The Assimilation of Captives On The American Frontier in The Eigh

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LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses Graduate School
1977
The Assimilation of Captives on the American Frontier in the

Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries.
Joseph Norman Heard
Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College
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Nineteenth Centuries." (1977). LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses. 3157.
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78-7548
HEARD, Joseph Norman, 1922-
THE ASSIMILATION OF CAPTIVES ON THE
AMERICAN FRONTIER IN THE EIGHTEENTH
AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES.
The Louisiana State University and
Agricultural and Mechanical College, Ph.D., 1977
History, United States
University Microfilms International, Ann A rb o r, M ic h ig a n 48 106
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
THE ASSIMILATION OF CAPTIVES ON THE AMERICAN FRONTIER
IN THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES
A Dissertation
Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the

Louisiana State University and
Agricultural and Mechanical College
in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
in
The Department of History
by
Joseph Norman Heard
B. J., the University of Texas, 1947
M.J., the University of Texas, 1949
M.L.S., the University of Texas, 1951
December 1977
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Without the encouragement and assistance of a con
siderable number of individuals this dissertation would
never have been completed. I would like to express my
appreciation to the members of my committee and, especially,
to the chairman, Dr. John L. Loos, for invaluable guidance
and assistance. I greatly appreciate, also, the valuable
advice of the following ethnohistorians: Dr. Wilcomb E.
Washburn, Dr. William N. Fenton, Dr. Arrell M. Gibson,
Savoie Lottinville, and Gaines Kincaid. Finally, I would
like to express heartfelt appreciation to my wife, Joyce
Boudreaux Heard, for her infinite patience and under
standing. Her courage during thirty years of adversity
has sustained me and inspired many.
with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
T A B LE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ............. ii
ABSTRACT ............................................... iv
CHAPTER
I. INTRODUCTION .................................... 1
II. A CONTEST OF CIVILIZATION ...................... 23
III. THE CULTURAL MILIEUFROM WHICH

THEY CAME ................................. 59
IV. THE CULTURE AREA IN WHICHTHEY

WERE HELD ................................. 110
V. LENGTH OF TIME IN CAPTIVITY .................... 174
VI. THE CRITICAL AGE ................................ 199
VII. AFTER RESTORATION .............................. 236
VIII. INDIAN CHILDREN AND WHITE

CIVILIZATION .............................. 258
IX. CONCLUSION ...................... 295
BIBLIOGRAPHY .......................................... 319
VITA ................................................... 334
ABSTRACT
THE ASSIMILATION OF CAPTIVES ON THE AMERICAN
FRONTIER IN THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES
The experiences of white persons held \ captivity
by Indians have fascinated readers for almost three
centuries. Hundreds of redeemed captives have written or
related accounts of their adventures, and many of them
acknowledged that they had enjoyed the life style of their
captors. Other former captives charged, however, that they
had been brutalized by the Indians to the point of pre
ferring death to a life of captivity. Many captives
retained almost no recollection of white civilization,
having lost the use of their native languages and even for
gotten their own names. They had become proficient in the
skills required for survival in the wilderness and, except
for the color of their skins, they could scarcely be dis
tinguished from their captors.
This study analyzes narratives of captivity in
order to identify and evaluate factors which facilitated
or retarded assimilation. A number of anthropologists and
historians have suggested the need for a study, based upon
a large number of cases, which would help to determine why
iv
V
some captives became "white Indians” while others com
pletely rejected native American culture. Scholars have
speculated that both white and Indian children, when ex
posed to both civilizations, invariably preferred the
Indian way of life. The experiences of Indian children
reared by whites were analyzed, therefore, to ascertain
whether assimilation occurred along similar lines among
both races.
The first section of this study examines Indian-
white relationships as a contest of civilizations. While
the Indian perceived that the white man held superior
technological knowledge which could make his life easier,
he rejected many aspects of European culture, and he did
not consider his own civilization to be inferior. Many
whites, on the other hand, regarded Indians as savages who
must be forced to abandon their way of life for the benefit
of both races. The experiences of young captives who were
adopted by Indian families show that these whites were
treated as natural-born Indians, and that they accepted
and enjoyed the way of life of their captors.
The next section looks at factors which have been
suggested as determinants of the assimilation of white
captives. It was concluded that the original cultural
milieu of the captive was of no importance as a deter
minant. Persons of all races and cultural backgrounds
reacted to captivity in much the same way. The cultural
characteristics of the captors, also, had little influence
on assimilation. While some tribes treated captives more
brutally than others, abuse delayed but did not prevent
Indianization. A lengthy captivity resulted in greater
assimilation than a brief one, but many captives became
substantially Indianized in a matter of months. It was
concluded that the most important factor in determining
assimilation was age at the time of captivity. Boys and
girls captured below the age of puberty almost always
became assimilated while persons taken prisoner above that
age usually retained the desire to return to white civili
zation.
The final section compares the assimilation of
Indian children reared by whites during frontier times with
that of white children who were captured by Indians. It
was concluded that an Indian child reared and cherished in
a white family became assimilated in much the same manner
as a white child adopted by an Indian family. The deter
mining factor was age at the time of removal from natural
parents for Indian children as well as for whites. Indian
children educated at boarding schools became less assimi
lated than those reared in white families because teachers
regarded them as persons of inferior culture and because
associations with other Indian students reinforced tribal
ties and cultural predilections.
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
Beginning with sixteenth century Spanish explorers
and continuing until the 1880's, thousands of white persons
were captured by Indians within the present boundaries of
the United States. While a majority of them eventually
were redeemed by their families, hundreds of captives
became so completely assimilated as to be designated "white
Indians." Many white males became warriors and raided
frontier settlements. A large number of captive females
married Indians and gave birth to half-breed children. A
considerable number of captives resisted attempts to redeem
them, and when forcibly restored to their white families
they sought the opportunity to escape and rejoin the
Indians.3- Many captives retained little or no recollec
tion of white civilization, having lost the use of their
native languages and forgotten their own names. They had
become proficient in the skills required for survival in
1 For an account of the reactions of hundreds of

captives given up by the Shawnees as a result of Colonel
Henry Bouquet's expedition see William Smith, An
Expedition Against the Ohio Indians in 1764 (Philadelphia:
W. Bradford, 1765), 26-29.
2
Indian civilization and, except for the color of their
skins, they could scarcely be distinguished from their
captors.2
Many redeemed captives wrote or told of their
experiences, and it is the primary objective of this study
to analyze these narratives in order to identify and
evaluate factors which facilitated or retarded assimila^
tion. Such a study was suggested a half century ago by
Dr. John R. Swanton, Smithsonian Institution ethnologist.
He speculated that if there are psychological differences
between races, evidence of this fact could be obtained by
a study of individuals of one race who were captured at an
early age by those of another and brought up wholly
immersed in the culture of the other. "Psychological dis
tinction between the two" should be observed among the
captives "as an element unaccountable on the basis of their
cultural surroundings." Swanton sifted evidence obtained
from a number of narratives of captivity and found no
evidence of such a psychological distinction. He recom
mended, however, that the number of cases studied should
2 The scholarly introductions to recent collec

tions of narratives of captivity provide interesting
generalizations on the reactions of captives to the Indian
way of life. See Howard Peckham, Captured by Indians (New
Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1954), and Richard
Van Der Beets, Held Captive by Indians (Knoxville,
University of Tennessee Press, 1973).
3
be greatly increased and reciprocal cases of primitive
peoples held by whites investigated before formulating

final conclusions.3
More than thirty years later William N. Fenton
included the topic among the ethnohistorical questions in

need of investigation,4 but as yet no study of assimilation
of white captives exists which is based upon an adequate
number of cases and covers tribal culture areas throughout
the present United States. Aspects of the topic have been
analyzed in historical, anthropological, and medical
journals, however, and much useful information is con
tained in these scattered sources.
Dr. Erwin H. Ackerknecht, physician and anthro
pologist, became interested in Indian captives while
studying the history of malaria in the upper Mississippi
Valley. While reading narratives of early explorers he
noted references to "white Indians" and read with amazement
of the remarkable abilities of both captors and captives
to withstand torture and survive terrible wounds.5
Additional research resulted in publication of his article,
3 John R. Swanton, "Notes on the Mental Assimi

lation of Races,11 Journal of the Washington Academy of
Sciences, XVI (1926), 493, 502.
4 William N. Fenton, American Indian and White

Relations to 1830 (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1957), 18.
5 Erwin H. Ackerknecht, Medicine and Ethnology

(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1971), 14.
"White Indians," which concludes that the assimilation of
captives was the result of Indian "unity of thought and
action and a kind of social cohesion which deeply appealed
to them, and which they did not find with the whites."6
Although Ackerknecht's article is valuable, especially for
its medical insights, it is based on the life histories of
only eight captives.
An article which provides some comparative studies
of assimilation is Dr. A. Irving Hallowell's ''American
Indian, White and Black: The Phenomenon of Transcultura-
tion." Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the University
of Pennsylvania, Hallowell is particularly enlightening
regarding the differences between acculturation of groups
and assimilation (or transculturation) of individuals.
The former consists of persons who remain functioning
members of an organized group whi.le undergoing readjust
ment; the latter involves individuals whose identification
with the group to which they had formerly belonged has
been broken. Hallowell analyzes the assimilation of black
captives, as well as whites, a suhject largely ignored by
other researchers. Further, he compares the assimilation
of captives held by Indians to that of seamen who were
cast away among Pacific Islanders and Christian boys
seized for sultan's service in the Ottoman Empire. Perhaps
6 Erwin H. Ackerknecht, "White Indians," Bulletin

of the History of Medicine, XV (1944) , 15<~36.
his most significant contribution is an analysis of the
differences in the roles open to the white captive among
Indians and the Indian in white society. While his article
probably is the best analysis of assimilation of captives
yet published, he readily concedes that it is based upon
an insufficient number of cases.7
The most recent historian to publish in this field
is Dr. James Axtell. His article, "The White Indians of
Colonial America," as the title indicates, is limited to
colonial captivities.8 Some of his conclusions appear to
contradict the preponderance of evidence presented by other
students of the subject. His assertations that reports of
Indian cruelty to captives are exaggerated, that prisoners
selected for assimilation were the weak and defenseless,
and that a carefully planned educational program was
employed to transform whites into Indians merit further
investigation.
In a persuasive article, Bernard W. Sheehan asserts
that a satisfactory account of Indian-white relations
remains to be written and calls for the subject to be con
sidered "a common ground of history and ethnology."9 The
7 A. Irving Hallowell, "American Indians, White

and Black," Current Anthropology, IV (1963), 519-31.
8 James Axtell, "The White Indians of Colonial

America," William and Mary Quarterly, Series III, XXXII
(1975), 55-88.
9 Bernard W. Sheehan, "Indian-White Relations in

Early America: A Review Essay," William and Mary Quarterly,
Series III, XXVI (1969), 269-70.
present dissertation is intended to investigate one aspect
of this problem— assimilation of captives. Ideally, the
researcher should be trained in psychology, sociology,
philosophy, geography, literature and bibliography, as well
as history and ethnology. No definitive study is attempted
here, but the writer has collected a large number of case
studies and bases his conclusions on "the common ground of
history and ethnology."

It is intended in this study to analyze narratives
of captivity among the North American Indians in an effort
to ascertain why some prisoners preferred death to captiv
ity while others readily adopted the way of life of their
captors. The case study method will be employed, based
upon the experiences of more than 100 captives taken in the
present United States between 1528 and 1885, Information
has been obtained from published narratives, manuscript
materials, newspaper articles and government reports. An
initial chapter will analyze assimilation as a contest
between Indian and white civilizations. Then an appraisal
will be made of the importance of such factors as the
original cultural milieu, treatment of captives in various
culture areas, duration of captivity, and the age of the
victim at the time of capture in determining the course
and degree of assimilation. As a control, attention will
be given to problems of redeemed captives and to the
assimilation of Indian children reared in white families
or boarding schools.
In seeking to establish correlations it is
necessary to estimate the extent of assimilation of
captives. This is difficult because of the lack of a
satisfactory model which interprets cultural traits in
terms of degrees of assimilation. Learning the Indian
language was a sign of the beginning of assimilation, even
for those who longed to return to their white families.
Attaining Indian skills, such as use of the bow and arrow,
indicates some coming to terms with the new way of life.
Marrying an Indian would appear to provide proof of assimi
lation if one could be certain that the captive did it
voluntarily. Participation in raids against white settle
ments does not present positive proof of Indianization
unless it can be shown that such participation was volun
tary. Even the rejection of an opportunity to return in
safety to one's white family may not be an indication of
assimilation, for it may have resulted from shame rather
than from a desire to remain with the Indians. Similarly,
failure to attempt to escape is not proof of assimilation,
for fear of being caught may have overridden a cherished
hope to return, but repeated attempts to escape do present
positive proof of resistance to Indianization. Only after
a large number of cases are analyzed is it possible to
recognize patterns which assist in estimating the extent
of a captive's adoption of the Indian way of life. While
correlations based upon these traits will lack precision,
they should be sufficiently valid to permit the formulation
of meaningful generalizations.
The tradition of captive-taking among North
American Indians goes back to prehistoric times. Centuries
before white men came to these shores, captives were taken
from neighboring tribes to replenish losses suffered in
warfare or to obtain victims to torture in the spirit of
r e v e n g e . W h e n warfare developed between Europeans and
Indians, white captives were taken for the same reasons
and, in addition, to hold for ransom or to gain favor with
an allied European government or colony.H
The Canadian Indians in their early New England
attacks seized captives primarily to hold for ransom.
Colonial officials attempted to discourage paying for the
return of captives as it led to more raids, but ransom, was
paid by governments and citizens in increasing amounts as
the kidnappers became more adept. After 1753, however,
the objective changed. The Indians of New York, western
10 Frederick Webb Hodge, Handbook of Indians North

of Mexico (2 vols. Washington: Government Printing Office,
1912), I, 203-206.
11 For example, see Edward Baynes, Adjutant

