The Ransom of Mercy Carter - Tapa dura

After an Indian tribe attacks her hometown of Deerfield, Massachusetts in 1704, young Mercy Carter becomes separated from her family and is forced to walk with other townsfolk to an Indian village in Canada where they live as hostages and await the delivery of the ransom for their freedom. Teacher's Guide available. 25,000 first printing.

assachusetts is one of the most remote, and therefore dangerous, settlements in the English colonies. In 1704 an Indian tribe attacks the town, and Mercy Carter becomes separated from the rest of her family, some of whom do not survive. Mercy and hundreds of other settlers are herded together and ordered by the Indians to start walking. The grueling journey -- three hundred miles north to a Kahnawake Indian village in Canada -- takes more than 40 days. At first Mercy's only hope is that the English government in Boston will send ransom for her and the other white settlers. But days turn into months and Mercy, who has become a Kahnawake daughter, thinks less and less of ransom, of Deerfield, and even of her "English" family. She slowly discovers that the "savages" have traditions and family life that soon become her own, and Mercy begins to wonder: If ransom comes, will she take it?