Eunice Kanenstenhawi Williams

Who was Eunice Kanenstenhawi Williams?

Eunice Williams, also known as Marguerite Kanenstenhawi Arosen, was an English colonist taken captive by French and Mohawk warriors as a seven-year-old girl from Deerfield, Massachusetts in 1704. Taken to Canada with more than 100 other captives, she was adopted by a Catholic Mohawk family at Kahnawake and became fully assimilated into the tribe. She was baptized Catholic under the name Marguerite and named A'ongonte meaning "she has been planted as a person." She married François-Xavier Arosen, a Mohawk man, had a family with him, and chose to stay with the Mohawk for the rest of her life. Although never returning to Massachusetts to live permanently, she did visit her family in 1739 but an outbreak of war prevented her from further visits. Her father, the Puritan minister John Williams and her brother Samuel made continuing efforts to ransom and to persuade her to return to Massachusetts. Hers was one of the more famous Indian captivity stories.