This broadside, printed in 1832, is based on the story of the capture of
two white women from a frontier settlement.  The image of Indians as
brutal savages was so popular with white Americans that many best-selling
books of the time featured stories of i nnocent settlers being kidnapped
by Indians.  This image of the "savage" Indians tells as much about the
white settlers as it does about the Native Americans.  As far back as the
early seventeenth century, Puritans who settled in New England saw the
natives as heathens sent by God to test the spiritual strength of white
believers.