The Captured: A True Story of Abduction by Indians on the Texas Frontier | Scott Zesch

The Captured: A True Story of Abduction by Indians on the Texas Frontier | Scott Zesch | A truely amazing achievement

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The Captured: A Tr...

	The Captured: A True Story of Abduction by Indians on the Texas Frontier Scott Zesch St. Martin's Griffin, 2005 - 384 pages average customer review:based on 31 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

interesting

This is a great read. I like the way the author opens up and tells his story along with the captives. He includes pictures (which is always nice). If you are interested in Native American history and/or Texas History you will like this book.

A truely amazing achievement

Zesch's wonderful book manages to entertain & inform with equal excellence. For a history book I found it suprisingly heartbreaking.

A colorful Texas Hill Country history

Texas Hill Country author Scott Zesch began writing "The Captured" after finding the lonely grave of one of his reclusive and little-known relatives. His great-great-great-Uncle Adolph Korn had been kidnapped as a youth by Indians, but Zesch knew little of the details surrounding this incident. His search for answers would prove to be truly enlightening.

It was not uncommon for Indians to integrate child captives into the tribe, and Adolph spent a number of years with the Comanches living his life as a full member of the Indian community. Eventually he was released and returned to his family, although his return to white society was anything but smooth. Adolph was never able to re-adapt to civilization and he ended up living in a cave in the Texas Hill Country, a willing recluse and outcast from the environment that he had been born into.

Zesch not only chronicles his ancestor's life, but also the lives of several other Indian abductees, all of whom had strikingly similar experiences.

The book is an amazing piece of work on several levels. Author Zesch does a tremendous job of researching his work, and his source material is first-rate. The book has excellent pictures that help to add depth and reinforce the stories told between the pages.

Be aware that there are some very graphic battle and abduction scenes depicted in the book. These are definitely not for the squeamish.

Overall, this is a wonderful Texas Hill Country history that will keep you entertained for hours. Zesch is careful to treat all of his subjects with humanity. He is neither an Indian apologist nor does he demonize them. He simply states the facts as told to him by his sources and then lets the reader come to their own conclusions and judgements about the events at hand.

Highly recommeneded for anyone interested in Texana or Hill Country history.

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Outstanding balanced heartfelt story worth 10 stars!

I agree with the other reviewers that this book was a pleasant surprise. Moreso, I believe this book should be nominated for a Pulitzer and a Nobel - and I am certain this will become a blockbuster movie!

For me to be uttering such rave exclamations about one book after reading and posting reviews of more than 100 other books and not so stating, this must be a treasure..

It is. Mr. Scott Zesch has provided a book that really gets into the souls of the abducted children and their captors. He somehow does so with balance and sensitivity and refrains from cliches.

I listened to the audio version twice (bought through audible.com, back-to-back, on my iPOD while driving between construction projects I oversee for safety concerns in the Middle East.

Hey, dodging microbuses and women drivers here is a bit similar to evading arrows and bullets in the old west!

I listened the second time, because I discovered something I felt noteworthy. I wanted to explore my new found realization of something I think so many researchers have failed to grasp when they discuss the psychological adjustments made by captives or those who transfer (by choice or not) into new surroundings.

Stockholm Syndrome is perhaps only part of the issue. Just as stem cells seem to adopt the particulars of their surroundings, and just as many wild critters can be raised by other species (and occasionally will suffer a confusion as to their own species), so, too, do human beings adopt those existences (sorry for a bad choice of words here) and become as their custodians, captors, siblings or peers. I realize this seems a bit, "duh, no kidding" but the import goes beyond the obvious. Further, it would seem, that any particular species is apt to more fundamentally accept, or accomodate, that which is least hampered or complicated by rules or regulations. In other words, transitioning toward simplicity is more pleasant than is adjusting to more and more complex organizations or societies.

This book, in an abject manner, seems to lead towards answers that could come from new research.

Precisely such a lesson may be of fundamental importance when establishing any system or organization. Perhaps too much regulation or too complex the controlling body makes routine operation (especially at the commencement) will lead to seeming chaos, disorder and thence lead to revolt and to eventual failure or destruction.

And, too abrupt a change before communication to and fro could shortcut any hopes or dreams of adjustment or transition from the simple state towards the complex state.

Although these observations result from a book about Indian captives, the observations, I submit, apply as well to Iraq, Egypt, (or politics in general) but, more important, to formations of clubs, associations and corporations.

General Motors and Ford seem now to be suffering, partly, from the complexities they created while transitioning from the Great Depression through the New Deal and into the Great Society. all the while, upstart, less complex carmakers, first in Japan, then in Korea, challenged from a simpler standpoint using a simpler vehicle.

And, now that Toyota et al have evolved, they may well be in danger from Hyundai, Kia and other not-yet-started personal transport manufacturers.

Anyway, back to Captured. This is probably the best analysis ever published about life among Native Americans as lived by children taken by force but who adopted the lifestyle out of love for those with whom they lived. I experienced tears of empathy in listening to Scott's discussion of visiting the cave of his distant uncle or when hearing of the reunion one 'white Indian describe his memory of the demise of his adopted 'brother' brutally massacred by a Texas Ranger.

I can't wait for the AmazonKindle edition or the blockbuster movie!

That, alone, is a significant achievement by Scott Zesch - Bill Anderson.

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Pretty darn interesting!

I have a Great-Great Grandmother who was kidnapped by Indians and taken to Canada. Her story is lost but I wanted to get the gist of what kinds of things may have happened, and why she didn't want to be "rescued". This was just the ticket. Well-researched and written, I really enjoyed this book. It wasn't dry or overly scholarly.

reviews: 1, page 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

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