The Captors' Narrative: Catholic Women and Their PPuritan Men on the Early American Frontier

Foster contributes to recent scholarship that places Colonial New England in wider social and geographic contexts by examining the Puritans' relationships with their Native American and French Canadian neighbors and frequent foes. . . . The inversion of Puritan gender roles-women supervised men and often assigned them to 'women's work'-socially emasculated the men, a position so humiliating that captivity narratives neglected descriptions of female captors, denied them agency, or portrayed them as stylized savage squaws, maidens of salvation, or surrogate mothers. Recommended. -Choice, November 2003

Many British-American men lived under the wing or, as Foster tells it, under the thumb of women in New France. His book's title tells us that it is also about French Canada's Catholic women, but it is more sympathetic to New England captive men and underlines the gender differences for those men as opposed to their sisters and female counterparts. . . . Foster presents us with captive stories from three points of view: French-Canadian women and New England Puritan men and women. He writes well, raises questions, and gives some answers on peace and war, on prisoners of war, on women's versus men's advantages and disadvantages in war, and about trying to get along with neighbors with different languages, religions, and cultures. His book is a good place to ponder all of these problems. -June Namias, American Historical Review, April 2004

Foster's suggestive study, rich in original data and stories of cross-cultural interactions, will prompt new questions about both the relation of archive to narrative and the categories we use to interpret the complexity of early colonial identities. -Teresa Toulouse, William and Mary Quarterly, April 2004

Foster suggests that male captives published their accounts not only to promote Anglo-American cultural superiority but also as a personal means of redeeming their own masculinity and authority. . . . The Captors' Narrative is a well-thought and well-written contribution to the study of female authority in colonial America. At the same time, it is an important corrective to the growing literature on captivity narratives. -Emerson W. Baker, Journal of American History, June 2004

The Captors' Narrative is a fresh and exciting book that sheds light on the complex intercultural nature of the North American frontier. It will appeal to those interested in New England, New France, Native Americans, and gender. -Leslie Choquette, Assumption College

William Henry Foster's research and his familiarity with the historical and genealogical scholarship about New France are comprehensive. This book offers more than just a contribution to the history of captivity-readers of The Captors' Narrative will learn a lot about life in colonial Montreal and Quebec and how it differed from life in New England. -Gordon Sayre, University of Oregon

Foster's fascinating book turns gender roles upside down in early modern North America. It is a remarkable account of the women captors in New France who exerted control over male captives from New England and the stunned response of those men whose masculinity was so surprisingly violated. -Elaine Forman Crane, author of Killed Strangely: The Death of Rebecca Cornell