10 Famous Captives of American Indians Who Became One With Their Kidnappers

10 Famous Captives of American Indians Who Became One With Their Kidnappers

Larry Holzwarth - December 23, 2017

10 Famous Captives of American Indians Who Became One With Their Kidnappers
A model of Fort Duquesne in Pennsylvania, one of the principal outposts from which raids on the frontier were launched. Wikipedia

Mary Jemison

Mary Jemison was born while her Irish parents were aboard a ship en route to the New World in 1743. Upon arrival, the young family, as did many Scots-Irish, went directly west of the largely English settlements on the East Coast, settling in the region of central Pennsylvania on land which was then under the control of the Iroquois.

Their small farm was reasonably prosperous by the time it was raided by Shawnee in 1755, and the Jemison’s and their seven children were captured, along with a neighbor boy. The Shawnee marched their captives west to Fort Duquesne (now Pittsburgh), torturing, killing, and scalping all of Mary’s siblings and both of her parents on the way. Upon arrival at Duquesne Mary was presented to the Seneca, who took her to their own settlement, where she was adopted into the tribe.

Mary remained with the Seneca, marrying a visiting Delaware and bearing a son. Her husband, Sheninjee, then undertook to take his family to his own village near the Genesee River. During the trip, he vanished, likely killed in a hunting accident or by hostile whites, and Mary remained with his family at their village of Little Beard’s Town. She remarried, eventually bearing another six children.

The Seneca fought on the side of the British during the American Revolutionary War, after which they were forced to evacuate their lands. Mary assisted the fledgling United States years later as an interpreter during negotiations which led to the Big Tree Treaty, an agreement between the Seneca and the United States which ceded all the remaining Seneca lands in New York State to the Americans.

In the early 1820s, Mary lived on a tract purchased out of these lands, where she remained until 1831. She retired to the Buffalo Creek Reservation, where she lived the remainder of her days. She died at the age of ninety in 1833, having never returned to the life into which she was born. In Western New York she is remembered as the “White Indian of the Genesee.” There is a memorial statue of her near the home where she was taken by the Shawnee in Adams County, Pennsylvania.

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