1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910822202503321

Autore

Steele Ian Kenneth

Titolo

Setting all the captives free : capture, adjustment, and recollection in Allegheny country / / Ian K. Steele

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Montreal : , : McGill-Queen's University Press, , 2013

ISBN

0-7735-8990-2

0-7735-8989-9

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (705 p.)

Collana

McGill-Queen's Indigenous and Northern Studies ; ; 71

McGill-Queen's native and northern series ; ; 71

Disciplina

973.2/6

Soggetti

Indians of North America - Wars - 1750-1815 - Prisoners and prisons

United States History French and Indian War, 1754-1763 Prisoners and prisons

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Part 1 : Captured in "Peacetime". Taken along Warriors' Paths -- Taking Traders, 1745-54 -- Colonial Soldiers Take Captives, 1754 --

Part 2 : Captured in War. Taken in Raids, 1754-59 -- Taken in Sieges and Surrenders, 1756-58 -- Taken in Battles, 1755-59 -- Indian War with Traders and Soldiers, 1763-65 -- Indian War with White Settlers, 1763-6 --

Part 3 : Captivity, Conversion, and Escape. Trails into Captivity -- Allegheny White Indians -- Escaped -- The Bereft --

Part 4 : Setting all the Captives Free. Diplomacy of Gift Exchange, 1756-62 -- Redeemed and Exchanged, 1745-62 -- Forced Return of Captives -- Imperial Moment, 1765 --

Part 5 : Afterwards and Afterwods. Restoring and Revising Identities -- Captivating Accounts, 1755-1826 -- Conclusion -- Tables -- Abbreviations -- Appendix: Named Captives Taken on the Allegheny Frontier.

Sommario/riassunto

Among the many upheavals in North America caused by the French and Indian War was a commonplace practice that affected the lives of thousands of men, women, and children: being taken captive by rival forces. Most previous studies of captivity in early America are content to generalize from a small selection of sources, often centuries apart.



In Setting All the Captives Free, Ian Steele presents, from a mountain of data, the differences rather than generalities as well as how these differences show the variety of circumstances that affected captives’ experiences. The product of a herculean effort to identify and analyze the captives taken on the Allegheny frontier during the era of the French and Indian War, Setting All the Captives Free is the most complete study of this topic. Steele explores genuine, doctored, and fictitious accounts in an innovative challenge to many prevailing assumptions and arguments, revealing that Indians demonstrated humanity and compassion by continuing to take numerous captives when their opponents took none, by adopting and converting captives into kin during the war, and by returning captives even though doing so was a humiliating act that betrayed their societies' values. A fascinating and comprehensive work by an acclaimed scholar, Setting All the Captives Free takes the study of the French and Indian War in America to an exciting new level.