Captivated

When I was in grade school, American history was such a bore:
all battles and dates and one-dimensional men.

But I'd have been totally fascinated if I'd read stuff like this:

"My feet were very sore,
and each night I wrung blood out of my stockings when I pulled them off." *

That's John Williams of Deerfield, Mass., writing about marching 300 miles through snowy woods to Canada,
as a captive of the Mohawks in 1704.

His seven-year-old daugher, Eunice Williams, was only seven when she was captured.
She chose to remain with the Mohawk her whole life.
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And history is always more interesting when related by an outraged drunk person.
Why didn't they think of this when I was in grade school? (I'm not sure some of my teachers weren't drunk, but they rarely expressed any enthusiasm or outrage.
Of course, as an adult, I can now better imagine why they didn't.)

Kellie sent me this entry from Drunk History:
It's the true story of Oney Judge, an enslaved woman George Washington "owned."


After a couple weeks of reading about our founding father, if I got drunk, I could rage about what a twit GW was too...
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* John Williams quote from The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early America, by John Demos. (While the French and Indian War officially dates 1756-1763, in fact it's really many decades long.)

Image (book cover) from Historic Deerfield.