Reading the American Past: Printed Page 99
DOCUMENT 6–1
Mary Jemison Is Captured by Seneca Indians during the Seven Years' War
During the Seven Years' War, French soldiers and their Seneca Indian allies captured Mary Jemison and her family on their frontier farm in southern Pennsylvania. Jemison, who was about fifteen years old at the time, was eventually adopted by the Seneca and lived for decades among the Indians. When she was about eighty years old, she told her story to minister James E. Seaver, who published it. In the excerpt below, Jemison describes her capture by the French and Seneca, her experiences as an adopted Seneca, and the negotiations on the eve of the American Revolution between the Indians, the colonists, and the British. Jemison's narrative highlights the terrors of frontier warfare, the satisfactions of peace, and the unsteady balance of alliances among the Indians, the French, the colonists, and the British.
James E. Seaver
A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison, 1824
Resolved to leave the land of their nativity [Jemison's parents left] . . . Ireland . . . [and] set sail for this country, in the year 1742 or 3 on board the ship Mary William, bound to Philadelphia. ...
The intestine divisions, civil wars, and ecclesiastical rigidity and domination that prevailed those days, were the causes of their leaving their mother country. ...
Excepting my birth, nothing remarkable occurred to my parents on their passage, and they were safely landed at Philadelphia. My father being fond of rural life, and having been bred to agricultural pursuits, soon left the city, and removed his family to the then frontier settlements of Pennsylvania, to a tract of excellent land. ... At that place he cleared a large farm, and for seven or eight years enjoyed the fruits of his industry. Peace attended their labors; and they had nothing to alarm them. ...
In the spring of 1752, and through the succeeding seasons, the stories of Indian barbarities inflicted upon the whites in those days, frequently excited in my parents the most serious alarm for our safety.
The next year the storm gathered faster; many murders were committed; and many captives were exposed to meet death in its most frightful form. ...
In 1754, an army for the protection of the settlers, and to drive back the French and Indians, was raised from the militia of the colonial governments, and placed (secondarily) under the command of Col. George Washington. ... The French and Indians, after the surrender of Fort Necessity by Col. Washington, . . . grew more and more terrible. The death of the whites, and plundering and burning their property, was apparently their only object. ...
The return of a new-year's day [after the beginning of the Seven Years' War] found us unmolested. ... I got home with the horse very early in the morning, where I found a man that lived in our neighborhood, and his sister-in-law who had three children. ... Immediately after I got home, the man took the horse to go to his house after a bag of grain, and took his gun in his hand for the purpose of killing game. ... Our family, as usual, was busily employed about their common business. Father was . . . at the side of the house; mother was making preparations for breakfast; — my two oldest brothers were at work near the barn; and the little ones, with myself, and the woman and her three children, were in the house.
Breakfast was not yet ready, when we were alarmed by the discharge of a number of guns, that seemed to be near. Mother and the woman . . . almost fainted at the report, and every one trembled with fear. On opening the door, the man and horse lay dead near the house, having just been shot by the Indians. ... They first secured my father, and then rushed into the house, and without the least resistance made prisoners of my mother, . . . [the rest of Jemison's family except two of her brothers, who escaped], the woman and her three children, and myself, and then commenced plundering. ...
The party that took us consisted of six Indians and four Frenchmen, who . . . took what they considered most valuable; consisting principally of bread, meal and meat. Having taken as much provision as they could carry, they set out with their prisoners in great haste, for fear of detection, and soon entered the woods. ...
[A few days later], an . . . Indian took the little boy and myself by the hand, to lead us off from the company, when my mother exclaimed, “Don't cry Mary — don't cry my child. God will bless you! Farewell — farewell!”
The Indian led us some distance into the bushes, or woods, and there lay down with us to spend the night. ... but our friends were left behind. It is impossible for any one to form a correct idea of what my feelings were at the sight of those savages, whom I supposed had murdered my parents and brothers, sister, and friends. ... But what could I do? A poor little defenceless girl; without the power or means of escaping; without a home to go to, even if I could be liberated; without a knowledge of the direction or distance to my former place of residence; and without a living friend to whom to fly for protection. ...
My suspicions as to the fate of my parents proved too true; for soon after I left them they were killed and scalped, together with [three of Jemison's siblings], and the woman and her two children, and mangled in the most shocking manner. ...
After a hard day's march we encamped in a thicket, where the Indians made a shelter of boughs, and then built a good fire to warm and dry our benumbed limbs and clothing. ... Here we were again fed as before. When the Indians had finished their supper they took from their baggage a number of scalps and went about preparing them for the market . . . by straining them over small hoops . . . and then drying and scraping them by the fire. ... Those scalps I knew at the time must have been taken from our family by the color of the hair. My mother's hair was red; and I could easily distinguish my father's and the children's from each other. ...
