SOURCE: Introduction to Held Captive by Indians: Selected Narratives, 1642–1836, edited by Richard VanDerBeets, University of Tennessee Press, 1973, pp. xi–xxxi.

In the excerpt that follows, VanDerBeets provides a general introduction to the American literary tradition of the captivity narrative, which in the nineteenth century became increasingly sensationalistic and fictionalized.

Civilized peoples have long recognized the value of tempering their joys with a play or story chronicling the misfortunes and tragedies of others. Because the earliest Americans countenanced neither playacting nor the unhealthy influences of the novel, they wrote and read true tales of tragedy and horror in the form of disasters, plagues, and shipwrecks—and of Indian massacres and captivities. As the frontier pushed westward under continuing conflict the tales of Indian captivity accompanied it, gradually becoming our first literature of catharsis in an era when native American fiction scarcely existed. The immense popularity of the Indian captivity...