At the beginning of John Demos' book The Unredeemed Captive, a group of Native Americans attack the English town of Deerfield, kidnap some of its inhabitants, and take them to Canada. On October 21, 1703, in response to the attacks, the "Reverend Mr." John Williams, the town's leader, writes to Joseph Dudley, the governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, for tax relief, funding to rebuild the fort, a prisoner exchange to free the captured residents, and soldiers to protect the town. Governor Dudley agrees to comply with the reverend's demands and places 16 soldiers in the city fort (Demos 1994, 11-13). In response to English counterattacks, Governor Pierre de Rigaud, Marquis of Vaudreuil, begins planning a February "expedition" of 48 French soldiers and 200 "domiciled Indians" in France. During the expedition, the soldiers destroy the town of Deerfield. Many of the residents who are unable to flee or hide are killed or captured, including the reverend and his family. The troops then take the captured settlers to Canada, where they will be held hostage in an attempt to negotiate the release of many French prisoners under English control, including Vaudreuil's best "privateer", Pierre Maisonat, the infamous "Captain Baptiste" ( Demos 1994, 15-19). In The Unredeemed Captive, Demos uses the Deerfield incident as a lens to reveal the underlying political, cultural, and religious conflicts in the relationships between settlers and Native Americans and those between the European colonizing nations themselves. Just over two centuries before the Deerfield Incident, many European countries, including Spain, England, and France, began establishing colonies in the Americas. Although many of their motivations varied, nearly all settlers sought "us... middle of paper... become 'Indianized.'" In his Letters from an American Farmer, J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur notes that other thousands of European children captured by the Indians completely forgot their real parents or refused to follow them. Many adult European prisoners also became Indianized, marrying the "squaws" who had adopted them. Crèvecoeur then explains the reasons for their decision to stay with. the natives, including the relative freedom and ease of the Indian way of life, that the natives must not be as "savage" as he and his fellow colonists claimed, due to the huge number of Europeans who did convert indicates that there is something "extraordinarily captivating" about the "social bond" of the Indians (Crèvecoeur 305-06 John Demos, The Unredeemed Captive Crevecoeur, Letters From An American Farmer).