was ‘Gannestenhawi,’ which can be roughly translated as ‘she brings in corn’” (159). Demos draws attention to the fact that, while there is no clear account of Kahnawake naming conventions, their practices clearly indicate a “flexibility” (159). As to the translation of Eunice’s second Kahnawake name, Demos speculates that it signifies her responsibilities as a “mature woman” in the community, as the tribe tasked nearly all women with the duty of harvesting and maintaining corn crops. If A’ongote was her childhood name, it stands to reason that Gannenstenhawi was the “adult counterpart.”  

As a springboard to explain the complexity of social ties among the Kahnawake, Demos provides the fact that Eunice was a godparent in her tribe: “Four times Eunice Williams, a.k.a. Marguerite A’ongote Gannenstenhawi, appears in the mission records as godparents to newly baptized members of her community” (162). Godparenting draws lines across immediate kin to form a larger community, which is true in traditional European Christian tradition as well as among the Catholic Kahnawake. For the Kahnawake, godparenting tied community members together even across clans. Clans, in the Kahnawake tradition, “conferred broadly defined rights and obligations among individual members” (163). Marriage and godparenthood were just two ways in which Kahnawake culture expanded the notion of “family” beyond biology and immediate kin.

The final fact that Demos presents about Eunice’s life concerns her two daughters and their integration into Kahnawake culture:

Eunice Williams’s two youngest daughters—apparently the only ones to survive to adulthood—married Indian men from the village. The husband of the first (Catherine Gassimontie) was named Omnasatgen and was identified in the records as “grand child of the village.” The husband of the second (Marie Skentises) was Louis Satgaeiton, also a locally prominent figure (164).

Demos notes that both of Eunice’s daughters married men of high social standing in the tribe, then points out that women held a special kind of power in Kahnawake society. Women, he notes, played a central role in selecting chiefs of the clan, typically done by the “matron” of a household (165). Given that both of Eunice’s daughters married into noble families, one can infer that they held a similar kind of power in the community.