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On February 29, 1704, during Queen Anne's War, a force of French and Native allies raided the English settlement of Deerfield, Massachusetts. 200 years later, author William Bennett Munro wrote this account for the Springfield, Massachusetts, "Sunday Republican." Writing entirely from an English perspective, Munro spoke of the dangers Deerfield faced as "the most advanced outpost in Massachusetts," and quoted liberally from "The Redeemed Captive Returning to Zion," the account by Deerfield's Reverend John Williams who was one of the English settlers taken captive. Much of Munro's information is inaccurate and should not be taken as fact; rather, this account should be viewed as a common early-20th-century interpretation of the event, and read with an eye to comparison with later, more informed accounts of what led up to the raid and of the raid itself.

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