BRATTLEBORO — Thank you to Shanta Lee Gander for her interesting column regarding Lucy Terry Prince.
There does seem to be a some confusion, however, regarding the history behind Prince's poem “Bars Fight.”
Ms. Gander states that Prince was a “bearer of witness” of the “famed Deerfield Massacre.”
The Deerfield Massacre occurred in 1704 when French and Native American forces assaulted the settlement of Deerfield, Mass., killing 47 villagers and taking 112 as captives. Lucy Prince was born around 1730.
The Bars Fight was an attack in 1746 by Native Americans upon two white families in an area of Deerfield called The Bars, a Colonial term for a meadow.
And although the illustration of Lucy by Louise Minks is lovely, I do wish Ms. Minks had depicted her with a more historically accurate cap.