In this period, English colonists and their Indian allies were involved in similar raids against French villages along the northern area between the spheres of influence.

Typical of the small-scale frontier conflict in Queen Anne's War, the French-Indian forces consisted of French soldiers and about 240 Indian warriors, mostly Abenaki (from what is now Maine), but including Huron (Wyandot) from Lorette, Mohawk from Kahnawake (both mission villages), and a number of Pocomtuc who had once lived in the Deerfield area.

However, the raid was a clear victory for the French coalition that aimed to take captives and unsettle English colonial frontier society.

When European colonists began in the 17th century to settle in the middle reaches of the Connecticut River valley (where it flows through the present state of Massachusetts), the area was inhabited by the Algonquian-speaking Pocomtuc nation.

They also had suffered population losses due to high mortality from the new, chronic infectious disease carried by traders and colonists, to which Native Americans had no acquired immunity.

[10][11] In 1665, English colonists from the Massachusetts settlement of Dedham were given a grant in the Connecticut Valley area, and acquired land titles of uncertain legality from a variety of Pocomtuc Indians.

[15] The war involved all of the New England colonies, and the colonists destroyed or severely decimated and pacified most of the Indian nations in the region.

[16] Deerfield was evacuated in September 1675 after a coordinated series of Native American attacks, culminating in the Battle of Bloody Brook, resulted in the deaths of about half the village's adult males.

During King William's War (1688–1697), Deerfield was not subjected to major attacks, but 12 residents were killed in a series of ambushes and other incidents.

[21] English attacks on the frontier communities of what is now southern Maine in the Northeast Coast Campaign of 1703 again put Deerfield residents on the alert, as they feared retaliation.

These men, minimally trained militia from other nearby communities, had arrived by the 24th, making for somewhat cramped accommodations within the town's palisade on the night of February 28.

The first was a rumor that Royal Navy warships were on the Saint Lawrence River, and the French sent a significant Indian force to Quebec for its defense.

The second was the detachment of some troops for operations in Maine; critically, these forces included Jean-Baptiste Hertel de Rouville, who was intended to lead the raid on Deerfield.

[27] The Indian contingent included 200 Abenaki, Iroquois (mostly Mohawk from Kahnawake), Wyandot (also known as Huron, from Lorette), and Pocomtuc, some of whom sought revenge for incidents by whites that had taken place years earlier.

Historians Haefeli and Sweeney theorize that the failure to launch a coordinated assault was caused by the wide diversity within the attacking force.

The raiders moved through the village, herding their prisoners to an area just north of the town, rifling houses for items of value, and setting a number of dwellings on fire.

Early in the raid, young John Sheldon managed to escape over the palisade and began making his way to nearby Hadley to raise the alarm.

[50] Williams' wife Eunice, weak after having given birth just six weeks earlier, was one of the first to be killed during the trek; her body was recovered and reburied in the Deerfield cemetery.

Church's instructions included the taking of prisoners to exchange for those taken at Deerfield, and specifically forbade him to attack the fortified capital, Port Royal.

It's theorised some young women remained, not because of compulsion, fascination with the outdoor adventure, or the strangeness of life in a foreign society, but because they transitioned into established lives in new communities and formed bonds of family, religion, and language.

[64] In fact, possibly more than half of young female captives who remained settled in Montreal where "the lives of these former Deerfield residents differed very little in their broad outlines from their former neighbors".

Whether in New France or in Deerfield these women generally were part of frontier agricultural communities where they tended to marry in their early twenties and have six or seven children.

[69] Williams' work transformed the captivity narrative into a celebration of individual heroism and the triumph of Protestant values against savage and "Popish" enemies.

[74] Viewing the raid as a "massacre", 19th century New Englanders began to remember the attack as part of the larger narrative and celebration of American frontier spirit.

Persisting into the twentieth century, American historical memory has tended to view Deerfield in line with Frederick Turner's Frontier Thesis as a singular Indian attack against a community of individualistic frontiersmen.

[75] Re-popularized and exposed to a national audience in the mid-twentieth century with the establishment of Historic Deerfield, the raid was contextualized in a celebration of exceptional American individual ambition.

This view has served as a partial justification for the removal of Native Americans and has obscured both the larger patterns of border conflict and tensions and the family based structure of Deerfield and similar marginal settlements.

[77] An 1875 legend recounts the attack as an attempt by the French to regain a bell, supposedly destined for Quebec, but pirated and sold to Deerfield.

[79] Canadians and native Americans who are less influenced by Williams' narrative and Turner's thesis, have given the raid a more ambivalent place in memory.

[80] Similarly, most Native American records justify the action in a larger military and cultural context and remain largely unconcerned with the particular event.