Several years ago a local group produced an opera of the captivity of Eunice Williams. My friend's daughter was the young Eunice. The opera was performed in Deerfield, Massachusetts, the place the Williams family lived at the time, and then travelled to Quebec for a set of performances with the descendants of the First Peoples that had "captured" Eunice.
The most striking thing I got from my friend's discussion of the show was that the captives were taken to replace tribe members that had died in the wars and plagues brought by the whites. I had always assumed, incorrectly, that captives were taken for some form of slavery/drudgery. Most captives were adopted into families and treasured, which is a very different view from that held even 30 years ago.
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momijizukamori
fictional narratives
Date: 2009-02-22 03:38 pm (UTC)The most striking thing I got from my friend's discussion of the show was that the captives were taken to replace tribe members that had died in the wars and plagues brought by the whites. I had always assumed, incorrectly, that captives were taken for some form of slavery/drudgery. Most captives were adopted into families and treasured, which is a very different view from that held even 30 years ago.