When we set off [down the Ohio river], an Indian in the forward canoe took the scalps of my former friends, strung them on a pole that he placed upon his shoulder, and in that manner carried them, standing in the stern of the canoe, directly before us [in a following canoe] as we sailed down the river. ...
It was my happy lot to be accepted for adoption; and at the time of the ceremony I was received by the two squaws . . . and I was ever considered and treated by them as a real sister, the same as though I had been born of their mother. ...
[Four years later] I had then been with the Indians four summers and four winters, and had become so far accustomed to their mode of living, habits and dispositions, that my anxiety to get away, to be set at liberty, and leave them, had almost subsided. With them was my home; my [Indian] family was there, and there I had many friends to whom I was warmly attached in consideration of the favors, affection and friendship with which they had uniformly treated me, from the time of my adoption. Our labor was not severe; and that of one year was exactly similar, in almost every respect, to that of the others, without that endless variety that is to be observed in the common labor of the white people. Notwithstanding the Indian women have all the fuel and bread to procure, and the cooking to perform, their task is probably not harder than that of white women, who have those articles provided for them; and their cares certainly are not half as numerous, nor as great. In the summer season, we planted, tended and harvested our corn, and generally had all our children with us; but had no master to oversee or drive us, so that we could work as leisurely as we pleased. ...
Notwithstanding all that has been said against the Indians, in consequence of their cruelties to their enemies — cruelties that I have witnessed, and had abundant proof of — it is a fact that they are naturally kind, tender and peaceable towards their friends, and strictly honest; and that those cruelties have been practised, only upon their enemies, according to their idea of justice. ...
After the conclusion of the French war, our tribe had nothing to trouble it till the commencement of the Revolution. For twelve or fifteen years the use of the implements of war was not known. ... No people can live more happy than the Indians did in times of peace, before the introduction of spirituous liquors amongst them. Their lives were a continual round of pleasures. Their wants were few, and easily satisfied; and their cares were only for to-day; the bounds of their calculations for future comfort not extending to the incalculable uncertainties of to-morrow. ... The moral character of the Indians was . . . uncontaminated. Their fidelity was perfect . . . ; they were strictly honest; they despised deception and falsehood; and chastity was held in high veneration, and a violation of it was considered sacrilege. They were temperate in their desires, moderate in their passions, and candid and honorable in the expression of their sentiments on every subject of importance.
Thus, at peace amongst themselves, and with the neighboring whites, . . . our Indians lived quietly and peaceably at home, till a little before the breaking out of the revolutionary war, when they were sent for, together with the Chiefs and members of the Six Nations generally, by the people of the States, to . . . ascertain . . . who they should esteem and treat as enemies, and who as friends, in the great war which was then upon the point of breaking out between them and the King of England.
Our Indians obeyed the call, and . . . a treaty made, in which the Six Nations solemnly agreed that if a war should eventually break out, they would not take up arms on either side; but that they would observe a strict neutrality. With that the people of the states were satisfied, as they had not asked their assistance, nor did not wish it. ...
About a year passed off, and we, as usual, were enjoying ourselves in the employments of peaceable times, when a messenger arrived from the British Commissioners, requesting . . . a council of the Six Nations . . . to engage their assistance in subduing the rebels, the people of the states, who had risen up against the good King, their master, and were about to rob him of a great part of his possessions and wealth, and added that they [the British] would amply reward them [the Indians] for all their services.
The Chiefs . . . informed the [British] Commissioners of the nature and extent of the treaty which they had entered into with the people of the states, the year before, and that they should not violate it by taking up the hatchet against them.
The Commissioners continued their entreaties without success, till they addressed their [the Indians'] avarice, by telling our people that the people of the states were few in number, and easily subdued; and that on the account of their disobedience to the King, they justly merited all the punishment that it was possible for white men and Indians to inflict upon them; and added, that the King was rich and powerful, both in money and subjects: That his rum was as plenty as the water in lake Ontario: that his men were as numerous as the sands upon the lake shore: — and that the Indians, if they would assist in the war, and persevere in their friendship to the King, till it was closed, should never want for money or goods. Upon this the Chiefs concluded a treaty with the British Commissioners, in which they agreed to take up arms against the rebels, and continue in the service of his Majesty. ...
As soon as the treaty was finished, the Commissioners made a present to each Indian of a suit of clothes, a brass kettle, a gun and tomahawk, a scalping knife, a quantity of powder and lead, a piece of gold, and promised a bounty on every scalp that should be brought in. Thus richly clad and equipped, they returned home . . . full of the fire of war, and anxious to encounter their enemies. ... Hired to commit depredations upon the whites, who had given them no offence, they waited impatiently to commence their labor, till sometime in the spring of 1776, when a convenient opportunity offered for them to make an attack. ...
From James E. Seaver, A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison (Canandaigua, NY: J. D. Bemis, 1824).
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