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NSTANCES are recorded in which white children have been captured and
brought up by the Indians, and have so far forgotten early associations
as to become identified in habits and manners with their red captors. In
most of these cases, the adopted Indian could not be induced to return
to the haunts of civilization and the friends of his or her race; which
fact would seem to prove that, either the life of the Indian is happier
than that of the civilized white man, or, the qualities of our nature
may be altered by the power of habit.
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In 1778, the family of Mr. Jonathan Slocum, near Wilkesbarre,
(Campbell’s Wyoming,) Pennsylvania, was attacked by Indians. Within the
house were two girls, aged nine and five years, a son of thirteen, a
little boy of two and a half, and their mother. The men were working in
the field, and two youths were in the porch grinding a knife. One of the
latter was shot and scalped with his own knife. The eldest sister seized
the little boy and ran with him towards the fort. The Indians took the
boy who had been turning the grindstone, young Slocum, and his sister
Frances, and prepared to depart. Little Slocum being lame, they set him
down, and proceeded on their way. One of the Indians threw the little
girl over his shoulder, and her weeping face was the last object of the
mother’s gaze.
About a month afterwards, the savages returned, murdered the aged
grandfather, shot a ball into the leg of the lame boy, and then plunging
into the woods were heard of no more. Years passed away; the mother
died of grief for her lost child. The two remaining brothers, grown to
manhood, resolved to ascertain the fate of their sister. They made every
inquiry, travelled through the west and into the Canadas, but all in
vain; and for fifty-eight years, the captive’s fate was unknown.
At length, in 1836, accident discovered what inquiry could not. The Hon.
G. W. Ewing, United States agent to Indian Territory, while travelling
on the banks of the Mississiniwa, lost his way and was benighted, and
compelled to take shelter in an Indian wigwam. The agent was kindly
received, and after supper, entered into conversation with the
hostess. He was soon surprised by observing that her hair was fine
and flaxen-colored, and that, under her dress, her skin appeared to be
white. Upon inquiry, she informed him that she was the daughter of white
parents, that her name was Slocum, that when five years old she had been
carried captive, by Indians, from a house on the Susquehanna. All else
was forgotten.
On reaching home, Ewing wrote an account of the affair, and sent it
to Lancaster for publication. Through neglect, however, it was not
published for two years afterwards; but it was then seen by Mr. Slocum,
of Wilkes-barre, the little boy who had been saved by the girl, sixty
years before. He immediately started for Indiana, accompanied by the
sister who had saved him, at the same time writing to his brother to
meet him at the wigwam. The incidents connected with this visit have
been preserved, and are interesting.
On entering the cabin, they beheld an Indian woman, apparently
seventy-five years old, painted and jewelled. Yet her hair was as the
agent had described it, and her skin beneath her dress appeared white.
They obtained an interpreter and began to converse. We may imagine the
feelings of the little party, while they listened to the Indian
wo-an’s tale. The incidents of the assault and capture--too well known
already--were disclosed with a faithfulness which left no room for
doubt. “How came your nail gone?” inquired the sister. “My elder brother
pounded it off when I was a little child in the shop.”
“What was your name then?” She did not remember. “Was it Frances?”
She smiled on hearing the long-forgotten sound, and promptly answered,
“Yes.” All were now satisfied that they were of one family, and yet
there was little joy in that meeting. There was a sadness, not merely
through remembrance of the past, but of a kind present, deep, painful;
for though the brothers were walking the cabin unable to speak, and the
sister was sobbing, yet there sat the poor Indian sister, no throb of
emotion disturbing her equanimity.
Her previous history may soon be told. It was the Delaware tribe who had
taken her captive, and when she grew up among them, she married one of
their chiefs. He died or deserted her, and she then married a Miami. She
had two daughters, who both grew up and married Indians. They all lived
in one cabin. The brothers and sisters tried to persuade their sister
to return with them, and, if she desired it, to bring her children.
She answered that she had always lived with the Indians; that they had
always been kind to her; that she had promised her late husband, on his
death-bed, never to leave them, and that promise she was resolved to
keep. The three generous relatives then retraced their steps, sorrowing
that they were compelled to leave their sister in the wilderness.
The Indian sister died in 1847. Her manners and customs were those of
the Indians until her death, yet she was admired alike by the red and
white men. Her grave is on a beautiful knoll, near the confluence of the
Mis-sissiniwa and the Wabash, a spot which had been her residence for
nearly thirty years.
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