Beadle's Pocket Novels: Massasoit's Daughter

Massasoit's Daughter; or, The French Captives

A historical romance by A. J. H. Duganne serialized in an 1881 Beadle and Adams dime novel. The story opens with a French emigrant ship wrecked on Cape Cod's rocky shores in summer 1615, beset by Indians and a violent Atlantic storm. Captain Pierre, a Creole buccaneer with questionable past, abandons the colonists aboard to save himself and his crew in the ship's pinnace. As the vessel breaks apart, French passengers are either killed, captured, or scattered into the wilderness. The narrative shifts to three survivors on a forest clearing: Abbé Claude, a priest; Louis de Luzerne, a young nobleman seeking his exiled father; and Louis's sister, whose youth and beauty contrast the harsh survival scenario. The text emphasizes the desperate circumstances and religious faith of the French emigrants facing hostile Native Americans.