The Deerfield Massacre
A Surprise Attack, a Forced March, and the Fight for Survival in Early America
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- £11.99
Publisher Description
From the New York Times bestselling author of Manhunt (now an Apple TV+ series) and in the tradition of Empire of the Summer Moon comes “a vivid account” (The Wall Street Journal) of a forgotten chapter in American history: the deadly confrontation between natives and colonists in Massachusetts in 1704 and the tragic saga that unfolded.
Once it was one of the most infamous events in early American history. Today, it has been nearly forgotten.
In an obscure, two-hundred-year-old museum in a little town in western Massachusetts there stands what once was the most revered relic from the history of early New England: the massive, tomahawk-scarred door that came to symbolize the notorious Deerfield Massacre of 1704. This impregnable barricade—known to early Americans as “The Old Indian Door”—constructed from double-thick planks of Massachusetts oak and studded with hand-wrought iron nails to repel the tomahawk blades wielded by several attacking Native tribes, is the sole surviving artifact from one of the most dramatic moments in colonial American history: In the leap year of 1704, on the cold, snowy night of February 29, hundreds of Indians and their French allies swept down on an isolated frontier outpost to slaughter or capture its inhabitants.
The sacking of Deerfield led to one of the greatest sagas of survival, sacrifice, family, and faith ever told in North America. One hundred and twelve survivors, including their fearless minister, the Reverend John Williams, were captured and forced to march three hundred miles north into enemy territory in Canada. Any captive who faltered or became too weak to continue the journey—including Williams’s own wife—fell under the tomahawk or war club.
Survivors of the march willed themselves to live and endured captivity. Ransomed by the royal governor of Massachusetts, the captives later returned home to Deerfield, rebuilt their town and, for the rest of their lives, told the incredible tale. The memoir of Rev. Williams, The Redeemed Captive, published soon after his liberation, became one of the first bestselling books in American history and remains a literary classic. The Old Indian Door is a touchstone that conjures up one of the most dramatic and inspiring stories of colonial America. Now, in this “immersive and memorable book [and] with his gifts of great storytelling and penetrating insight, James Swanson has given us a compelling account of an unjustly forgotten episode in American history” (Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of And There Was Light).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"Once, it was the most famous episode in early American history," writes bestseller Swanson (Manhunt) in this meticulous account of the eponymous 18th–century massacre, which occurred in an isolated British frontier settlement during Queen Anne's War. In the predawn hours of February 29, 1704, approximately 240 Native and French raiders attacked the small settlement of Deerfield (in present-day Massachusetts), where they murdered 47 colonists, took 112 captives, and burned most of the town to the ground. Transported over 300 miles north on foot, the survivors became servants or adopted family members in Native communities. One prominent captive, Rev. John Williams, later wrote about his experiences. His eight-year-old daughter, Eunice, who was sent to live with a Mohawk group, eventually assimilated and married. She refused to leave her adopted home years later during an attempted rescue. The latter third of Swanson's narrative pivots ingeniously from the event itself to examine the town's subsequent history, drawing on hundreds of years of published accounts, pageants, and tourist attractions to trace the massacre's afterlife in British and American mythologizing as it evolved to suit the settlers' changing relationship with Native America (from victimhood, to victory, to guilt). The result is a rewarding close look at the process of history-making.
