Captive Daughter, Enemy Wife
In the early seventeenth century Great Lakes area, WhiteCorn, a member of the Neutral Tribe, endures plague, flight down rapids andacross Lake Erie, and violent assault and capture by the Iroquois. Along withHole-In-The-Night, hermysteriously beautiful and impassive mother, and her half French brother,Papillon, she is forcibly adopted into the Onondaga tribe of the Iroquois FiveNations. White Corn learns notonly how to survive but how to flourish in a time and place where, as hermother says,"death is always there."
Againstthe background of the struggle known as the "Beaver Wars", we meetthe goodhearted and carefree French trader, Jean Aregnac, devout but ill-fated Jesuits, and thefascinating Dutchman known as Corlaer, a man who is equally at home among thenatives and the Europeans. Withoutsanitizing Iroquois culture for modern consumption we encounter not only thefamed brutality of the Iroquois but also their beauty and complexity.
The Story Behind This Book
In the early 17th century the struggle to obtain furs for European trade began among the Native American tribes of the Great Lakes region. In the course of the struggle, the nation known to us as the Iroquois lost large numbers through warfare and disease. They took to replacing their depleted population by forcibly adopting members of the tribes that they had conquered. "Captive Daughter, Enemy Wife," follows the experiences of a young Neutral Indian girl, her mother and brother, through the experience of capture and integration into the Onondaga tribe of the Iroquois Five Nations.
