Summary Of The Unredeemed Captive, By John Demos

In reading the Book, The Unredeemed Captive, By John Demos, I found that the relations between the Native Americans, the French and the English were different than I had anticipated. These people groups had many differences in their cultures and also had varying religious, military and family views. The two communities I will be addressing are the British Colony at Deerfield and the Native American and French colony at Kahnawake. Kahnawake was made up of Indians, from different tribes such as the Huron, Iroquois, and Mohawk, to name a few. But not only Indians, they were also in coexistence with the French, as Kahnawake was, a Catholic mission. Because of this, Demos showed how there was a sharing of religion among the Indians and French

In Deerfield, women were naturally submissive, that being Part of the Puritan belief. Also, women did not have much power and they did not work in the fields, they were housewives. Lineage was through the male and if a man should die, his estate did not go to his widow, just a small portion. Women in Deerfield were not seen as strong. Husbands and wives all lived together with their children, and at times, with close relatives. There is a much different family system in Kahnawake. In Kahnawake, “the husband and wife did not leave their family and lodge to set up a family and residence apart.” (143) In fact, husbands and wives did not live together at all and furthermore, “the children born of these marriages… are counted as being of the wife’s lodge and family, not the husband’s.” (143) In Kahnawake, women had the power. Lineage was in reference to women, not men. Children did not know their father’s house. In Deerfield, children knew their fathers and they were active in their lives, but in Kahnawake, the father’s, to me, were more absent. Women worked in the fields. They were strong and strength, as well as courage, in the face of pain, was greatly

The Kahnawake, as I mentioned before, were Roman Catholics and further, the Indians in Kahnawake also implemented some of their native religious practices into their practice of the Catholic faith., such as having shamans, having charms and fetishes, divination by dreams, round dances, etc…Despite this, the Kahnawake were seen as very devote to prayer and practicing of the Catholic religion as shown by Demos, “To all this, insisted the Jesuits, the Indians responded with extraordinary devotion, so much that visitors from the outside were sometimes moved to tears.” (153) In contrast, Deerfield was Puritan. Puritan was considered the purified church, the right way and if you were “rebaptized” as Catholic there was this idea that you needed to be “redeemed.” Throughout the entire book, redemption is prayed for. Affliction, massacre and people taken captive during the war were considered either punishment form angering God or testing of your faith. Being Puritan was considered the way to