General, British Army, General Orders Respecting Head-
Money to be Paid Indians for the Capture of Americans.
Kingston, July 26, 1813, (RG8C 1170), Public Archives of
Canada, Ottawa.
9
Pennsylvania and Ohio "had no Quebec or Montreal in which
to sell their human chattels to compassionate French
families or anxious English relatives." They held

captives, therefore, largely to adopt as replacements for
relatives killed in battle.12
Indians in every region of the present United
States held at least a few white captives. East of the
Mississippi the majority was taken in New England, northern
New York, western Pennsylvania, western Virginia and
Kentucky. Whites in the Southeast seemed, by and large,
to have avoided falling into the hands of the Indians.12
In the West most narratives of captivity describe experi
ences among the Plains tribes or those of the southwestern
deserts. Few accounts were found of captives taken in the
northern Rockies or on the Pacific coast.1^
Frontiersmen, with good reason, lived in constant
fear of Indian captivity. For men, capture frequently
ended in death by the most excruciating torture Indians
12 Axtell, "The White Indians of Colonial

America," 59-60.
13 R. W. G. Vail, The Voice of the Old Frontier
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1949),
41.
14 An exception was the Marcus Whitman massacre
in which 50 captives were seized. See Peter Skene Ogden
to Rev. E. Walker, December 31, 1847, Coe Collection of
Western American Manuscripts (Yale University), 50 3.
Ogden succeeded in obtaining the release of the prisoners
and his correspondence provides their names and ages.
could learn from Europeans or devise by themselves. Women
feared lifelong bondage, forced marriage, and rape.
Frontier people tried to keep always on guard against
Indian captivity, but sometimes there was no way short of
suicide to avoid falling into the hands of raiders.
The Indians' favorite method of attack was to
surround a cabin during the pre-dawn hours and to rush the
family when the father came outdoors at first light. They
characteristically would massacre men, old women, and
children too small to travel, take the young women and
older children captive, and be well on their way back to
their villages before the neighbors of the victims could
organize for p u r s u i t . F r e q u e n t l y the surviving members
of the family were compelled to carry the scalps of their
parents and little brothers and sisters, an experience
which by European logic would have instilled in them such
a hatred of the Indians as to make assimilation impos
sible .16
There is, however, abundant evidence that many
captives quickly accepted the Indians as their own people
15 Dale Van Every, A Company of Heroes: The

American Frontier, 1775-1783 (New York: Morrow, 106 2) ,
117-20.
16 An example of this practice is provided in the
narrative of David Boyd's captivity. David became a
complete Indian in spite of this experience. See "The
Captivity of David Boyd" in the chapter which follows on
treatment of captives in various Indian culture areas.
and came to regard the whites as enemies. This fact was
especially clearly demonstrated in November, 1764 when
Colonel Henry Bouquet invaded the Shawnee stronghold on the
Muskingum River and compelled the Indians to release
hundreds of prisoners.1? Many captives had been with the
Indians so long that they had forgotten their native
languages. It was necessary to list them on the official
log under such entries as "Cut-Arm" or "German Girl"
because they could no longer remember their own names. By
the time the returning army reached the settlements, two
young women named Rhoda Boyd and Elizabeth Studebaker had
already escaped and fled into the wilderness to rejoin
their Indian families. The soldiers stood guard over
others to prevent them from running away. One reason for
the reluctance of some of the women to leave their Indian
husbands was that they had half-breed children by these
men whom they did not wish to abandon. In some cases they
had older children who were all white and younger children
who were half I n d i a n .
This scene, on a smaller scale, was repeated again
and again for the next one hundred and twenty years.
Throughout the West, white captives in the vicinity of
17 Henry Bouquet to Colonel Lewis, November 15,

1764, Bouquet Collection, A 21, Public Archives of
Canada, Ottawa.
18 Dale Van Every, Forth to the Wilderness (New

York: Morrow, 1961), 217-18.
frontier forts painted their faces to conceal their
identities from officers who would have redeemed them. In
Texas, many whites restored to their families after years
of Comanche or Kiowa captivity seized the first opportunity
to escape to the red m e n , ^
It is probable that the majority of captives did
not remain in Indian hands long enough for assimilation to
make substantial headway. Many were killed during the
journey to the Indian village or tortured upon arrival.
Others were ransomed quickly by relatives or traders. Some
were sold to French or English settlers within a few
months. A surprisingly large number escaped, sometimes
killing their captors in the process.
But the fact remains that hundreds of white
captives became completely Indianized. In New England
alone at least 750 captives whose names are known to
history were carried to Canada, and statistics indicate
that more than 1,500 were captured whose names were not
recorded. Of the 750 whose histories are a matter of
record, 92 were killed by the Indians, 60 became completely
Indianized, and many of the more than 300 who were returned
to their families retained Indian characteristics all of
19 Carl Coke Rister, Border Captives (Norman;

University of Oklahoma Press, 19401, 68-76.
their lives. 90 In the Southwest, the scope of captive
taking is equally startling. In 1854 New Mexico Governor
David Meriwether wrote to the Cheyenne Indian agent, J. W.
Whitfield, requesting that he try to ransom 11 Mexican
children recently captured near Las Vegas, New Mexico.
Whitfield refused to establish the precedent of buying
Mexican captives, explaining that it would bankrupt the
treasury to pay for those then held at the agency. He was
convinced that the Kiowas and Comanches alone held a
thousand captives.
The narrative of Indian captivity was one of the
most popular genres of American literature for more than a
century, and the fact that it never has entirely lost its
fascination is demonstrated by the publication of collec
tions of captivity narratives as recently as 1974. The
first four such narratives were published in the sixteenth
century-— one in Spanish, one in Portuguese, one in German,
and one in English. The earliest of these was the Relation
of Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca (Zamora, 1542) . A survivor
of the Narvaez Expedition of 1528, he was cast away on the
Texas coast and enslaved by the Indians. His subsequent
20 Richard Slotkin, Regeneration Through Violence

(Middleton, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1973), 97-93.
21 J. W. Whitfield to David Meriwether, September

29, 1854, Letters received from the New Mexico Superinten
dency, 1851-1875, U. S. Office of Indian Affairs, Record
Group 75 (National Archives).
14
travels with three companions to the Pacific Coast of
Mexico constitute one of the great adventures of American
history. Another survivor of the Narvaez Expedition was
Juan Ortiz. His account of his captivity by Florida
Indians is related in one of the following chapters of
this thesis. Hans Staden, a German, was shipwrecked on
the coast of Brazil in 1549 and taken by the Tupi tribe.
His narrative, Wahraftige (Marburg, 1557), was published
three years after his recovery by a French ship. The first
English captive was Job Hortop, a sailor with John Hawkins.
Hortop was captured in Mexico in 1567, His narrative, The
Trauailes of an Englishman, was published in London in
1591.22
The earliest captivity narrative in the English
colonies was the account of Mrs, Mary Rowlandson (Boston,
1682), a Puritan minister's wife abducted in 1675 during
King Philip's War. No copy of the first edition survives
and the exact title is uncertain. It is one of the most
popular of all captivity narratives, having been published
in more than 30 editions.23
During the colonial wars between the English and
French the number of captives increased tremendously and
22 Vail, The Voice of the Old Frontier, 29-30.
23 Ibid., 31-33. Vail's study includes an

invaluable bibliographic essay which has opened the field
of pre-nineteenth century captivity narratives to
researchers in several disciplines.
15
hundreds of narratives were published between 1690 and
176 3. Others were written as the result of captures during
Pontiac's War, and beginning in the 1780's accounts of
prisoners taken during the American Revolution began to
appear. As United States citizens moved westward they
began to encounter mounted Indians, and whites who fell
into captivity wrote about cultures that varied greatly
from those of eastern woodland tribes. The Sioux uprising
in Minnesota during the Civil War resulted in many captivi
ties and some of the most gripping of narratives. The last
white people captured north of Mexico were held by the
Apaches and Plains Indians and some of them survived to
publish their own stories as recently as the 1920's.2^
Although scholars have demonstrated confidence in
narratives of captivity by citation and inclusion in
bibliographies, little has been published analyzing their
credibility.25 Perhaps the most scholarly assessment was
made by the literary historian, Roy Harvey Pearce. "The
narrative of Indian captivity has long been recognized for
24 A former Comanche captive still lived in

Refugio, Texas, during the boyhood of this writer in that
community. Fifty years after her redemption the indenta
tions caused by rawhide thongs used to bind her to the
back of a wild pony during her captivity were visible.
25 One excellent resource is the catalogue of a

list of books in the E. E. Ayer Collection of the Newberry
Library, Chicago: Narratives of Captivity.Among;.the
Indians of North America. Publications1of the Newberry
Library, No. 3 (Chicago, 1912); Supplement I (Chicago,
1938).
16
its usefulness in the study of our history and, moreover,
has even achieved a kind of literary status," he notes.
But he traces their declining value for historical purposes
from the first direct statements of frontier hardships as
related by individuals who experienced them, through pro
pagandist tracts intended to arouse hatred of French and
Indians, to "penny dreadfuls" which included as much
fiction as fact. By 1800 American readers were so doubt"
ful of the truth of such accounts that redeemed captives
considered it necessary to ask prominent citizens to
testify to their veracity. The narratives lost influence
as popular literature by the nineteenth century but re»-
tained interest to scholars as a reflection of American
pioneer life. "The captivity narrative as a popular genre
varies with the quality of the cultural milieu in which it
was produced," Pearce concludes. And it is "interesting
and valuable to us. , . not because it can tell us a great
deal about the Indian or even about immediate frontier
attitudes toward the Indians, but rather because it enables
us to see more deeply and more clearly into popular
American culture, . . .1,26
In a ground breaking study of American frontier
mythology, Richard Slotkin analyzes the changing motive
26 Roy Harvey Pearce, "The Significance of the

Captivity Narrative," American Literature, XIX (1947^48),
1, 17-20.
17
of the captivity narrative. He regards the earliest
narratives as "natural, spontaneous" reflections of the
American wilderness environment. They began to lose
force, however, in the hands of Puritan religious leaders
who seized upon them as a means of keeping their congrega
tions under control. Puritan ministers published revised
editions of the narratives and turned them into religious
tracts which lost much of the flavor and some of the
factuality of the ordeals so simply and starkly recounted
in the original narratives. Through this means, Slotkin
states, they began to serve as "material for revival
sermons, vehicles for political diatribes, and experimental
evidence in philosophical and theological works," Although
these so-called "improved" versions are much less useful
to historians and ethnologists, they achieved great popu
larity which makes them valuable to students of sociology,
literature, and mythology. If they describe Indian civili
zation inaccurately, they provide useful insights into the
culture of the intended readers, Slotkin concludes that
these revised narratives of captivity constitute the
earliest "coherent myth-literature developed in America for
American audiences."2?
The need for caution in the use of revised or
"improved" versions of captivity narratives was emphasized
27 Slotkin, Regeneration Through Violence, 95,
18
recently by Richard Van Der Beets in a useful introduction
to his compilation, Held Captive by Indians: Selected
Narratives, 1642-1836. While noting that many redeemed
captives were keen observers who provided valuable infor
mation about Indian wars, subsistence methods, and customs,
he, too, stresses that as sources of American cultural
history their utility is dependent in large measure upon
the interests of the society for which the narratives were
intended. The first accounts published by English colonists
"are plain, factual and generally reliable religious
documents which treat the salutary effects of the captivity
as test, trial, or punishment by God; and, finally and most
demonstrably, the captivity as evidence of Divine Provi
dence and God's inscrutable wisdom." Puritan redeemed
captives published their stories to provide guidance
for readers who could profit from the morally uplifting
messages to be found in their experiences.
After the outbreak of wars between the French and
English colonies, Van Der Beets writes, the usefulness of
captivity narrative as propaganda became increasingly
evident. "The military, religious, and nationalistic con
siderations of both the French and Indian and the
Revolutionary wars, then, find forceful expression in
propagandistic narratives of Indian captivity and as such
constitute another of their significant cultural impulses."
In the nineteenth century dramatic and stylistic
devices frequently were used in a deliberate attempt to
19
stimulate sales, Van Der Beets asserts. Narratives
originally published as factual and truthful experiences
were "improved" in later editions until they "only slightly
and speciously" resembled reports of actual captivities.
These narratives lack the essential quality of genuine
frontier experiences that are so starkly evident in earlier
accounts of captivity.
In conclusion, Van Der Beets asserts that genuine
narratives of captivity "touch upon fundamental truths.
More than cultural indices or curiosities, the narratives
of Indian captivity draw and shape their materials from
the very wellsprings of human e x p e r i e n c e . "28
While Pearce, Slotkin, and Van Der Beets have
analyzed captivity narratives as sources for understanding
white culture, other scholars have either questioned or
endorsed their value as records of the character and
civilization of North American Indian tribes. Dwight L.
Smith, who appraised the value of Shawnee captivity
ethnography for ethnologists and historians, advises
caution in their use. In the captivity narrative "the
habits, customs, and ways of life of the Indian garnish
the simple details of the account," he writes. "These
things are of interest to the ethnologist and historian.
In an objective appraisal, nevertheless, these items
28 Van Der Beets, Held Captive by Indians,

xiii-xxxi.
20
cannot be accepted at face value. The circumstances under
which they were originally observed and the reasons for
which they were written must be considered before they can
be used totally or in part by ethnologists and historians."
Smith concedes, however, that "studies of captivities are
legitimate scholarly pursuits as the basis for the narra
tives was a common experience of hundreds of pioneers.”2^
R. W. G. Vail acknowledges that the captive, like
most frontiersmen, was prone to exaggerate, but he contends
that narratives of captivity are "simple, vivid, direct
and, generally, accurate pictures of the exciting and often
harrowing adventures of their authors" which are "of
importance to the historian and biographer, the ethnologist,
the sociologist, the natural scientist, and the medical
historian.
The Kentucky historian, Willard Rouse Jillson, has
made extensive use of narratives of captivity. Noting that
frontier literature is enhanced by hundreds of accounts of
captivities, he states that many of them "are truthful and
informative as to the life, practice, and philosophies of
the American Indian."31
29 Dwight L. Smith, "Shawnee Captivity Ethnog

raphy," Ethnohistory., II (1955), 2 9 - 3 1 , 37.
30 Vail, Voice of the Old Frontier, 27.
31 Willard Rouse Jillson, Indian Captivities of

the Early West (Louisville: Society of Colonial Wars in the
Commonwealth of Kentucky, 1 9 5 3 ) , 15.
21
Among leading historians who have written scholarly
introductions to reprints of narratives of captivity are
Walter Prescott Webb, Charles M. Andrews, and Milo M.
Quaife. Nelson Lee's story contains some of the most
amazing adventures of any narrative of its kind, but Webb
thought his account authentic. "It is his account of life
among the Indians that makes this book of unique value,"
Webb writes. "The story he tells is absorbing, but the
information he conveys about how the Comanches lived before

they were affected by the white man is i n v a l u a b l e . "32
Aside from Swanton, few United States ethnologists
have voiced opinions on the usefulness of the captivity
narrative. A distinguished Canadian scholar, Marius
Barbeau, has devoted more attention to the subject than
have his colleagues below the international boundary. He
believes that the value of the captivity narrative "is
enhanced by the candor of the observers who found them
selves among the natives before the ancient customs had
been abandoned, and the ethnographers had entered the
field.1,33
The narratives upon which this study is based have
been selected whenever possible from those available in
32 Walter Prescott Webb, introduction to Nelson

