Setting All the Captives Free: Capture, Adjustment, and Recollection in Allegheny Country (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 460 October Setting All the Captives Free: Capture, Adjustment, and Recollection in Allegheny Country. By IAN K. STEELE. (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2013. 708 pp. Illustrations, appendix, notes, index. $39.95.) Between 1745 and 1765 the growing imperial rivalry between Britain and France sparked violence in the Allegheny country between the region's white settlers , traders, and soldiers and its Indian inhabitants. Ian K. Steele notes that "at least 2,873 who could have been killed immediately in these Allegheny wars were not. Amid the horrors and outrages . . . the taking of captives continued to be a major objective and amelioration" (183). Unlike New England captives, the nearly three thousand captives taken in Allegheny warfare have received little attention by scholars. In Setting All the Captives Free, Steele places captives at the center of his study of warfare in the Allegheny country in the mid-eighteenth century. In this wide-ranging study, Steele examines the capture of white settlers and traders by the Ohio Indians as well as soldiers and Indian warriors taken prisoner by the British and French military. Using colonial newspapers, archival collections, printed narratives, letters, monographs, folklore, and genealogical websites, Steele has compiled an impressive database that reports thirty-nine variables "concerning 6,130 people captured or killed in Allegheny warfare between 1745 and 1765" (xiv). Indian raiders, colonial militaries, and European regulars all brought their own motives and cultural traditions to the taking, treatment, and return of captives. Steele traces the changes and continuities in the taking of captives in peacetime and wartime. Before the Seven Years' War, Steele contends that Allegheny Indians "had shown little interest in white captives . . . but war caused them to fight with their customary emphasis upon raiding for captives" (73). Unlike European and colonial military forces, who took prisoners for exchange, Delaware, Shawnee, and Mingo war parties primarily took captives to adopt into their own communities; however, captives could also be used as slaves, ransomed to the colonial authorities , or sold to the French or other Indian nations. Using captivity as a lens to view Allegheny warfare, Steel provides new perspectives on these well-studied military actions and a better understanding of Indian strategy, tactics, and diplomacy. In one of the most interesting chapters of the book, Steele shows that age, gender , and race were key determinants affecting captivity, acculturation, and escape. As he points out: "By 1765 the Ohio Indian communities contained more than 10,000 people, and perhaps 15 percent of them were whites" (216). Acculturation was most successful among captives taken between the ages of three and six, who quickly lost their native language and remembered little of their former lives. Although the Ohio Indians successfully incorporated captives into their communities , Steele contends that the number of escapes challenges the "exaggerated claims about the allures of becoming a white Indian" (231). Yet the longer captives were held, the less likely they were to escape. The success of Indian acculturation BOOK REVIEWS 2014 461 can be appreciated by noting that "of 242 captives still living with the Indians after five years, only 7 'escaped'" (235). Surprisingly, given the propaganda of the time and the continuing interest in female captivity narratives, male captives outnumbered female captives by three to one, and four out of five escapees were male. However,"most captives whose fate is known neither became white Indians nor escaped" but were redeemed by negotiation and, less successfully, by force (232). Those captives freed by the intervention of the colonial authorities, rather than through their own efforts, faced suspicions and could be called upon to prove their allegiance to white society. Setting All the Captives Free concludes with a nuanced examination of the changing purposes of Allegheny captivity narratives over time. These narratives could serve political or military purposes or affirm their authors' loyalty to white society and rejection of Indian culture. Steele's study of who was taken captive, how they were taken, and by whom yields new insights into the military and cultural contest for the Allegheny country in the mid-eighteenth century. Montgomery County Community College RUTH ANN DENACI The Complete Antislavery Writings of Anthony Benezet, 1754–1783: An Annotated Critical Edition. Edited...

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