Elizabeth Meader Hanson is known primarily for the popular eighteenth-century frontier narrative about her experiences in 1724 as a Euro-American captive of American Indians. First published in 1728 as God's Mercy Surmounting Man's Cruelty, Exemplified in the Captivity and Redemption of Elizabeth Hanson and later expanded and republished as An Account of the Captivity of Elizabeth Hanson, Now or Late of Kachecky, in New-England (1760), the narrative of Hanson's captivity among the Indians of North America merits analysis for a variety of reasons. Once relegated to the margins of the American literary canon, captivity narratives such as Hanson's reveal significant information about the literary culture of Euro-American women living on the New England frontier in the early eighteenth century and about the relationship between Native American peoples and the European newcomers during the formative years of the United States of America. In addition the Hanson narrative provides considerable insight into Quaker...