Lee, Three Years Among the Comanches (Norman: University
of Oklahoma Press, 1957), ix-x.
33 Marius Barbeau, "Indian Captivities," American

Philosophical Society Proceedings, XCIV (1950), 531.
22
scholarly editions, those listed in reputable bibliog
raphies, and from those frequently cited by historians or
ethnologists. While individual narratives may contain
inaccuracies or exaggerations, taken in the aggregate they
provide a generally reliable source of information about
the assimilation of captives.
CHAPTER II
A CONTEST OF CIVILIZATION
Lewis H. Morgan, pioneer of American anthropology,
has written that the institutions of all peoples emerged
in savagery, developed in barbarism, and came to full
fruition in civilization. As all humanity had a common
origin, the development of various races has been similar,
advancing at different rates but along identical courses
in all regions until a corresponding degree of civilization
was attained. He was convinced that American Indian history
was representative of an earlier period of development
among the ancestors of Europeans.1
Morgan's views are shared by an anthropologist of
Indian ancestry, Arthur C. Parker, who concedes that at the
time of American colonization European ethnic culture was
at a higher stage than that of the Amerinds. But Parker
contends that this fact does not indicate a larger mental
capacity. In his view it is faulty reasoning to relegate
Indians to inferior status, for the relative standing of
races is correctly evaluated on capability of advancement
1 Lewis H. Morgan, Ancient Society (Chicago:

C. H. Kerr Company, n.d.), vii.
23
24
rather than on the level of current cultural attainment.
The Europeans had advanced more rapidly because of environ
mental advantages. The Indians could in favorable
environments attain superior status within a few gener
ations. He reminds his readers that "the Teuton and the
Gaul were hairy savages delighting in devouring one another
when other races now decadent enjoyed the acme of civili
zation. "2
While the earliest European colonists of North
America believed in the progress of civilized men, many of
them thought that savage races had moved in the opposite
direction. They were convinced that when races differed
greatly in appearance they must be considered higher and
lower forms of humanity. Such differences constituted
proof of species corruption, for if God had designed the
world to be peopled by an ideal kind of man, retreating
from the ideal could occur only in terms of degeneration.
Racial variations must represent progressive and degenerate
replicas of the Creator's handiwork.2
The colonists' attitudes toward the Indians at
first were more paternalistic than antagonistic. They
2 Arthur C. Parker, "Philosophy of Indian

Education," Indian Historian, III (spring, summer 1970},
63. Reprint (originally published 1911).
3 Hayden White, "The Forms of Wildness: Archae

ology of an Idea," in Edward Dudley and Maximillian Novak
(eds.), The Wild Man Within (Pittsburgh: University of
Pittsburgh Press, 1972), 9.
25
were confident that Indians would welcome European civili
zation after having had the opportunity to observe how
vastly superior it was to their own. The natives must be
provided with the benefits of Christianity, civilization,
and order. This was one of the missions inherent in
planting the colonies and it constituted a burden of the
greatest magnitude. For the Indian would stand in the way
of civilization as long as he was satisfied with his savage
nature.^
It was inevitable that when Europeans landed in
America with their sense of mission and convictions of
white superiority^ clashes with the native races would
ensue. Yet in the typical initial contact between North
American Indians and Europeans the natives were hospitable
and helpful.^ As long as the prime European objective was
trade, relations between the races remained amicable. But
from the establishment of Jamestown onward, English settle
ments were planned as permanent communities which would
4 Roy Harvey Pearce, The Savages of America

(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1965), 6.
5 For an understanding of the views on Indian

savagery of Europeans considering migration to America see
William Bradford's History of Plimoth Plantation (Boston:
Wright & Potter Printing Company, 1899), 32-34. A sermon
warning Englishmen preparing to leave for America against
marrying Indians is quoted in Arthur W. Calhoun, A Social
History of the American Family (Cleveland: Arthur H. Clark
Company, 1917), I, 322.
6 John Collier, The Indians of America (New York:

W. W. Norton, 1947), 190-98.
26
intrude increasingly into the Indian domain. This change
in English intention gradually reversed the nature of
Indian-white contacts. Indian esteem for the English
eroded while the colonists no longer concealed their con
tempt for native civilization.?
It is clear in retrospect that the two cultures
could not mesh. European individualism and emphasis on
private property were incomprehensible to the Indian,
while the communal life style of the native American was
anathema to the newcomers from across the Atlantic. As
Wilcomb E. Washburn observes, "when such diverse peoples
struggled for the same land base, the loser might retain
his physical existence but almost invariably he lost the

culture and the land that gave his life m e a n i n g . ' 1** As
captive taking was an important element in the conflict,
it may be helpful to analyze attitudes toward basic
cultural differences to determine whether they influenced
assimilation.
The early English colonists were imbued with the
idea of the importance of order in the universe. They
believed that progress would elevate civilized men who, in
7 Gary B. Nash, "The Image of the Indian in the

Southern Colonial Mind," in The White Man Within, 60-63.
8 Wilcomb E. Washburn, The Indian and the White

Man (New York: New York University Press, 1964), xilT
27
accordance with God's plan, would establish order in chaos
such as existed in America. Like the forest and the wild
beasts, the native Americans were a part of that chaos.
In order to civilize the New World it would be necessary
to teach their own cultural values to the natives.0
Within a few years the dominant paternalistic
attitude gave way to ambivalence. A dual image developed
in which colonists observed the Indian on the one hand as
a savage, sub-human, unreasoning race, and on the other as
a generous, innocent, childlike people, free of many of
the vices which had been so commonly seen on the other side
of the Atlantic.10 In the French colonies, far more than
in the English, the favorable view took hold, largely as
the result of the influence of the Jesuit fathers who
described the Indians as nature's noblemen, inferior only
in their ignorance of Christ's teaching, a shortcoming
which could be remedied through missionary zeal.11
A dramatic change in English attitudes toward
Indians occurred in 1622 with the uprising of the tribes
9 Pearce, The Savages of America, 3-4. For an

expression of amazement over the refusal of the Indians
to welcome European civilization see Cotton Mather, India
Christiana (Boston: Printed by B. Green, 1721), 55.
10 Nash, "The Image of the Indian in the Southern

Colonial Mind," 56-57.
11 Geoffrey Symcox, "The Wild Man's Return," in

Edward Dudley and Maximillian Novak (eds.), The Wild Man
Within, 226-27.
28
against Virginia. Instantly the darker view gained the
ascendancy and the colonists branded all Indians as
treacherous savages. No longer feeling an obligation to
civilize them, they deemed the Indians to have forfeited
their rights. The destruction of the tribes could be
countenanced with little soul-searching, for the red races
now were regarded as irredeemable savages rather than
natural men with an interesting, though inferior, culture.
In justifying the acquisition of Indian lands some
whites charged that the savages were devils to be extermi
nated while others held that they were heathen who could
13
benefit by trading their lands for Christian teaching.
There was no question of "the right of followers of the
true Jehovah to take by force the lands of the
Cananites."14 if further justification were needed, the
colonists could cite Vattel's Law of Nations which held
that industrious nations in need of space for burgeoning
populations rightfully could confiscate lands of hunting
peoples who were not using them efficiently. This theory

was reinforced by the teachings of John Locke that private

13 Louis B. Wright, The Atlantic Frontier (New
York: A. A. Knopf, 1951), 124.
14 Louis B. Wright, Religion and Empire (Chapel

Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1943), 157.
29
property was the basis of civilization. Disregarding the
fact that the Indians thus far encountered were as much
farmers as hunters, the colonists decreed that they were
wastrels who must give way to a higher form of civili
zation.
In New England the early relationships between
Puritans and Indians resembled those in the southern
colonies in many respects. Although the Puritans were
more averse to Indian institutions than were the Virginians,
there did develop bonds of sympathy based in part on
gratitude for the generosity of the natives during the
first hard years of settlement. Many Puritans believed
that the Indians actually were white people descended from
the ten lost tribes of Israel and dark skinned only because
of exposure to the sun. The tribes, like the Irish, were
misled by the Devil, and it was the plain duty of the
Puritans to help them find their way back to God.1® How
ever, the Puritans did not permit this duty to prevent them
from maintaining sharp racial distinctions in their day to
day relations with the Indians. Theodore Parker, Unitarian
minister and humanitarian, comments that the "Puritan hoped
15 Pearce, The Savages of America, 66-71.
16 Alden T. Vaughan, New England Frontier (Boston:

Little Brown, 1965), viii.
30
to meet the Pequods in heaven, but wished to keep apart
from them on earth, nay, to exterminate them from the
land. "-*-7
Richard Slotkin asserts that the aversion was
more apparent than real. The Puritans sensed and covertly
desired the easy-going life style of the native American,
the manner in which his environment served him, his un
complicated and naturalistic approach to religion, and the
mental and physical well-being that his worship offered him.
In return, Slotkin surmises, the Indian both feared and
desired the technological skills of the white man, "Each
culture viewed the other with mixed feelings of attraction
and repulsion, sympathy and antipathy,
Again, however, the onset of war brought a change
in attitudes. During the massive raids of King William's
War the French and Indians carried more white women and
children into captivity than were seized in all previous
wars combined. This catastrophe forced the Puritans to
re-examine their vision of the city on a hill. In
departing from their fellow Puritans in Europe they had
incurred criticism which created feelings of guilt and
17 Quoted in Louis Ruchames, Racial Thought in

America, I, (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press,
1969) , 10.
18 Slotkin, Regeneration Through Violence, 26.
31
caused them to cling to English customs as a psychological
n e c e s s i t y . T h e y viewed with alarm the temptations con
fronting their captive kinsmen. Would their Puritan faith
and English upbringing be strong enough to offset the
"freedom of impulse and action" which was inherent in
Indian civilization? The Puritans saw in the loss of
their women and children a parody on their departure from
Europe 60 years earlier. In the Indian village they saw
the "antithesis of a city on a hill," Thus the recurring
raids and captivities represented "retribution for their
own departure from sanctity and society," The captivities
of their loved ones seemed to mean that their nightmares
were coming true.20
As the tribes along the Atlantic seaboard were
gradually driven westward by the expanding English
colonies, the image of the Indians began to change once
more, at least to reflective men comfortably removed from
the dangers of the frontier. Educated easterners restored
the Indians to the status of cultural entities, and during
the early eighteenth century men such as missionaries and
colonial officials who had known the red men at first hand
19 For an account of soul-searching by John

Winthrop regarding this matter see Edmund S, Morgan, The
Puritan Dilemma (Boston: Little, Brown, 1958), xiif 40-51,
20 Slotkin, Regeneration Through Violence, 120-22.
32
published anthropological studies which analyzed
interesting aspects of tribal culture,21
Early in the eighteenth century it became increas
ingly evident to students of Indian culture that contacts
with whites demoralized rather than civilized the tribes.
They observed that the virtues as well as the vices of
white civilization made a shambles of the admirable traits
of Indian culture.^2 it is ironic that at the very time
that scholars regained an appreciation of Indian civiliza
tion the traits of the native Americans which elicited
admiration were deteriorating as a result of perversion
by whites. Demoralized by whiskey and disease, the
eastern Indians became increasingly dependent upon white
traders and abandoned the cultural traits which intrigued
scholarly observers. The liquor sold by the traders
introduced drunkenness among the Indians while land
speculators taught them covetousness. The most disorderly
members of American society gravitated to the frontier.
It is not surprising that they caused the Indians "to
suspect the superiority of white Christian culture to which
they were incessantly urged to aspire," For their part,

