Anthropology

Last edited Sat Feb 18, 2023, 12:49 PM - Edit history (1)

is quite true, AFAIK. They lived in Deerfield, MA as adults. One of them, Benoni Stebbins, was the brother of my ancestor, Hannah Stebbins Sheldon. He was a "wild kid" in his youth, getting into trouble often, according to records about him. As a young adult, he was taken captive from a field by a raiding party and again escaped.

Eventually he was killed in the French and Indian raid on Deerfield n 1704.

His sister, Hannah Sheldon, was also killed in the raid. 3 of her children and her eldest son's wife were taken captive to New France (Canada), including my ancestor, her 12 year old son, Ebenezer. They were later ransomed back by her husband, John, who managed to ransom back over 100 captives, some of whom had been taken in earlier raids on other English villages.

Regarding captives who remained with their Native captors, I have a book on the Deerfield raid which has a chart showing which captives remained, which ones died on the March to Montreal, and which ones returned. Most of the ones who returned had been ransomed back within 2 years. A few returned on their own a couple years later. Some were taken for adoption by Native people who participated in the raid. Some were kept among the French, including Ebenezer Sheldon, who was bought from Native captors by a French woman to work in a cloth making business that she ran. His 16 year old sister, Mary, was taken to a Mohawk village outside of
Montreal. All of the Sheldons were ransomed back.

Most of the ones who returned were adults who had strong ties in Deerfield and older teens who came from families that had social status in Deerfield. The younger children were more easily assimilated into French or Native cultures.

But the adult and teen captives who chose to remain in Canada found life less restrictive in both the French and the Native cultures. The French offered land and money to adults who were willing to convert and settle in. The adult women found that in Native villages women were freer because Native women shared their work together, did not have the social restrictions of Puritan culture, and did not have a baby every year or two.

English colonists (and later frontier settlers farther west) were frustrated and embarrassed by the number of people who preferred to stay with Native captors.