The Unredeemed Captive published by Vintage on March 28, 1995. The Unredeemed Captive - A Family Story by John Demos was about Eunice Williams’ being held captive by the resident Indians and the fight her family endured in order to go home. Eunice was captured together with her family along with hundreds of other residents in and around Deerfield. Demos, seems very knowledgeable of the Deerfield raid. He also uses impeccable detail on the captives’ march to Canada. Demos, also does a great job of depicting the experience of being a captive. It also helped to understand the story better when Demos explained further why the Indians were victorious in capturing the villagers. As well, he described the Kahnawake Indian village where Eunice …show more content…
There were rumors accumulating but by 1704 there were so many over a long period of time that everybody just ignored but still took precaution. Since they had been alerted to the possibility of a raid, they all took refuge within the palisade, and a guard was posted. The raid occurred in winter which was atypical. There was a couple feet of snow on the ground. The Indians would have to walk nearly 300 miles to get to Deerfield and return back with captives. The raiders swept into the village, and began attacking individual houses. Reverend Williams' house was among the first to be raided; Williams' life was spared when his gunshot misfired, and he was taken prisoner. Two of his children and a servant were slain; the rest of his family and his other servant were also taken prisoner. Similar scenarios occurred in many of the other houses. The residents of Benoni Stebbins' house, which was not among the ones attacked early, resisted the raiders' attacks, which lasted until well after daylight. A second house, near the northwestern corner of the palisade, was also successfully defended. The raiders moved through the village, herding their prisoners to an area just north of the town, rifling houses for items of value, and setting a number of them on fire. The captives were rounded up and marched to Canada. The word “raid” does not sum up to the events that took place in Deerfield. In this interpretation of the “true” story of Eunice Williams, it
Institutional structures have the power to configure adolescent growth through repression and liberation. The capability that adolescents have to create their own destiny and choose their own social institution can be limited, but not impossible. In Trites article, “Do I dare disturb the universe?” the author argues that kids have personal power, whether they acknowledge it and use it to their own advantage or not. Michel Foucault declares that “Power is everywhere; not because it embraces everything, but because it comes from everywhere” (Trites). Power is inevitable, there will never be no such thing as power in this world; it will never diminish or fade. Trites also conveyed that, “power not only acts on a subject but, in a transitive
First, you would locate a possible slave cabin. To locate a possible slave cabin, you can use the Historic American Building Survey (HABS). HABS is an online government site that has created in 1933, for relief employment under the Civil Works Administration. (slavaehousing.org)
The Unredeemed Captive tells a story of struggles a family went through to stay true to one another. Eunice Williams’ was taken captive and family went through many obstacles to try and get her home. Both Eunice and her family were captured together along with many other town residents in the Deerfield Massacre of 1704. Demos precisely described the Deerfield raid along with the process of traveling to Canada. Throughout the book, Demos also covered some individual captive experiences and events. Demos showed the life of Eunice before her life was changed and how it would be if she was not taken. He stated why the raid was the way it was and showed the success of it.
Throughout the stories told in both Mohawk Saint and The Unredeemed Captive, the unintended consequences of attempting to convert the American Indians to Christianity are powerful players in the unfolding events. When these Christian groups arrived in the New World, they came armed with the word of God that they wished to share among a group of people that have never before encountered the concept of Christianity. While eventually these relationships improved and Christians and American Indians began to have closer contact, there were still results from the conversion process that no one could have expected when the progress had started. In both of these stories, the unintended consequences of the encounters between Christian religious and
In her novel, Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir, Deborah A. Miranda theorizes that the underlying patronage of her father’s violent behavior arises from the original acts of violence carried out by the Spanish Catholic Church during the era of missionization in California. The structure of her novel plays an essential role in the development of her theory, and allows her to further generalize it to encompass the entire human population. “In this beautiful and devastating book, part tribal history, part lyric and intimate memoir, Deborah A. Miranda tells stories of her Ohlone Costanoan Esselen family as well as the experience of California Indians as a whole through oral histories, newspaper clippings, anthropological recordings, personal reflections, and poems.” Patching together every individual source to create the story of a culture as a whole, Miranda facilitates the task of conceptualizing how Societal Process Theory could play into the domestic violence she experiences growing up as the daughter of a California Indian.
In the documentary ‘Incarcerating US’ they discussed the issue of how the growth of incarceration is becoming extremely ridiculous. It introduced several issues with the system along with a few concepts to resolve the criminal justice system. For the US to be only 5% of the population, but have 25% of the incarceration rate, the US has the largest prison population. Throughout the documentary they allowed inmates to share their personal experiences/stories about what decision they made to make them receive time in prison. In the movie it discussed the war on drugs that was once considered to be the major issue. Instead of going against the issue head on it was decided that it would be better to attack those that are using the drug. There is
The circumstances of captivity were as varied as the number of people involved on both sides. Prisoner redemption was the process of prisoner exchange that had long been unfair. Captives were subject to ransom, trade for other key people, and sometimes prisoners decided to remain in captivity since escape was very dangerous. Acculturation which included adoption and repatriation were choices for some of them as well. For example, "Eunice's inability to speak English and her personal appearance announce her loyalty to other standards" (Demos 146). "She had been fully integrated or Indianized" (Demos 142). Eunice comes of age in her adoptive community, secure, and increasingly well integrated. The trauma of capture including as it did the deaths of her mother and
The Unredeemed Captive- A Family Story From Early America, John Demos, Vintage Books, April 1995, New York
Poverty hits children hardest in the world. When I was younger, the Armenians had faced the hard facts of poverty after they break up with the Soviet Union, war with Azerbaijan, and a devastating earthquake. My family moved into our motherland Armenia while our nation was going through these huge dramatic changes. Furthermore the poor economy and inflation destroyed numerous hopes and futures. In the novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie, Arnold Spirit, describes his hardships involving poverty living on Spokane reservation. The people on the reservation are stuck in a prison of poverty. They are imprisoned there due to lack of resources and general contempt from the outside world, so they are left with little chance for success. Like Arnold, I also went through hardships regarding poverty and education.