Colonial Mind," 73,
22 Pearce, The Savages of America, 41, For an

enlightening account of the effect of white trade.goods on
Indian civilization see Bernard De Voto, The Course of
Empire (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1952), 92.
33
the frontiersmen found little to admire in the deterio
rating Indian culture. "For the Indian the limited respect
of European colonizers had come too late to halt the
process of cultural change which would have left his image
impaired and his power to resist further cultural and

territorial aggrandizement fatally w e a k e n e d . "23
During the French and Indian War and the Revo
lution, the Americans suffered greatly at the hands of
Indians allied with European nations. On the frontiers
hatred of all Indians intensified, and from that time until
the tribes no longer posed a threat to their region most
whites regarded them as no better than wild animals to be
hunted down or destroyed wherever encountered. Illus
trative of these sentiments are the remarks of soldiers
and settlers who knew the Indians intimately:
The Indians have seventeen prisoners; they have

already knocked several of them on the head.
The cruelties and the insolence of these bar
barians is horrible, their souls are as black as
pitch. It is an abominable way to make war; the
retaliation is frightening, and the air one
breathes here is contageous [sic] of making one
accustomed to callousness — Louis Antoine de
Bougainville (French Army officer), 1756.24
2 3 Nash, "The Image of the Indian in the Southern

24 Adventures in the Wilderness (Norman: Univer

sity of Oklahoma Press, 1964), 41. Bougainville was a
keen student of native cultures. He was the discoverer
of Tahiti and the first Frenchman to circumnavigate the
earth. As General Montcalm's aide-de-camp he had
continuous contact with the natives during the French and
Indian War.
34
One of the principal objects of my attention,

whilst I lived among the Indians, was the humili
ating condition of their women. Here the female sex,
instead of polishing and improving the rough manners
of the men, are eqully ferocious, cruel, and
obdurate. Instead of that benevolent disposition
and warm sensibility to the sufferings of others,
which marks their characters in more civilized
climes, they quaff with extatic [sic] pleasure the
blood of the innocent prisoner, writhing with agony
under the inhuman torments inflicted upon him—
whilst his convulsive groans speak music to their
souls. — Mary Kinnan (redeemed captive), 1794.25
The writings of the earlier western historians
reflect the attitudes of the frontier whites. Theodore
Roosevelt, although he recognized great diversity among
the cultures of various tribes, believed that Indians were
so inherently cruel that in the crudest of white societies
a man would be lynched for offenses which even the
children committed in Indian villages:
Not only were the Indians very terrible in battle

but they were cruel beyond all belief in victory;
and the gloomy annals of border warfare are stained
with their darkest hues because it was a war in
which helpless women and children suffered the same
hideous fate that so often befell their husbands and
fathers. It was a war waged by savages against
armed settlers, whose families followed them into
the wilderness. Such a war is inevitably bloody
and cruel; but the inhuman love of cruelty for
cruelty's sake, which marks the red Indian above
all other savages, rendered these wars more
terrible than any others. For the hideous, un-
namable, unthinkable tortures practiced by the red
25 True Narrative of the Sufferings of Mary

Kinnan, Who Was Taken Prisoner by the Shawnee Nation of
Indians on the Thirteenth Day of May, 1791, and Remained
with Them Till the Sixteenth of August, 1794 (Elizabeth
town : Printed by S. Kollock, 1795), 8-9.
35
men on their captured foes, and on their foes'

tender women and helpless children, were such
as we read of in no other struggle, . . . It
was inevitable— indeed it was in many instances
proper— that such deeds should awake in the breasts
of the whites the grimmest wildest spirit of re
venge and hatred.2o
As the white settlers completed occupation of the
eastern woodlands and began to push onto the Great Plains,
they encountered in the red man a formidable mounted enemy.
The Plains Indian’s way of life centered around warfare
and his subsistence depended largely upon pursuit of the
buffalo. The warrior societies were determined to defend
at whatever cost the lands over which they roamed. The
pioneers who wanted these lands were little concerned with
the red man's philosophy or cultural traits,2? a few of
the more forthright openly admitted that they were
occupying Indian lands because they were powerful enough
to take them. But the majority justified their actions on
26 Theodore Roosevelt, The Winning of the West

(New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1889), I, 100-101. This
is in sharp contrast to the remarks of another President,
John F. Kennedy, who wrote in an introduction to The
American Heritage Book of Indians that only through study
of the heroic past of the American Indians "can we as a
nation do what must be done if our treatment of the
American Indian is not to be marked down for all time as
a national disgrace." American Heritage Book of Indians
(New York, American Heritage Publishing Co,, 1961), 7,
27 Walter Prescott Webb, The Great Plains

(Boston: Ginn and Company, 1931), 58.
36
the ground that the murdering red devils deserved their
fate.
In the 1850's more white men wished to cross the
Plains on the way to the Pacific Coast than to settle on
the buffalo range. These travelers entertained a wide
variety of opinions and misconceptions about Plains
Indians. Some considered them to possess the natural
innocence of children, a notion which meshed with their
ideas of innate white superiority. Others derided this
idea, contending that Indians were "subject to temptation
like other men." Travelers who saw Indians hanging around
the forts begging for whiskey regarded them more as worth
less degenerates than as noble savages.2^
Before the Civil War, a movement began among both
enemies and friends of the Indian to remove him from
contact with whites. The motives of most frontiersmen
were obvious. They wanted to settle on western lands
without having to endure the threat of Indian attack. For
eastern humanitarians, removal was a means of protecting
the Indian from contact with rougher white elements until
he could be taught to cope with civilized life. The Indian
28 Walter S. Campbell, "The Plains Indian in

Literature and Life," in James F. Wilard and Colin B.
Goodykoontz (eds.), The Trans-Mississippi West (Boulder:
University of Colorado, 1930), 186.
29 Ibid., 182-85.
37
must be compelled to give up his stubborn preference for
his own way of life and to accept assimilation for his own
preservation. Disregarding striking evidence to the
contrary, they thought that acculturation, "throwing off
one way of life for another," could occur rapidly and
easily. Following the theories of John Locke, they
believed that private property, conceived in terms of an
agrarian society, was the means to social maturity. To
gain civilization the Indian merely must become a landowner
and a farmer. This could be achieved through education in
a generation or two.3° John Daniel Hammerer advocated the
teaching of agriculture and useful arts as early as 1730,31
More than a century later, Randolph B, Marcy, a United
States cavalry officer, made the same suggestion. The
Indians "have been despoiled, supplanted, and robbed of
their just and legitimate heritage, by the avaricious and
rapid encroachment of the white man," he acknowledges.
30 Pearce, The Savages of America, 47-49, 66-68,

But this optimistic view was questioned' by some humani-
tarians who began to fear that the Indian race was doomed
to extinction. Theodore Parker expressed this belief in
an address delivered before the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery
Convention on January 29, 1858: "Our fathers tried to
enslave the ferocious and unprogressive Indian. He would
not work— he would fight. He would not be enslaved— 'he
could not help being killed. The Indian will perish
utterly and soon." (As quoted in Ruchames, Racial Thought
in America, I, 370.)
31 Joan Daniel Hammerer, An Account of a Plan for

Civilizing the North American Indians (Brooklyn:'"Historical
Printing Club, 1890), 9-10.
38
"It is not at this late date in our power to atone for all
the injustice inflicted upon the red men; but it seems to
me that a wise policy would dictate almost the only recom
pense it is now in our power to make— that of introducing
among them the light of Christianity and the blessings of
civilization, with their attendant benefits of agriculture
and the arts."32
As friends of the Indian were so thoroughly con
vinced of the superiority of their civilization it did not
occur to them to consider the wishes of the Indian. They
sought to solve the Indian problem by doing away with
identifiable Indian traits. Francis Paul Prucha comments
that "with an ethnocentrism of frightening intensity, they
resolved to do away with Indianness and to preserve only
the manhood of the individual Indian." The Indian problem
would be solved by destroying the tribal structures and
completely assimilating the individual. Civilization must
be forced on the Indians if they attempted to resist. "The
communal. . . patterns of the Indians were an affront to
their sensibilities. Unless the Indian could be trained
to be selfish, they felt there was little hope of assimi
lating him."33 The slogan of the founder of the Indian
32 Randolph B. Marcy, Exploration of the Red River

of Louisiana (Washington: A. 0. P. Nicholson, Public
Printer, 1854), 108.
33 Francis Paul Prucha (ed.), Americanizing the

American Indian (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1973), 1-8.
39
school at Carlisle Institute, Captain Richard Pratt, was
"Kill the Indian and save the man." Pratt, who was such a
sincere friend of the Indian that he was called "the red

man's Moses," saw nothing worth saving in Indian culture.34
While a majority of white Americans agreed that the
Indian must accept assimilation as the only alternative to
extinction, a significant minority, including some
frontiersmen and some intellectuals, admired the Indian way
of life. Even among the more adventurous of the earliest
European colonists the wild, free life of the native
American exerted an attraction which they found difficult
to resist. Richard Slotkin finds in the reaction to the
Puritan ethos the seeds of rebellion which could make
Indian life attractive. While Puritans viewed the Indian
village as "the antithesis of the city on the hill," he
calls attention to "certain fundamental affinities between
them ," Many traits of the Indian life style "were
characterized by the overt expression of basic human
desires and states of mind that Christianity had long sup-'
pressed and concealed beneath an elaborate scrollwork of
conventional symbols and complex mores," The European
attitude toward Indian sexual freedom, for instance, re-1
inforced by racial prejudices, caused Puritans "to view
34 Elaine Goodale Eastman, Pratt, the Red Man *s

Moses (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1935),
188-89, 196.
40
the prospect of marrying an Indian or bearing Indian
children with horror and revulsion. Yet mingled with the
horror and revulsion was the recognition that the Indian
practice was somehow 'natural' and that all men, if left to
their own devices, would soon succumb to its logic and
attractiveness," Slotkin asserts.
Slotkin sees in this "logic of rebellion" a power
ful inducement to the Indianization of Puritan captives,
"To the young captives, the freedom of impulse, action,
and sexual expression that Indian society offered might
have been enough in themselves to tempt them to remain,"
he speculates. An even more compelling inducement was the
difference the captive Puritans observed in the treatment
of those prisoners who had been adopted into the tribe
from others who lived in perpetual slavery, Under such
circumstances it is not difficult to understand why "many
captives succumbed, if only temporarily, to the lure of
the wigwam." Female captives were invited to marry
warriors who would provide them food and lodging. Boys
could enjoy the thrills of the chase and, eventually, the
warpath, and as adopted sons of chiefs, they could look
forward to places of importance in the t r i b e , 35
Benjamin Franklin was among the few white men of
his time who understood the Indian-white relationship as a
35 Slotkin, Regeneration Through Violence, 123-24,
41
contest of civilizations. In a letter to a friend,
Franklin commented on the peculiar hold that Indian life
retained over whites who had experienced captivity
. . . proneness of human nature to a life of ease,

of freedom, from care and labour appears strongly
in the little success that has hitherto attended
every attempt to civilize our American Indians, in
their present way of living, almost all their wants
are supplied by the spontaneous Productions of
Nature, with the addition of very little labour, if
hunting and fishing may indeed be called labour
when Game is so plenty, they visit us frequently,
and see the advantages that Arts, Sciences, and
compact Society procure us, they are not deficient
in natural understanding and yet they have never
shown any Inclination to change their manner of
life for ours, or to learn any of our Arts; When an
Indian Child has been brought up among u s , taught
our language and habituated to our Customs, yet if
he goes to see his relations and make one Indian
Ramble with them there is no persuading him ever
to return, and that this is not natural merely as
Indians, but as men, is plain from this, that when
white persons of either sex have been taken prisoner
young by the Indians, and lived awhile among them,
tho' ransomed by their Friends, and treated with
all imaginable tenderness to prevail with them to
stay among the English, yet in a Short time they
become disgusted with our manner of life, and the
care and pains that are necessary to support it,
and take the first opportunity of escaping again
into the Woods, from whence there is no reclaim-
ing them. One instance I remember to have heard,
where the person was to be brought home to possess
a good Estate; but finding some care necessary to
keep it together, he relinquished it to a younger
brother, reserving to himself nothing but a gun
and match-Coat, with which he took his way again
to the Wilderness.36
36 Benjamin Franklin to Peter Collinson, May 9,

1753, Leonard W. Labaree, (ed.), The Papers of Benjamin
Franklin (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961), IV,
481-83.
42
Few redeemed white captives extolled the superi-
ority of the Indian life style (although many voluntarily
returned to it), but a youth who did was James Willard
Schultz, a talented writer who chose to live his life as
an Indian. Schultz, as an 18-year-old member ofa promi-
nent New York family, was preparing to enter West Point in
1877 when he went to Montana for a summer’s buffalo
hunting. He developed an affection for the wild, free
life, married a Blackfoot maiden, and remained with the
Indians until after they were driven onto the reservation:
Alas! Alas! Why could not this simple life have

continued? Why must the. , . swarms of settlers
have invaded that wonderful land, and robbed its
lords of all that made life worth living? They
knew not care, nor hunger, nor want of any kind.
From my window here I hear the roar of the great
city, and see the crowds hurrying by. , , 'bound
to the wheel.1 and there is no escape from it
except by death. And this is civilization} I,
for one, maintain that there is no, , . happiness
in it. The Indians of the plains, . , alone knew
what was perfect content and happiness, and that,
we are told, is the chief end and aim of men - to
be free from want, and worry, and care. Civiliza
tion will never furnish it, except to the very,
very few. 3*7
A. Irving Hallowell has pointed out that there were
"cases where historical circumstances combined with unusual
personality characteristics" to enable individuals to
"feel simultaneous loyalty to both Indian and white
institutions." Two prominent men of this class were
37 J. W. Schultz, My Life as an Indian (Boston:

