HST 121 Essay

Before I read the book, I was a little bit concern about those people who got capture by the Indian. Based on my previous ideas and logical thinking, I thought those white captive will either get kill or turn into slaves. But after I read the White Captives by James Axtell, I found out the Indians were very kind to the white captive. Some people could report that “every captive left the Indians with regret.” Some captives are really fell in love with the Indian culture, even when they had been returned, they still only responded to Indian names, spoke only Indian dialects, felt comfortable only in Indian cloths. From that point we can see, the Indians real treat white captives as their own families. The Indians describe white captives as their own flesh, and blood, after the war was fades on both sides, they journeyed through the English settlements to visit their estranged children. While their traveling, the Indians hurried their prisoners to replace their hard-heeled shoes with the footwear of the forest-moccasins. These were universally approved by the prisoners, who admitted that they traveled with “abundant more ease” than before. Back in that time, I thought the lack of food would be the big problem, Indians will only provide barely enough food for white captives to survive. But turn out, although their food in short supply, the Indians always shared it equally with the captives. In the beginning, I thought those women who are captives will usually turn into sex slave. But according to the reading, although they had been completely powerless in captivity, the Indians had never affronted them sexually. One reason for Indians’ lack of sexual interest was perhaps they seem black the color as beauty. But personally I think the Indians just respect their captives, which have nothing to do with their skin color. The Indians not only kind to women, their kindness to children was more recognizable. Thomas told a common story of how “some of the children who were