Raid on Deerfield

February 29, 1704

Before dawn in deep Massachusetts snow, a French and Abenaki force scaled the palisade at Deerfield, killing fifty-six settlers and marching more than a hundred captives three hundred miles north. One captive, Eunice Williams, refused to return: she had married a Mohawk and become someone else. Her father's account of the ordeal became colonial New England's most widely read captivity narrative.