Houghton Mifflin Company, l5T5l^ 3*6,
43
Sir William Johnson and George Croghan, both of whom
acquired tremendous influence over the Iroquois and their
neighboring tribes. Johnson was able to conduct a complex
diplomatic mission in the morning, join so wholeheartedly
in an Indian war dance in the afternoon that "his mind was
washed clean of every European thing," and resume his
diplomatic duties a few hours later as if there had been
no interruption. He and Croghan have been called the most
powerful white Indians in America.38
One of the most enthusiastic endorsements ever
given to Indian civilization by a white man was that of
Rufus Sage who went among the western Indians before their
cultural traits had been greatly modified by white contacts.
He declared that the Indian:
has a heart instinctive of more genuine good feeling

than his white neighbor - a soul of more firm in
tegrity - a spirit of more unyielding independence.
Place the white man in his condition, divested of
all the restraints of law, and unacquainted with the
learning and arts of civilized life - surrounded by
all the associations of a savage state, and the
Indian, by comparison, will then exhibit, in a more
striking light, that innate superiority he in reality
possesses.
Among the famous figures of American history who
have praised the freedom, instinctive generosity, and
38 Hallowell, "American Indians, White and Black,"

523.
39 Pufus Sage, Western Scenes and Adventure

(Philadelphia: G. D. Miller, 1655), 8f>, as quoted in
Pearce, Savages of America, 110.
44
innate moral principles of the Indian were Thomas Paine,
Henry David Thoreau, William Bartram, and Sam Houston.
Paine points to the absence of poverty in Indian society
as proof that it is a product of civilized life: "There
is not" among the Indians "any of the spectacles of human
misery which poverty and want present to our eyes in all
the towns and streets in Europe." Thoreau writes that the
Indian "stands free and unconstrained in nature," while the
white man "finds himself constrained and oppressed" in his
own house.^0 Bartram, whose travels led him into intimate
contact with the southern tribes, believed that the
Indians' high moral principles are innate. "These people,"
he observed, "are both well-tutored and civil. It is from
the most delicate sense of the honour and reputation of
their tribes and families, that their laws and customs
receive their force and energy. This is the divine
principle which influences their moral conduct, and solely
preserves their constitution and civil government in that
purity in which they are found to prevail amongst them."41
Houston, who three times abandoned white civilization to
live with the Indians (once after resigning the governor
ship of Tennessee), has depicted the delights of the
40 As quoted in Pearce, Savages of America, 14 9 ,

153.
41 William Bartram, The Travels of William Bartram
(N.p.: Macy-Masius, 1928), 45-46.
45
Cherokee camp as "the moulding period of life ,.. when
every idea of gratification fires the blood and flashes on
the fancy.... The poets of Europe ... have borrowed their
sweetest images from the wild idolatry of the Indian
maiden,"42
The delights of the company of Indian maidens ranks
among the most significant but seldom analyzed factors in
attracting men to the frontier. This attraction is noted
in the journals of fur traders and mountain men, Whenever
Europeans came in close contact with exotic races, their
first impulse was to fight the men and cohabit with the
women. In North America the fighting and cohabiting pre
vailed until the Indian nations were no longer powerful
enough to pose a threat or mysterious enough to arouse
interest,43
While American history abounds with the writings
of whites on the contest of Indian and white civilizations,
comparatively little has been recorded on the subject by
Indians. It is obvious, however, from the orations of
Indians at conferences with whites that they considered
their way of life superior. One such encounter was de
scribed by Benjamin Franklin:
42 Marquis James, The Raven (Garden City, New

York; Blue Ribbon Books, 1929), 22,
43 Walter O ’Meara, Daughters of the Country

(New York; Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968), 16,
46
The little value Indians set on what we prize so

highly under the name of Learning appears from a
pleasant passage that happened some years since
at a Treaty between one of our Colonies and the
Six Nations; when everything had been settled to
the Satisfaction of both sides, and nothing re
mained but a mutual exchange of civilities, the
English Commissioners told the Indians, they had
in their Country a College for the instruction of
Youth who were taught various languages, Arts,
and Sciences; that there was a particular founda
tion in favour of the Indians to defray the expense
of the Education of any of their sons who should
desire to take the Benefit of it. And now if the
Indians would accept of the offer, the English
would take a dozen of their brightest lads and
bring them up in the Best manner; The Indians
after consulting on the proposal replied that it
was remembered some of their Youths had been
formerly educated in that College, but it had been
observed that for a long time after they returned
to their Friends, they were absolutely good for
nothing being neither acquainted with the true
methods of killing deer, catching Beaver or sur
prizing an enemy. The Proposition however, they
looked on as a mark of kindness and good will of
the English to the Indian Nations which merited
a grateful return; and therefore if the English
Gentlemen would send a dozen or two of their
Children to Onondago the great Council would take
care of their Education, bring them up in really
what was the best manner and make men of them,44
The Indians considered themselves to be "a chosen
people" while they believed that the diversity of hair,
eyes, and facial features of the whites proved them to be
"a mongrel race." And while assessing character the
Indians felt vastly superior. They needed no Bible to
44 Benjamin Franklin to Peter Collinson, May 9,

1753, Papers of Benjamin Franklin, IV, 481-83,
47
teach them right from wrong, for the natural order of their
way of life assured them of acquiring the virtues of

bravery, hospitality and i n t e g r i t y . 45
Arthur C. Parker points out that European culture
brought to the Indian evidence of the whites' great power
based on technological achievement. Ships and firearms
staggered the natives at first sight with knowledge of
their own weakness. The Indians desired the power repre
sented by these technological achievements, but they did
not welcome all aspects of European culture. In fact,
some elements of European society repelled them.46
At a debate held at Cayuga Academy in 1845, Ely
S. Parker, later to become an Iroquois chief, an engineer,
a general in the Union Army, and United States Commissioner
of Indian Affairs, asserted that Indians contemplated a
hereafter where "the avarice of the white man will never
reach them." There they would be able once more to live
in their natural manner which consists of "bravery,
friendship or hatred, universal benevolance and hospitality
and a strict adherence to truth and duty. . . . "

Why, then, his opponent asked, did he attend a
school run by whites?
45 Randolph C. Downes, Council Fires on the Upper

Ohio (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press), 5-7,
46 Arthur C. Parker, "Philosophy of Indian

Education," 63.
48
Parker countered that white people claimed their
civilization produced happier lives than the Indians
enjoyed- He had come to Cayuga Academy to learn whether
they spoke the truth. If he failed to find the happiness
which was said to exist "in the cultivation of the liberal
arts and sciences and powers of the mind" he would "resume
the blanket, the. . . bow and arrow, the tomahawk and
scalping knife and resume savage life. . . ."47
Similar sentiments were expressed by Charles A.
Eastman, a Sioux who abandoned the life of a young warrior
to attend school. He eventually married a white woman and
became a doctor and writer but, like young Ely Parker, he
saw much in the Indian life style which was lacking in
white civilization:
When nature is at her best and provides abundantly

for the savage, it seems to me that no life is
happier than his! Food is free— lodging free—
everything free! All were alike rich in the summer,
and again, all were alike poor in the winter ....
The Indian boy enjoyed such a life as almost all
boys dream of and would choose for themselves if
they were permitted to do s o . 48
Eastman clearly perceived that the Indian could
not compete in a world controlled by advanced technology.
47 Ely S. Parker, address delivered at Cayuga

Academy, November 18, 1845, Parker Collection (American
Philosophical Society Library, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania).
A large volume of correspondence relating to the education
of various members of the Parker family is contained in
this collection.
48 Charles A. Eastman, Indian Boyhood (Boston:

Little, Brown, 1937), 16-18.
49
He dedicated himself to leading his people to accept white
civilization. But after many disillusioning experiences
with corrupt officials, he found little to praise in their
way of life:
Why do we find so much evil and wickedness practiced
by the nations composed of professedly "Christian"
individuals? The pages of history are full of
licensed murder and the plundering of weaker and
less developed peoples, and obviously the world
today has not outgrown this system. Behind the
material and intellectual splendor o f ...civiliza
tion, primitive savagery and cruelty and lust hold
sway .... The dollar is the measure of value and
might still spells right....49
Indians believed that Europeans were lacking in
bravery, dignity, and honor. White men devoted their lives
to the pursuit of material wealth. They would dishonor
themselves to obtain it, even to the point of laboring for
others. Cowardly in war, they avoided battle unless they
had overwhelming superiority in numbers, and they had no
regard for the test of individual manhood exhibited by
counting coup on an enemy. Moreover, the physical
appearance of the white man revolted the Indian. His very
color revealed a sickly constitution, and he neglected to
practice the purificatory rites which might have enabled
him to shake loose from the debilitating diseases he
carried wherever he went to infect the unfortunate Indians
49 Charles A. Eastman, From the Deep Woods to

Civilization (Boston: Little, Brown, 1916) , 194.
50
upon whom he breathed. He shrank like a weakling from
tests which proved manhood. "He was a coward who screamed
like a woman when burned."50
The one characteristic of Europeans which infuri
ated Indians most was their obsession to possess land. The
Indian believed that the earth was intended to provide
support for everyone. It was beyond their understanding
that anyone should presume to claim individual possession
of a tract of land. To see the game depleted and the
forests destroyed was enraging enough, but to see the
white man fence off private property "struck at the heart
of the Indian's conception of man's ordained place on
earth." The Indian was satisfied with every facet of his
own way of life. He was quite willing to die to preserve

it.51
50 Van Every, Forth to the Wilderness, 37-42. An

article in an American medical journal gives an interesting
theory on the extra-ordinary physical prowess which was
shared by Indians and their white captives. They per
formed remarkable feats of strength and endurance,
survived terrible wounds and prolonged periods of starva
tion, and withstood pain far more courageously than a
civilized white man could to. The fact that captive white
children developed these same characteristics proved that
heredity had not bestowed these powers on the Indians.
The author attributes them, rather, to natural selection.
Indian life was rigorous and only those white children who
could survive the same hardships as Indian children lived
to adulthood. He concludes that a child of any race
brought up in this manner would show the same biological
peculiarities. Edwin H. Ackernecht, "White Indians," 34.
51 Van Every, Forth to the Wilderness, 37-42.
51
A present day Indian activist and scholar, George
Manuel, is one of the men of his race most recently to
reassert the conviction that red people had as much to
give as to receive in the acculturation process between
Amerinds and Europeans.^2 jn his book, The Fourth World
(written with Michael Polsuns), he includes an interesting,
if argumentative, analysis of the contest of civilizations.
Noting that initial relationships between European
colonists and native peoples stimulated instant flowering
for both cultures, he asserts that a mutual dependence
developed which ameliorated problems and maintained peace.
In early relationships neither culture dominated
the other. Trade benefited both races and each civiliza
tion offered new insights which would assist the other.
But of the two, in Manuel's view, the contributions of
the Indians were of much greater benefit to mankind. These
contributions centered around the necessities of life—
food, clothing, housing, and medicine. These were pre
cisely what the newcomers needed most, for a tenth of all
Europeans were afflicted by some disability as a result of
52 Manuel grew up in British Columbia, living

with his grandfather who was a Shuswap medicine man. His
contacts with whites were few until he was compelled to
attend a missionary boarding school, thus experiencing both
civilizations before growing to manhood. He became chief
of his band, Chairman of the National Indian Advisory
Council, President of the North American Indian Brother
hood, and President of the National Indian Brotherhood of
Canada.
52
poor nutrition. In return, the European technologies
assisted both races to make better use of the Indian
contributions.
"What is important," Manuel contends, "is
creativity, imagination, and humanity." The list of Indian
innovations, as opposed to those of whites, is revealing
of a wide gulf in cultural values. The inventions of
Europeans that retain major importance are related to war-
making capabilities, while Indian contributions to techno
logical development have addressed themselves to providing
for the necessities of human survival.
In reviewing the clash of European and Indian
civilizations, Manuel observes that his people could not
withstand the economically motivated surge of the
"acquisitive society religiously committed to possessive
individualism." Unlike the Indians near the Atlantic and
Pacific Coasts, the Plains Indians did not experience an
era of mutual dependence with the westering whites. By
the time the frontiersmen pushed onto the Plains the
Indians had become an inconvenience. Manifest Destiny
dictated their eradication. They possessed nothing of
value except their land, and failure to use it for produc
tive purposes deprived them of the right to retain it. "By
this time, extermination through massacre and the delib
erate spreading of disease had become institutionalized
53
as the standard way in which European powers sought to
relate to Indian peoples," he charges.
In justifying their seizure of Indian lands, Manuel
relates, the invaders charged that the tribes were warlike
savages who lacked respect for human life. How, he
wonders, did this differ from the motivations of European
nations that made warfare the prevailing way of life? A
double standard permitted the European to label Indian
customs "savage, evil, primitive, or otherwise unaccept
able" while regarding their own aggressions as carrying
out the will of God.54
While the views of Indian men can be ascertained
from orations, the women of the tribes had no such means
of making their opinions known to whites during frontier
times and, although hundreds of Indian women lived with
white traders and trappers "according to the custom of
the country," few have recorded their impressions of white
civilization. But at least one by her actions has provided
proof of her preference for the way of life of her own
people. Medicine Snake Woman, sister of a chief of the
Blood nation, married the wealthy American Fur Company
official, Alexander Culbertson. A beautiful girl of 15,
53 George Manuel and Michael Posluns, The Fourth

