Lesson 8
Captives of 1704: Stephen Williams, the Parson's Son

After the attack of the French and Indians on Deerfield, Stephen Williams, the ten-year-old son of the parson, did not get along so well as his younger sister Eunice.

When the savages divided up what they had stolen, he was given to a brave, who stripped him of his silver knee buckles and buttons. With his master he went through trackless stretches of forest, keeping up with the Indian's great strides, and often with only a few kernels of corn for the day's rations.

He was now called Cossanip, the slave. When camp was pitched, he cut wood for the fires and dug roots from the frozen ground and took bark from the trees for his food.

Later his master traded him to another Indian. By this time Stephen looked very much like an Indian boy, with leather leggings and moccasins and a fringed coat of deerskin. He learned how to hunt and trap, to light a fire with dry sticks and tinder, and later, to swim.

At the end of the long winter, camp was struck and Cossanip staggered under packs with the rest. Finally, they reached a great lake which he guessed to be Champlain, and they took to canoes, much to Stephen's joy, for his feet had been bruised and gashed on the rocks and underbrush. From this lake they went into the St. Lawrence. At one of their first landings, they came to a French fort. It was a wonderful thing to the homesick lad to see a white face and hear a kind voice once more. The French were very good to him, but his master was stern and would not let him stay with them.

At last they came to the Indian village of St. Francis, where Stephen was again sold, this time to a brave, whom the English called Sagamore George. There were several white captive children in the village, but they never spoke English when the Indians were near for fear of being abused.

A number of times Frenchmen came, trying to ransom Stephen, but the greedy Sagamore asked too high a price for him. Finally, however, he told Stephen to write to his father, who was a prisoner in Quebec, saying that he must be ransomed by Spring for forty crowns.

After many long wintry days, the black-robed priest brought him an answer from his father.

Here was proof at last that his dear father was yet alive, though still a prisoner. He wrote full of hope that he and his children would all soon be ransomed, so Stephen waited almost cheerfully for the Spring.

One fine day early in May the Governor of Canada with his officers appeared in the Indian village. It took some time to close the bargain at forty crowns, after which the English prisoner was brought before him, wretchedly thin, sun-burned and nearly naked. "You are a slave no longer," said the Governor with much feeling, "no more Cossanip, but Stephen Williams."

As in a dream, the lad found himself once more at the Sorel fort, free to come and go at will. To his great joy, his sister Esther was the first one there to greet him, laughing and crying, for her heart ached at sight of him, he was so changed and thin. Indeed, every one who saw the lad pitied him.

Now for the first time he poured out the story of his hardships, and Esther wondered how he had lived through so much. She and her two other brothers had soon been bought from the Indians, she said, by the French people, who had been very kind to them. "They dearly love little Warham," said Esther, ëand you should hear him speak French! Samuel is living with a merchant in Montreal, said to be the richest man in all Canada, and father is in the house of a priest near Quebec. Eunice, alas! is still with the Indians, and they say she has forgot

"If you can go home with me, Stephen," she added, "how happy we shall be! We are on our way to Deerfield now, I and Hannah and Mary Sheldon, in the care of their father who is taking us by way of Albany. Perhaps you can go, too."

But in this hope the brother and sister were to be disappointed. Stephen was taken to Quebec, a hundred miles away, where once more he was among entire strangers.

He had never before been in so large a town, and in his lonely walks he stared and was stared at in return, until a captive English woman cut his long hair and clothed his naked little body.

Before long he was permitted by the Governor to go to his father, a few miles distant.

It was the middle of May and fourteen months since they had seen each other. Mr. Williams was greatly moved at the change in his little son.

It was not until the following October that Stephen, after having been for twenty months a captive, set sail for Boston. A year later his father and two brothers followed him.

Stephen Williams had traveled three hundred miles, mostly on foot, through the wilderness to Canada, and had lived almost a year alone with the Indians.

After thirty-five years, a messenger brought word to his home at the parsonage at Longmeadow, Mass., that his sister Eunice and her husband Arosen were in Albany waiting to see him. There followed a "joyful, sorrowful meeting," for not only were the brother and sister greatly changed, but neither could understand the other.

Through an interpreter, Stephen persuaded his sister to visit him in his home, by promising that he would not keep her against her will.

In less than a year she returned with her family and camped out in the orchard back of his house, where she received visitors from far and near. Later she made him a third visit, but went back to the Canada forest, where she lived to a good old age, a savage to the last.

Stephen had six children and lived to be eighty-nine years old.

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