MASSACHUSETTS Deerfield will mark defeat of 1704

Villagers were victims of the war between the French and the British.
DEERFIELD, Mass. (AP) -- The attack by a combined force of French and Indians came on a cold February night in 1704, a shock to the English settlers of this village who weren't expecting an assault during the depths of winter.
Before it was over, 50 residents of Deerfield were dead and more than 100, including 41 children, were marched off to captivity in Quebec, victims of the ongoing war between the French and British for control of the continent.
Next weekend Deerfield will mark the 300th anniversary of that bloody night through the eyes of the victors -- Mohawks, Hurons, Abenakis and French Canadians -- as well as the vanquished.
What's planned
The observance includes two days of re-enactments, historical lectures, performances by Mohawk dancers and French Canadian fiddlers and the launching of an elaborate Web site analyzing the attack from all the viewpoints.
"It is important for us and all the peoples that our story be told," said Stephan Picard, archivist for the Huron-Wendat Council in Wendake, Quebec. "People don't know a lot about each other's history."
The captors and captives of Deerfield were for the most part common people. Their stories were kept alive in family histories as their descendants spread out across Canada and the United States, and in this little settlement on the Connecticut River that became a farming town of 4,700 people. Descendants of those families will gather here in June.
"It was the pivotal event in the history of Deerfield," said Donald Friary, retired executive director of Historic Deerfield, which maintains much of the original village as a museum. "Half of the population was killed or captured. And the response of the people of Deerfield was to never forget. It created everything we are today."
Minister's account
One of the more famous accounts of the attack was offered by the Rev. John Williams, who wrote a dramatic first-person narrative of the Feb. 29 attack on his northwest Massachusetts village, published in 1707.
"Not long before break of day, the enemy came in like a flood upon us. ... They came to my house in the beginning of the onset, and by their violent endeavors to break open doors and windows, with axes and hatchets, awaked me out of sleep," the Rev. Mr. Williams wrote.
Mr. Williams' two youngest children, 6-week-old Jerusha and 6-year-old John, were killed and the remaining five taken captive. The Protestant leader's wife was among several women who had recently given birth, and who were killed on the forced 300-mile march when they could not keep up the blistering pace.
Mr. Williams was held captive for three years before he was ransomed and returned to New England. Eventually four of his children also were returned. But Mr. Williams' daughter Eunice, 7 years old at the time of the attack, refused her family's repeated pleas and remained with the Mohawks.
Thirty-three captured children under the age of 13 survived the march. At least six other children besides Eunice Williams remained with their adoptive Indian families. An additional 19 Deerfield captives converted to Roman Catholicism and remained in French Canada.
Resonance
Kevin Sweeney, a professor at Amherst College and co-author of a recently published book about the raid, said it wasn't a pivotal battle in the decades-long struggle for control of North America "but it came to have the same kind of resonance as the Alamo and Little Big Horn."