World (Don Miles, Ont.: Collier-Macmillan, 1974), 6-19.
54 Ibid., 252-53.
54
she immediately became a great business asset to the
company, accompanying Culbertson on visits to remote Indian
villages and winning the warlike Blackfoot tribe over to
trade and peaceful relations. In 25 years she bore
Culbertson five children and served as a fitting hostess
at social events around Fort Union.
In 1858 Culbertson retired from the Indian trade,
moved east to Illinois, and constucted a mansion. There
Medicine Snake Woman, clad in the finest gowns imported
from Europe, entertained distinguished visitors from East
and West, "mistress of all the manners and graces of
civilized life." But each autumn she indulged in a partial
return to her Indian culture. She moved out of the mansion
and pitched a tipi on the front lawn where she lived until
the onset of winter. After ten years, Culbertson lost his
fortune and they returned to the West. There Medicine
Snake Woman abandoned civilization completely and returned
to her own people. She died on the Blood Reservation at

the age of 70.^5
Has this contest between civilizations relevance
to a study of assimilation of captives? Yes, in the sense
that it suggests a primary reason that individuals of both
races who experienced both civilizations so frequently pre
ferred the Indian life style. It would appear that Indian
55 O'Meara, Daughters of the Country, 294-99.
55
family life offered much to the fulfillment of the
individual which was lacking in the more advanced civili
zation. Charles A. Eastman believes that Indians' "love
for one another is stronger than that of any civilized
p e o p l e . "56 Thomas Wildcat Alford, a Shawnee who attended
boarding school, asserts that "Indian parents felt their
responsibility keenly and paid more attention to training
their children than does the civilized w h i t e f a m i l y . "57
And the evidence presented in narratives of cap
tivity strongly suggests that Indians loved their adopted
white children with an instinctive openness that would be
difficult for white parents to exceed. This quality was
discerned by a few white scholars, including J. Hector
St. John de Crevecoeur. He calls attention in Letters
From an American Farmer to the fact that many parents
visited the Indian towns at the conclusions of wars to
reclaim their children who were held in captivity. "To
their inexpressible sorrow, they found them so completely
Indianized, that many knew them no longer, and those
whose more advanced ages permitted them to recollect their
fathers and mothers, absolutely refused to follow them,
and ran to their adopted parents for protection against
56 Eastman, From the Deep Woods to Civilization,

6.
57 Thomas Wildcar Alford, Civilization (Normant

University of Oklahoma Press, 1936), 18-21.
the effusions of love their unhappy real parents lavished
upon them!" Crevecoeur concedes that the Indians must
possess a "social bond singularly captivating, and far
superior to anything to be boasted of among u s . " ^
Nowhere, perhaps, is this quality better illus
trated than in the account given by Thomas Wildcat Alford
of the experience of his great grandmother, a white captive
of the Shawnees: "The Scouts brought the baby to the
chief's wife, who was childless. She loved the little
white girl very dearly, and cared for her as tenderly as
she knew how to do. The child grew and played happily
with the Indian children." When the girl was 14 she, along
with numerous other captives, was given up under terms of
a treaty. "But she loved the Indians and their wild, free
way of living, and pined for her foster mother so much
that she was very unhappy when separated from her."
Seizing the first opportunity to escape, she made her way
across a trackless wilderness to rejoin the tribe.
"In the meantime the girl's foster mother, the wife
of the Indian chief, had grieved so deeply over the loss
of her daughter that it was thought she would not live.
She refused to eat food, and pined away. Finally she was
no longer able to go about, but lay on her bed in an
58 Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, Letters From

an American Farmer (New York: Dutton, 1957), 208-209.
57
exhausted conditon, seemingly waiting for her life to
leave her body. . . . " Then, suddenly, "the young girl
approached, and they were clasped in each other's arms. . .
The foster mother was no longer ill; she rapidly regained
her strength, and lived to an old age." The girl
eventually married an Indian and bore him eight c h i l d r e n . 59
Here, then, is one factor fascilitating the
assimilation of white captives. Taken at an impression
able age and cherished by Indian adopted parents, it is
understandable that many of them lost the desire to return
to the grinding toil of a white family on the frontier.
A second factor, closely related to the first,
was the opportunity for captives to achieve positions of
great influence and authority in tribal affairs. "The
Indian institution of adoption entailed the fullest kind
of socialization of the white child," A. Irving Hallowell
explains. "It prepared him for all the roles which were
open to him in Indian society." Narratives of captivity
describe a surprising number of cases in which captives
became chiefs. Some of their descendants are tribal
leaders to this day. Almost one third of the captives
known to Swanton became chiefs or wives of chiefs. This
fact "is one indication of the complete receptiveness of
these cultures to transculturites. This basic
59 Alford, Civilization, 1-3.
58
receptiveness was mediated to a large degree by the nature
of their social organization and kinship structure."
While pointing out that Indians had no such opportunity
to become leaders in white society, Hallowell asserts that
Indian receptiveness of persons of other cultures smoothed
the way for white adults as well as children to cross over
in the contest of civilization.®0
60 Hallowell, "American Indians, White and

Black," 527.
CHAPTER III
THE CULTURAL MILIEU FROM WHICH THEY CAME
Some anthropologists and historians believe that
pre-existing conditions determined whether a white captive
readily adopted or strongly resisted the Indian way of
life. Such characteristics as race, intelligence, up
bringing and religious training have been suggested as
determinants of the rate and degree of assimilation. It
is the purpose of this chapter to analyze case studies in
search of correlations between the captive's original
cultural milieu and the extent of his adoption of the
Indian way of life.
A relative of Frances Slocum (the famous "lost
sister of Wyoming") has suggested that heredity was the
determining factor in assimilation. In an address to the
Anthropology Section of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science, Charles E. Slocum claimed that her
Quaker inheritance enabled Frances to resist the savage
practices of her captors and to influence them to improve
their way of life. He said that Frances' captivity was
unique in that her ancestors were not typical "rough and
ready" frontier people. She was a "delicate, timid, female
59
60
child rudely transferred from a quiet family in the Society
of Friends to a savage environment among hideous strangers
in time of war."-*- The scenes which she witnessed during
her capture "were so savage and shocking as to soon obscure
all memory of details of her environment and a brief
period of parental training ... and to leave her as a
foundation for a worthy future character only the influence
of heredity." This heritage enabled her to avoid adopting
the more savage traits of Indian culture and to acquire
only the supportive characteristics of tribal life. "The
kindly disposition of her Quaker ancestors, the good-will-
to-all-persons, the for-generations-inbred considerate mood
governing expressions and actions, curbing and disciplining
impulse to the enthronement of reason— all had left an
indelible impress on her psychic life."2
If the circumstances of this case support Slocum’s
theory, then Frances' experiences may provide evidence that
inherent moral qualities strongly influence assimilation.
If Frances had completely forgotten her earlier environ
ment and had yet resisted the adoption of traits common to
females among her captors, such biologically transmitted
precepts may have been responsible. The evidence indicates,
1 Charles Elihu Slocum, History of Frances Slocum

(Defiance, Ohio: Charles E. Slocum, 1908TT unpaged
preface.
2 Ibid., 36-37.
61
however, that she retained remarkably vivid recollections
of her life before captivity. After living almost 70 years
with the Indians, she was able to describe the house in
which the family lived before moving to the Wyoming Valley
and she remembered the great heap of money counted out on
the table when her father sold the property.3
Although there is no evidence to suggest that
heredity created cultural differences between Frances and
her Indian companions, her life style did vary from theirs
in several details. After settling on a reservation she
became wealthy by Indian standards, lived in a comfortable
home and kept it spotlessly clean. She ate off dishes
which she washed immediately after the meal. When visitors
remarked on the practice, she credited her white mother
with having trained her in habits of cleanliness.^ Her
early parental training, brief as it was, enabled her to
retain cultural characteristics which differed from the
practices of her adopted people.
Did her way of life influence the Indians to
improve theirs? There is little evidence to support the
claim that it did. Her neighbors respected her as an in
fluential woman, but this might be expected of a wealthy
widow of a chief. It is probable that her husband's
3 George Peck, Wyoming (New York: Harper &

Brothers, 1858), 270-74.
4 Ibid., 267-68.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission
62
deafness rather than her salutary influence prevented him
from taking the warpath. Other members of her Indian
family died violently, for one son-in-law was killed in a
drunken brawl and a rejected suitor murdered her grand
daughter .5
Slocum's belief in the uniqueness among Indian
captives of his relative's background is not supported by
the facts. An appreciable number of captives had a genteel
ancestry. However, his theory that captives reared in
sheltered surroundings reacted differently to primitive
conditions from those of "common" frontier stock merits
investigation. The following case studies relate to female
captives removed from well educated families. If such
captives were more successful than others in resisting
assimilation, Slocum's claims for the importance of genteel
ancestry as a determinant of assimilation may well be
correct.
Captivity of Frances Slocum
Frances Slocum was captured by Delaware Indians in
the Wyoming Valley of Pennsylvania on November 2, 1778.
Five years old at the time of her abduction, she remained
with the Indians 68 years. Her brothers ranged the wilder
ness in a futile search for her, and her mother offered
5 Ibid., 270-74.
large rewards for her return. Many years passed before
they abandoned the quest. Then, in 1837, a white man who
could speak the Miami language visited an Indian home near
the Wabash River and discovered that the head of the family
was a white woman. She told him that her name was Slocum.
She had never revealed her identity to any other visitor
because of her fear that white relatives would compel her
to abandon her Indian family. Now an old woman, she was
willing for her white relatives, if any still lived, to
know of her whereabouts.
As soon as they heard the astounding news, Prances
Slocum's brothers hurried to her wilderness home. They
urged her to return with them to Pennsylvania, if not to
stay, at least for a visit. But she declined:
I cannot. I cannot. I am an old tree. I cannot

move about. I was a sapling when they took me
away. It is all gone past. I am afraid I should
die and never come back. I am happy here. I
shall die here and lie in that grave-yard, and
they will raise the pole at my grave with the
white flag on it, and the Great Spirit will know
where to find me. I should not be happy with my
white relatives. I am glad enough to see them,
but I cannot go. I cannot go. I have done.®
Frances gave a brief account of her captivity to
her brother, Joseph, in which she emphasized the kind treat
ment that she had received. Her first Indian home was that
of Chief Tack-horse. "Early one morning Tack-horse took
me and dressed my hair in the Indian fashion, and painted
6 Ibid., 262.
64
my face,” she related. "He then dressed me up, and put on
me beautiful wampum, and made me look very fine.”^ Frances
recalled that the wampum pleased her greatly. This may

have been her first step toward Indianization, to be
followed in a short time by the crucial event of adoption:
I was now adopted by Tack-horse and his wife in the

place of one they had lost a short time before, and
they gave me her name. When the Indians lose a
child, they often adopt someone in its place, and
treat that one in all respects as their own. This
is the reason why they so often carry off the
children of white people.®
By the time she was thirteen, Frances had come to
regard the Indians as her people and to dread the possi
bility of recapture by the whites. Upon reaching puberty
it seemed only natural for her to marry an Indian:
I was always treated kindly by the Delawares; and

while I lived with them I was married to a Delaware
by the name of Little Turtle. He afterward left me
and went west of the Mississippi. I would not go
with him. My old mother stayed here, and I chose to
stay with her. My adopted father could talk
English, and so could I while he lived. It has now
been a long time since I forgot it all.®
The failure of Frances' first marriage did not deter
her from forming a second Indian union. She lived with the
Deaf Man, a Miami chief, until his death many years later.
They had four children. A few years after Frances rejected
the chance to rejoin her white relatives, the Government
compelled the Miamis to move west of the Mississippi.
Joseph Slocum successfully petitioned Congress to grant his
7 Ibid., 274-76. 8 Ibid., 276. 9 Ibid., 279.
65
sister permission to remain on her land. But Frances
became despondent after the Indian removal. Although her
widowed daughter remained with her, she felt surrounded
by an utterly foreign way of life. She contrasted the
communal tribal life style with the vices and thirst for
gain of backwoods neighbors who coveted the square mile
that Congress had given her. When she became ill she
refused medical aid, lamenting that as her people had been
driven away and their lands given to greedy strangers, she
had lost the desire to live. She died on March 9, 1847 .
Captivity of Eunice Williams
Eunice Williams, daughter of the Reverend John
Williams, was a product of a refined environment and a
strict Puritan upbringing.H Her case has many similari
ties to that of Frances Slocum, such as capture during
early childhood, determination to remain with the Indians,
and a desire to renew acquaintanceship with white rela
tives. But there were significant differences, including
conversion to another Christian faith rather than accep
tance of Indian religion. Among factors which make her
case unusual are the importance of her family in colonial
10 Ibid., 282-83.
11 John Williams, The Redeemed Captive Returning

to Zion (Northampton: Hopkins, Bridgman, and Company,
1853), 130.
66
affairs, her status as a Puritan minister's daughter, and
the efforts of both French and English governors to redeem
her.
John Williams, pastor of the Deerfield,
Massachusetts, church, had been a school teacher before
entering the ministry. He had studied at the Roxbury Latin
School and obtained a B. A. degree from Harvard College. A
student of both literature and science, he had collaborated
with Cotton Mather in some of his writings. Mrs. Williams,
a member of one of the most cultured and influential
families of New England, was the daughter of the Reverend
Eleazar Mather and the granddaughter of Richard Mather.I2
Iroquois warriors abducted the Williams family
during a massive raid on Deerfield in 1704. They mas
sacred Mrs. Williams and several of her children. Eunice,
her father, and the remaining children, along with more
than 100 other Deerfield captives, were taken by the
Iroquois to Canada. After arriving there the Indians, as
usual, divided the prisoners among their villages and
subsequently sold many of them to French families. Eight-
year-old Eunice was held at a Mohawk village in the
vicinity of a Jesuit mission. John was held by the French
at Fort Chambly, some distance away.
12 Raymond P. Stearns, "John Williams," Allen

