The attack on Deerfield, Massachusetts, has become an archetypal moment in American history, representative of a long era of violent frontier encounter between the diverse peoples of colonial North America. On 29 February 1704, a joint French and Indian raiding party surprised the settlement, killing and taking captive over half of Deerfield's 300 occupants. The daring and calculated raid was a key point in the War of Spanish Succession, with ramifications that would be felt for years to come by many peoples.

Starting in 1707 with Reverend John William's The Redeemed Captive Returning to Zion, the Deerfield raid has been explored by generations of authors. Evan Haefeli and Kevin Sweeney go far beyond previous efforts to craft a new narrative of Deerfield that encompasses all of its participants and places the event in the broader context of imperial conflict.

Captors and Captives is divided into four sections that examine the raid in a chronological framework. Part 1, “Creating Communities,” introduces the young town of Deerfield, the most isolated and vulnerable settlement in Western Massachusetts. The authors then explore the other communities that had central roles in the raid: the colony of New France and their numerous Native American allies. Some of these Indians, such as the Hurons of Lorette and the Iroquois of the Mountain, were from the Catholic mission settlements of the St. Lawrence River. Others, such as the Wabanaki of northern New England, lived a precarious existence between two expansive empires. While traditional histories of the Deerfield raid have focused on the English settlers, Haefeli and Sweeney work hard to present a balanced view of all participants of the raid.

Part 2 focuses on the Deerfield Raid itself, with individual chapters devoted to “Warnings,” “Assault,” and “Retreat.” Although it provides an exhaustive examination of the attack, this is the shortest section of the book—an acknowledgment that the Deerfield story goes far beyond the immediate events surrounding the attack itself.

Part 3, “Negotiating Empires,” is perhaps the strongest section of the book. Not only was Deerfield one of the largest raids of the era, but it also had the most settlers taken captive. Haefeli and Sweeney do an excellent job of telling the individual stories of captors and captives. It is all the more impressive when you realize that their narrative is built on quite limited documentation that the authors carefully gathered from English, French, and Native sources.

These individual stories are told within the context of imperial diplomacy and warfare, for Deerfield was but one scene in a lengthy international conflict. Long overlooked by social and cultural historians, scholars now realize that early America simply cannot be understood without a firm grasp of the imperial setting. Captors and Captives demonstrates the importance of studying both the ethnohistorical and imperial frontier. At the same time, the authors are careful to point out that the participants in the Deerfield story had many different motives for their actions. Conflicts fought in colonial North America did not always coincide with the European struggles to which they have long been tied. For example, Haefeli and Sweeney look at the unsuccessful negotiations between Massachusetts and New France to sign a treaty that would have ended fighting along the frontier, even though England and France remained at war. New France and New England struggled in a war that “overlapped” the broader imperial struggle.

The authors also explore the motives of France's Indian allies, for these peoples had their own reasons for going to war. Many fought what has been called a “parallel war” with goals that were quite distinct from those of the French. The Iroquois participation was in large part a mourning war, where captives could be tortured or adopted into a tribe in order to assuage grieving Iroquois widows. The Wabanaki of New Hampshire and Maine wanted to strike blows against English expansion, but they also desired scalps, supplies, and profitable captives.

Part 4, “Preserving Communities,” looks at the long-term implications of the Deerfield raid for the peoples involved. It took many years for some captives to return home, and some such as Eunice Williams never did, preferring to join French or Native society. The raid would prove to be the French zenith in the War of Spanish Succession. In its aftermath, Massachusetts improved defenses to prevent future raids, and the English also took to the offensive. Although largely ineffective as invaders, colonial forces were able to conquer Acadia. Having suffered a string of losses in America and Europe, the French signed the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht, where they would officially hand over Acadia and other prizes to the English.

Captors and Captives ends with an afterword that looks at how stories of the raid have been passed on by historians as well as storytellers in Deerfield, Montreal, Kahnawake, Odanak, and elsewhere. In the end it is the intertwining of these many stories, complete with the complex motives of the participants, that makes this book stand out. Captors and Captives is ethnohistory at its finest—a detailed examination of all sides of the frontier and the connections that held them together.