When someone hears the phrase “held captive”, usually wild animals come to mind. No one ever really thinks of humans as being held captive. However, in Daniel Quinn’s 1992 novel Ishmael, the character of Ishmael tries teaching the story’s narrator to think of ways in which he has been held captive by both internal and external forces. Society has a way of making people feel like they need to do certain things to be successful, so basically society is holding people captive by holding them back from living the way they want to. As humans, we also have ways of holding ourselves captive. Ishmael compares our captivity with a form of blindness. Throughout the novel, Quinn helps the reader realize what they are blind to and what they are
wasn't that big and nice. The land is actually in bad conditions when we got there and it still is now. The U.S. soldiers told us that this will be our new home and we had to stay here. If we left, then we might have been prosecuted and worst of all killed. They also said that this is a reservation and by law we had to stay here for now. I went toward the U.S. soldiers and ask, them what was a reservation? They said it was an area of land given by the government for Native Americans to occupy.My face was turning red, I was enraged because we were told to move away from our terrain and to adjust our lives to be on a reservation. We are humans, just like them, meaning we should be treated the same as them and not be set aside like if we something meaningless. In the reservations, we couldn't survive with these kinds of conditions because we need it to hunt buffaloes. buffaloes are our main source that provided almost everything needed to survive. Buffalo provided us with food, tools, weapons, and clothing. It wasn't possible for us to hunt buffalo in reservations because buffaloes, where it usually found in reservations or near reservations.Most Native Americans and I were crying because we lost our spirits a fight. We lost our spirit to fight because the United States troops and the government took our land that was rightly ours, most Native Americans died during the trails of tears. They made us move to a horrible place with the worst conditions that mankind could have imagined.The conditions of the houses on the reservation had the same conditions of a reservation overall. The houses in the reservations are tenements because the houses were poorly built. The ceilings of the houses were poorly built because it seemed that it was going to fall down in view of the fact that the rain made the ceiling fall apart. In the circumscribed land, there wasn’t a multitudinous quantity of stores. The stores
Almost all teens experience some sort of an identity crisis. They struggle with finding a clearer sense of themselves. Arnold Spirit Jr., a 14-year-old reservation Indian, faces an identity crisis when he leaves his reservation to go to school in Reardan, a town inhibited by white people. To begin, Arnold moves between different settings, and when he does, there is a change in his identity. Moreover, there is a change in his character as he moves between cities. Finally, Arnold experiences an identity crisis as well as conflicts with his community. In The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, the author uses literary elements to emphasize that one’s racial and ethnic identity changes depending on the social surrounding.
As the proverb goes, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Beauty, as we know it, is subjective to each individual. However, some individuals are primed to perceive beauty as deriving from physique, clothing, and accessories; neglecting more important traits such as honesty and kind-heartedness. Aaron Shephard portrays in his short story, “The Hidden One: A Native American Legend”, that neglecting such traits results in failure. Any woman who makes deceitful attempts at proving they’re capable of seeing the Great Hunter is cast away. Little Scarface’s unpleasant older sister would “hold[] her down and burn[] her arms and face with sticks from the fire” (Shepard 1) and lie to their father about it. She claimed to see the Hunter and lied about that as well. The mistreated little girl is stripped of having appealing clothing and, what some may consider, a beautiful face; yet, only with her pure soul intact, she ultimately succeeds. The image of beauty the author is attempting to paint for you is that physical appearance only gets you to the door; the Hidden One, symbolized as the prize, is obtained with a “good heart”, free from “jealous[y] and cruel[ty]”.
This week’s reading focused on prisons. The Society of Captives was written by Gresham M. Sykes in 1958. He conducted a study on a maximum security prison in New Jersey. Chapter 1 focused on the prison and its settings. The author goes into detail about the size of the cells and what the prison actually looks like. He also writes about how the prisoner is no longer seen as man but as a number. My Sunday school teacher visits prisons to teach about the bible. He has commented to me that is exactly how certain correction officers see the prisoners. They are nothing but a number to some individuals. This can lower their self-image (Sykes, 1958).
"Double-consciousness this sense of always looking at one 's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one 's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity" (Dubois, 8). W.E.B. Du Bois had a perfect definition of double-consciousness. The action of viewing one 's self through the eyes of others and measuring one 's soul. Looking at all of the thoughts good or bad coming from others. This is present in the main character of the book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie. The Absolutely True Diary is about a boy named Junior that is fourteen years old and living on the Spokane Reservation. Junior was born with too