Johnson and Dumas Malone (eds.), Dictionary of American
Biography (20 Vols. & 3 Supps. New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons, 1928-1958), XX, 270.
67
All of the Deerfield captives were urged by the
Indians and French to become converts to Catholicism. John
Williams, even in captivity, managed to counteract this
persuasion among many of the scattered members of his
flock. Even after the priests had him removed to
Chateauviche he managed to write to his son, Samuel, be
rating him for accepting Jesuit teaching, and persuading
him to return to Massachusetts when given the opportunity.
John Williams exerted himself to persuade Eunice
to cling to her religion and civilization. He appealed to
Philippe de Rigaud de Vaudreuil, Governor General of New
France, for permission to visit his daughter, and it was
granted. On his first visit he was encouraged to observe
that she remembered her Puritan prayers. On his next
visit, however, he realized that the Jesuit missionaries
and Indians had gained her allegiance. Vaudreuil, who
sincerely sympathized with Williams, offered to purchase
the child or to obtain an Iroquois girl held captive by an
enemy tribe in exchange for her release. Although the
Governor was a hero to the Indians because of his record
as their wartime ally, the Mohawks refused to part with
her.13
In October, 1706, John Williams and 56 other
captives gained their freedom as a result of negotiations
13 Williams, The Redeemed Captive Returning to

Zion, 10-26, 34-37, 90, 130.
68
by Joseph Dudley, Captain General and Governor of
Massachusetts. Dudley's envoys tried to obtain the release
of the other captives, but Eunice and many other children
resolutely refused to return to Deerfield. These captives
had forgotten the English language, accepted the Catholic
religion, and adopted the Iroquois life style.
But John Williams still hoped to redeem his child.
Six years after his release, he sent John Schuyler, a
member of a wealthy and influential New York family, to
Canada to offer a large ransom for her. Schuyler learned
that Eunice had recently married an Indian. The priest
who performed the ceremony had protested because of her
youth, but Eunice had threatened to live out of wedlock
with the warrior and the Jesuit had reluctantly married
them.
As long as he lived, John Williams refused to
accept the fact that his daughter had abandoned her
religion and civilization. In 1714 he returned to Montreal
for a last attempt to redeem her, but wrote as follows of
his lack of success:

And she is yet obstinately resolved to live and
die here, and will not so much as give me one
pleasant look. It's beyond my ability . . . to
make you understand how ours are besotted. The
English are so naturalized to the customs and
manners of the French and Indians and have for
gotten the English tongue, and are so many of them
married or gotten into nunneries . . . that I think
it would be far easier to gain twice the number of
French and Indians to go with us than English.14
While the citizens of Deerfield were concerned
about the welfare of all of their missing children, the
passage of time obliterated their hope of redeeming the
captives. But Eunice continued to occupy the prayers of
the congregation for many years. Her case was unique.
The daughter of a divine, she must be rescued from the
heresy of Catholicism and restored to the true religion.
John Williams' sons and grandsons followed him into the
ministry and after his death they kept up his practice of
public prayer for Eunice's salvation. The futility of
their efforts is revealed by a sermon preached by Reverend
Solomon Williams in 1741 describing a visit that Eunice
and her Indian husband had made to their Deerfield rela-
tives. Offered a large tract of land to remain, Eunice
refused on the ground that it would endanger her soul.
She remained true to that conviction during the remainder
of her long life.15
The Eunice Williams captivity provides an excellent
opportunity to consider the effects of pre-captivity
nurture upon assimilation. It is evident that she enjoyed
14 Emma Lewis Coleman, New England Captives

Carried to Canada (Portland, Me.: Southworth Press, 1925),
II, 44-53.
15 Williams, The Redeemed Captive, 170-72.
70
the love of a close-knit and cultured family and that her
relatives and neighbors would have been overjoyed by her
return even after she had committed two almost unpardon
able sins - conversion to Catholicism and marriage to an
Indian. Yet these family and religious ties were not
strong enough to withstand the forces of assimilation.
Captivity of Mary Boyeau
Mary Boyeau, like Prances Slocum and Eunice
Williams, belonged to a well educated family. Her father
was a scientist who moved from New York to Spirit Lake,
Minnesota, to study the flora and fauna of that frontier
region. His use of microscopes aroused the suspicions of
the Sioux, and Inkpaduta's warriors made him one of their
first victims during the Spirit Lake Massacre of 1857. The
raiders carried several women and girls into captivity,
including Mary and her sister.
Mary's case is included in this study because of
the opportunity it affords to compare the assimilation of
females of similar backgrounds under contrasting captivity
conditions. Like Frances and Eunice, she acquired an
Indian husband and, so far as is known, she remained with
her captors as long as she lived. There were crucial
differences in the women's experiences, however, for
Frances and Eunice were captured during the eighteenth
century by eastern woodland tribes and reared with
71
kindness. They entered into Indian marriages as a natural
event in a culture which they had accepted as their own.
Mary was captured a century later by a Plains tribe,
treated brutally, and compelled to marry a warrior who
already had a wife. The foregoing cases indicate that a
refined pre-captivity milieu provided no deterrent to
assimilation when the captive received kind treatment.
The question arises as to whether mistreatment of a
cultured female captive would result in preventing or re
tarding assimilation.
In 1864 Mary met Fanny Kelly, a young married
woman who had been captured a few months earlier. The
prisoners were permitted to converse on occasion and
Fanny, redeemed after a comparatively brief captivity,
reported that Mary's life with the Sioux seemed even more
intolerable than her own. Far from accepting Indian
civilization, the young woman preferred death to captivity.
"From a life like mine death is an escape and I long to
lie down and die, if God's mercy will permit me to escape
from this hopeless imprisonment," Mary had insisted.
Misery and consciousness of her own degraded life

seemed to have made this poor creature desperate. . .
she had never attempted to escape, nor did she
seem to think it was possible to get away from her
present life, so deep was the despair into which
long continued suffering had plunged her.16
16 Fanny Kelly, Narrative of My Captivity Among

the Sioux Indians (Hartford: Mutual Publishing Company,
1872), 112-13.
On the basis of these three cases, it seems
improbable that family backgrounds before captivity deter
mined acceptance or rejection of Indian culture. On the
contrary, preliminary investigation indicates that con
ditions prevailing during captivity were more important
than pre-captivity nurture in influencing assimilation.
More evidence is needed, however, before the original
cultural milieu can be discarded as an important deter
minant.
Experiences of Amanda Barber
Amanda Barber was a young woman who experienced
many of the same hardships as Mary Boyeau. In one respect
her experiences were unique, however, for she joined the
Indians voluntarily. A well educated and deeply religious
person, she was employed as a Federal government clerk
when a delegation of Sioux chiefs visited the nation's
capital in 1867. Sincerely interested in the welfare of
Indians and attracted by what she had read of the romance
of primitive life, she attached herself to a young chief,
Squatting Bear, offering to marry him and to serve his
nation as a teacher and missionary. Although the New York
Times published an account of her experiences which
characterized her offer as "a fit of enthusiasm or
insanity," she demonstrated her sincerity by accompanying
the Indians when they returned to Dakota Territory.
Miss Barber received a rude shock upon her arrival
at the Sioux village, for only then did she learn that
Squatting Bear already had two wives. These women abused
her, assigned all of the hardest chores to her, and lived
in such squalor that the realities of her situation rapidly
supplanted her romantic visions of the Indian life style.
Still she attempted to fulfill her duties as missionary
and teacher, but with little success as the Sioux reacted
to her efforts with contempt and indifference.
Although Amanda joined the Indians voluntarily,
her status soon changed to that of a captive. After
witnessing the burning of three white captives, she began
to seek an opportunity to escape, but as Squatting Bear
had already murdered one of his wives, she feared that
recapture would result in her death. On the annual
buffalo hunt she rode hundreds of miles tied on the back
of a half-wild pony. This painful experience convinced
her that such a life was intolerable. Finally, in despera
tion, she spurred her pony into a ravine in a hopeless
escape attempt. Squatting Bear overtook her and almost
beat her to death.
In 1870 Squatting Bear traded Miss Barber to a
Cheyenne chief for three ponies. She had an easier life
with the Cheyennes and remained with them two years, but
she refused to adopt their cultural traits. In 1872 she
escaped to Fort Benton. The only evidence of assimilation
74
was her knowledge of Indian l a n g u a g e . ^ Thus, for the
young woman who had sought the opportunity to live as an
Indian, adjustment to the life style of her chosen people
proved to be impossible.
In analyzing the cases of these four females, all
products of genteel families, no evidence has been found
to substantiate the theory that the pre-captivity cultural
milieu played an appreciable role in resistance to assimi
lation. While Eunice Williams and Prances Slocum lived
contentedly to old age with their captors, Mary Boyeau
wished for death and Amanda Barber risked death to escape.
The absence of significant correlation between nurture and
Indianization in these and other cases indicates that
factors aside from superior familial characteristics,
refined upbringing, good education, or religious training
acted as determinants in assimilation.
Still to be considered is the theory that racial
or national origins influenced the degree of Indianization.
Carl Coke Rister, a frontier historian who has written
extensively about Indian warfare in the Southwest, asserts
that it was easier for captive Mexicans than for Anglo-
Americans to adapt to the Indian way of life. The typical
Mexican was poor and degraded. "He must take no great
cultural step, therefore, in going from the life he had
17 Uew York Times, July 4, 1872, p. 2.
lived to that required by his captors." As evidence of
this fact Rister points out that 'Indianized' Mexicans were
much more common among Apaches, Comanches, and Kiowas than
were Anglo-Americans.
Original sources do indicate that Mexican captives
frequently became completely assimilated. Thomas
Fitzpatrick, veteran scout and Kiowa Indian agent, reported
that Mexican males, when adopted into the tribe, became
skillful marauders, while females frequently married
I n d i a n s . But is there evidence that captives of other
ethnic origins were more successful in resisting assimi
lation? A majority of captives were taken from one of
three stocks— Anglo-American, German-American, or Mexican.
The evidence does not suggest that the ethnic origins of
captives had much to do with the degree to which they were
or were not assimilated by their captors. Several repre
sentative case studies should make the point clear.
Captivity of Clinton Smith
Clinton Smith, the 11 year-old son of an Anglo-
Saxon ranch family, was captured by Comanche Indians near
Dripping Springs, Texas, on March 3, 1869. His younger
18 Rister, Border Captives, 9, 58-59.
19 Thomas Fitzpatrick, Report, as quoted in James

Mooney, "Calendar History of the Kiowa Indians," Bureau
of American Ethnology Annual Report, 17th (Washington,
Government Printing Office, 1898), 174.
76
brother, Jeff, was taken at the same time. Clinton re
mained in captivity for almost four years and Jeff about
six years. Both boys became thoroughly Indianized. After
redemption they experienced a great deal of difficulty in
readjusting to the white man's way of life. Eventually
they married and became respected ranchers, but they re
tained a strong affection for their Indian friends. Both
of them have written accounts of their experiences which
reveal interesting aspects of assimilation.
The band that captured the Smith boys consisted of
Comanches and Lipans. The Comanches adopted Clinton soon
after reaching their village. By the spring of 1870 he
had become a "white Indian" even though he had been in
captivity only a year. He enjoyed swimming, roping
buffalo calves, and riding wild horses with the Indian boys
and regarded himself as one of them.
During their wanderings, the band fell in with
Geronimo's Apaches, and the fierce Chiricahua traded the
Comanches a horse and arms and ammunition for Jeff. They
tied the youngster so that he could not move and branded
him like a calf. In February 1871 the tribes went their
separate ways and the boys parted with great sorrow.
In the spring of 1871, Clinton, then 13, went on
a raid into Texas. He met other captives and all of the
boys his age were compelled to accompany war parties. At
first the warriors used them to hold the horses. After
77
some experience, they became full-fledged warriors them
selves. Clinton was compelled by his chief to do his
share of the fighting. One night he went on a horse
stealing raid right into a Texas town. Lamps were burning
and Clinton could have escaped, but he had come to con
sider the Comanches to be his own people and he had no
desire to leave them.

A year or two later the Comanche band camped with
Geronimo's Apaches and Clinton enjoyed a brief reunion with
his brother. By that time Jeff had almost entirely for
gotten the English language. He seemed unable to recall
who he was, but he remembered Clinton.
One of Clinton's fellow captives named Adolph Korn,
a German boy who had been held for eight or nine years,
became one of the most skillful warriors in the band.
Once they made a night foray into a little town. Although
lights were still burning and the Indians refused to follow,
Adolph and Clinton entered the stables and led the horses
out one by one.

