SOURCE: "'A Thirst for Empire': The Indian Captivity Narrative as Propaganda," in Research Studies, Vol. 40, No. 3, September, 1972, pp. 207-15.

In the following essay, VanDerBeets discusses captivity narratives as vehicles for propaganda, employed to incite anti-Indian sentiment during the period dominated by the idea of Manifest Destiny.

These few instances of savage cruelty … must strike the utmost horror, and cause in every breast the utmost detestation, not only against the authors, but against those who, through inattention, or pusillanimous or erroneous principles, suffered these savages at first unrepelled, or even unmolested, to commit such outrages, depradations, and murders.

French and Indian Cruelty; Exemplified in the Life and Various Vicissitudes of Fortune of Peter Williamson (1757)

While American anti-French and anti-British propaganda during both the French and Indian and Revolutionary Wars exploited the conventional and better-known modes of promulgation in tracts, military "histories," broadsides, and sermons, another and little-examined vehicle for...