On September 20, 1372, General Ranald McKenzie
caught up with the Comanches near the Red River and the
startled Indians fled in all directions. But one warrior
did not run--the German boy, Adolph Korn. He hid in the
brush and shot an arrow through the lapel of General
McKenzie's coat, narrowly missing the skin. Many squaws
and Indian children were killed during the attack and
78
Clinton burned with hatred against his own race. That
night he joined in a desperate attack on the troops which
enabled some of the prisoners to escape. During the next
few months the Comanches hit the frontier hard. Clinton
saw so many people massacred that he considered killing a
person "of no more consequence than killing a cow."
Pressure from troops finally forced the band onto
the reservation at Fort Sill. Clinton refused to return
to the white people until forcibly delivered to the fort
by the Indians. Along with eight other captives^0 he
remained locked in the guardhouse to prevent his running
away.
After identification, Clinton Smith and Adolph
Korn rode to San Antonio under troop escort. When they
made camp the first night, they tried to steal horses and
escape. The soldiers guarded them closely during the rest
of the trip and delivered them to Adolph Korn's father,
the owner of the largest candy store in San Antonio. The
German boy was absolutely uncontrollable. He kept getting
into trouble and urged Clinton to run away with him. Then
16 years old, he had been with the Indians half of his
life. A short time after his release he stole a horse and
rejoined the Comanches.
20 One of these captives was a sixteen-year-old

girl with a half-Indian baby. She had forgotten her name
and no one ever reclaimed her.
Clinton, too, had become almost completely assimi
lated. He found it difficult to resume life as a white
boy, especially after his brother was reclaimed from
Geronimo. After years of kind treatment, however, he
began to feel shame and remorse for having killed so many
of his own people. In later life he still felt defensive
when asked about his life as an Indian, asserting that he
had "without choice, absorbed the customs and manners of
a savage tribe."2!
It is evident from Clinton's narrative that both
Anglo-American and German-American captives became
thoroughly Indianized. In this case study Clinton re
adjusted to white civilization with great difficulty while
Adolph Korn rejected it entirely. Is this an indication
that Germans were easier than other captives to assimilate
The following case study of a German-American who became
a "white Indian" warrior may be helpful in considering
this possibility.
Captivity of Herman Lehmann
Herman Lehmann was born of German parents on June
5, 1859. Captured by Apaches in May 1870 in Gillespie
County, Texas, he lived with them four years. Then he
21 Clinton L. Smith, The Boy Captives (Hackberry,

Texas: Frontier Times, 1927), 30-57, 67-71, 112, 116-40,
152, 162, 168-69, 177-79.
killed an Apache medicine man, fled to the Comanches, and
was adopted into that tribe. He remained with the
Comanches until his restoration to the whites, a fully
grown man and a fearsome warrior, probably having partici
pated in as many raids against the whites as did any other
Indianized Texas captive.
Upon reaching the Apache village, Herman withstood
torture so bravely that his captors considered him to be
warrior timber. Once he escaped but was recaptured and
whipped. Then an Indian boy taught him the Apache language
and showed him how to hunt with a b o w . 22 He herded the
horses and served Chief Carnoviste: "He stole me, so I
belonged to him. I would get his horse, bring his food,
light his pipe, bathe his feet, paint his skin, tighten
the spikes on his arrows, catch lice on his head and body,
and attend to what other chores he required, some not
decent to put in his b o o k . "23
When he had been with the Apaches about a year, he
participated in the first of many raids. The war party
attacked a family traveling in a wagon, killing and
scalping the parents and a baby, and capturing a boy of
six and a girl of eight. The children cried constantly
22 Herman Lehmann, Nine Years With the Indians

(Austin: Von Boeckmann-Jones Co., 1927), 1, 13-20.
23 Ibid., 24.
and refused to eat, so the Indians, considering them unfit
for adoption, killed them and hung their bodies on a tree
as food for the vultures.2^

One of the most successful strategies of Indians
in inducing a captive to accept their way of life was to
convince him that he no longer had a white family. The
Apaches were able to deceive Herman in this way because
his family had temporarily abandoned their ranch and moved
to safety in East Texas. The Indians took him within sight
of his former home, and when he saw that it was deserted
they told him that they had killed his family. Feeling
himself alone in the world except for the Indians, he
began to enjoy his new way of life. In a short time he
became proficient in Indian activities and considered him
self superior to boys he had once feared.25
When the Apaches temporarily went on the reserva
tion, only two years after Herman's capture, he hid from
the soldiers. During an outbreak a short time later, he
participated in a fight with Texas Rangers. Recognized
as white, he had only to give himself up, as a Mexican
24 Lehmann, Nine Years With the Indians, 1,

13-18, 33-41.
25 A. C. Greene, The Last Captive (Austin: Encino

Press, 1972), 24. Greene believes that Herman's acceptance
of the lie about the death of his parents was of paramount
importance in turning a "shy, introverted white captive"
into "a cocky, capable Indian."
82
captive did, by running toward the Rangers with his hands
lifted high. But Lehmann fought until the Rangers killed
his horse, pinning him to the ground. When the Rangers
rode up, he feigned death. In a moment they spurred on in
pursuit of the Indians. Then he freed himself and hid in
the brush. Later the Rangers returned and searched for
him, passing within a few feet of his hiding place. After
they abandoned the search, he took up the Indians' trail.
He walked 300 miles and almost starved to death in order
to rejoin the t r i b e . 26
Five years after his capture, Herman killed a
medicine man in a drunken brawl and fled from the Apaches
to join the Comanches. "I told them," he said, "that I
was a white man by birth but an Indian by adoption; that
I loved the Indian and hated the white man; that on my
shield were the scalps of whites whom I had killed in
battle, and that I was regarded by my race as a mortal
e n e m y . "27 Adopted by a Comanche family, Lehmann remained
with the tribe four years, raiding most of the time,
killing settlers and collecting their scalps.

Like several other captives Lehmann became
Indianized more completely as a result of the brutality
practiced by white soldiers against his adopted people.
26 Lehmann, Nine Years With the Indians, 98-102.
27 Ibid., 143-44.
The United States Cavalry and Tonkaway Indian scouts
attacked the Comanche camp while the warriors were away on
a horse stealing raid. They killed and mutilated five
squaws. Lehmann vowed to kill and mutilate twice that
number of white w o m e n . 28
But the period in which the Indian could hold his
own against troops was rapidly closing. Gradually the
soldiers gained control over the South Plains as white
buffalo hunters eliminated the Indians' food supply. Faced
with starvation, Chief Quanah, son of the famous captive,
Cynthia Ann Parker, led the Comanches to the reservation.
One of the last to go in, Lehmann spent his final years
among the Indians as an adopted member of Quanah's family.
"Quanah told me my mother and folks were still alive, and
asked me if I wanted to go to them," he recalled. "I told
him no; that the Indians were my people. ..."
Finally, under Quanah's persuasion, Lehmann agreed
to go home, the last captive to be released by the
Comanches. He made the trip from Fort Sill, Oklahoma, to
Loyal Valley, Texas, under military guard. During his
first year of redemption it was necessary to watch him
constantly to prevent his running away. But in time he
ceased longing for the wild Comanche ways, settled down
with a wife, and raised a family.29
28 Ibid., 185-86. 29 Ibid., 186-215.
Unlike Clinton Smith, Herman appears to have
experienced little remorse for having killed whites. He
accepted the values and the practices of the Comanche
culture, including the dominant place of warfare, as being
no less valid than those traits of: the white culture. Like
few other captives he bridged the gap between civiliza
tions .
Captivity of Andres Martinez
Andres Martinez, a Mexican-American, was captured
by Mescalero Apaches on October 6, 1866, near Las Vegas,
New Mexico. About eight years old when taken, he remained
in captivity almost 20 years. After hostilities ended he
returned to his Mexican family, but in a short time he
decided that he belonged with the Indians and went back
to the reservation. Eventually, he became an interpreter
and teacher in a mission school. At that time he told the
story of his captivity to the Reverend J. J. Methvin,
missionary to the wild tribes in the Indian Territory.
Andres' original captors kept him only a short
time before trading him to another Apache band for a supply
of liquor. His new masters beat and abused him until two
Kiowa warriors, one of whom was a Mexican captive, took
him away from them. The other Kiowa warrior, Heap-o1-Bears,
adopted him as a son. The Kiowas treated him kindly.
with permission o f the oopyright owner. Further reproduotion prohibited without permission.
A change from cruelty to kindness usually facili
tated assimilation, and when the Kiowas returned to their
homeland on the Wichita, Andres adopted the Indian life

style rapidly. When Heap-o1-Bears returned from a raid
with two scalps, the boy joined in the scalp dance with
wild delight. Within five years the captive had become
so completely Indianized that he asked permission to go
on raids.
As a young warrior Andres married a Kiowa girl,
but she ran away with another Indian. In a short time he
married again, only to put her away as they did not get
along. A year later he married a third time and lived
happily with this wife until she died.
After Andres had lived as an Indian for almost 20
years, he settled down with his band on the reservation.
The Indian agent trained him as a blacksmith and his
contacts with whites led him to recall the circumstances
of his early life. He went home to New Mexico for four
years and then returned to the Indians, as "his interests
were all identified with the Kiowas, and he had learned

to love them."30
In analyzing the experiences of Anglo-American,
German-American, and Mexican male captives, no
30 J. J. Methvin, Andele, or the Mexican - Kiowa

Captive (Anadarko, Oklahoma: Plummer Printing Company,
1927), 11-47, 58, 69, 109-17, 152-63, 169-78.
86
corroboration is found for Carl Coke Rister's theory that
Mexicans are easier to assimilate than others. Among the
three cases presented in this chapter no indication is
given that Andres Martinez was more completely Indianized
than either Clinton Smith or Herman Lehmann. Indeed he
seems to have made fewer raids against whites than they
did. When additional cases are considered, however, it is
apparent that many Mexicans did become "white Indians."
Preliminary research indicates that other factors
being equal, male captives regardless of race or national
origin, would adjust to Indian civilization in much the
same way. In the instances of Clinton Smith, Herman
Lehmann, and Andres Martinez, variables aside from
national origin were at a minimum. All three were
captured in the same region during the same decade and
they underwent many similar experiences. The question
arises as to whether the results would have been the same
if variables of sex, chronology, or geography had been
introduced. In an attempt to answer this question, case
studies of three female captives will be presented: an
Anglo-American reared by a tribe with an advanced Indian
civilization during the eighteenth century, a German at
about the same time by a less advanced but still sedentary
woodland tribe, and a Mexican by a wandering Plains tribe
a century later. If no significant difference can be
87
detected in these and other cases, it would appear that
national origins played an insignificant, if any, role in
the Indianization of captives.
Captivity of Mary Jemison
Mary Jemison was born on shipboard about 1743.
Her parents were of Scotch-Irish ancestry, that hardy
breed of land-seekers who left an indelible mark on the
American frontier. The family settled in the Pennsylvania
wilderness. In 1755 the French and Indian War brought
devastation to their settlement. A war party captured the
girl, and she lived the remainder of her life (75 years)
as an Indian maiden and squaw. Her narrative of captivity
provides one of the best sources available for tracing the
course of white assimilation into Indian culture.
Mary was fortunate in being reared by two kind
Indian sisters. Upon her arrival at Fort Pitt she
experienced a great sense of relief when her captors gave
her to two "pleasant looking" Seneca squaws. The squaws
took her to their village where they dressed her in the
"finest Indian style." Then she underwent an adoption
ceremony in which the two women welcomed her as a
sister— a replacement for a relative who had died. "I
was ever considered and treated by them as a real sister,
88
the same as though I had been born of their mother," she
insisted.31
After adoption Mary had an easy life and was
employed primarily in taking care of children. But still
she was miserable at first, longing for the opportunity to
return to her white family. Her adopted sisters gradually
weaned her away from these feelings, and through kindness,
as well as informal instruction in Indian culture, they
began the process which led to assimilation:
My sisters were diligent in teaching me their

language; and to their great satisfaction I soon
learned so that I could understand it readily,
and speak it fluently. I was very fortunate in
falling into their hands; for they were kind,
good natured women; peaceable and mild in their
disposition; temperate and decent in their habits,
and very tender and gentle towards me. I have
great reason to respect them, though they have
been dead a great number of y e a r s . 32
Within a year Mary's assimilation was far ad
vanced, but it received a temporary reversal the first
time she visited a white settlement. Her adopted sisters
took her to Fort Pitt and the white people there began to
question her about the circumstances of her captivity.
Instantly the desire was rekindled to return to white
civilization. Her adopted sisters perceived the change in
her attitude and, realizing their mistake, quickly took
31 Mary Jemison, A Narrative of the Life of

Mrs. Mary Jemison (New York: Random House, 1929), 40-47.
32 Ibid., 48.
89
her back to their village. "My sudden departure... seemed
like a second captivity," she said, "and for a long time
I brooded the thoughts of my miserable situation.... Time,
the destroyer of every affection, wore away my unpleasant
feelings, and I became as contented as before."33
Mary's adopted sisters continued to instruct her
in the Iroquois life style until her assimilation was
virtually complete. She lived comfortably in the communal
long house until they decided that she was old enough to
marry. Then they informed her that arrangements had been
made for her to marry a warrior named Sheninjee. This
was unwelcome news to the young captive, but it did not
occur to her to oppose their wishes. She went to
Sheninjee with a great deal of reluctance and they "were
married according to Indian custom."
Mary's account of her adjustment to marriage
provides one of the best insights available into the kind
of relationship which could develop between a white woman
and an Indian husband. She had almost attained the age of
puberty at the time of her capture and, thus, had lived
with her family long enough to absorb some of the usual
revulsion at the thought of sexual union between white
women and Indian men. It is evident, however, that she
33 Ibid., 50-51.
90
had become sufficiently assimilated to enable her to
overcome those prejudices and to develop feelings of deep
affection and respect:
Sheninjee was a noble man? large in stature?

elegant in his appearance? generous in his
conduct? courageous in war? a friend to peace,
and a great lover of justice. He supported
a degree of dignity far above his rank, and
merited and received the confidence and friend
ship of all the tribes with whom he was
acquainted. Yet, Sheninjee was an Indian. The
idea of spending my days with him, at first
seemed perfectly irreconcilable to my feelings?
but his good nature, generosity, tenderness,
and friendship towards me, soon gained my
affection? and, strange as it may seem, I loved
him!— To me he was ever kind in sickness, and
always treated me with gentleness? in fact, he
was an agreeable husband, and a comfortable
companion. We lived happily together till the
time of our final separation.34
Mary's narrative demonstrates how completely
Anglo-American females could become "white Indians."
After the death of her first husband, Mary and her three-
year-old child hid in the woods to avoid redemption when
the Indians were compelled to surrender their white
prisoners. Even in old age when most of her neighbors
were whites she still referred to Indians as her own
people.35
34 Ibid., 52-53.
35 Ibid., 67-151. Some of her white neighbors

considered her to be a witch. She became known throughout
the area as the "White Woman of the Genesee."
91
Her experiences will be compared to those of Regina
Leininger, a German-American, and Tomassa, a Mexican, in
search of differences in assimilation patterns which could
be attributed to national origins.
Captivity of Regina Leininger
Regina Leininger was the daughter of German immi
grants who settled in the wilderness on the west bank of
the Susquehanna River. At the age of ten, she and her
sister, Barbara, fell into the hands of a Shawnee war
party. She remained in captivity for nine years. When
Colonel Henry Bouquet forced the Shawnees to give up their
captives in 1764, Regina appeared among the bedraggled
throng. She had become substantially assimilated, had
forgotten her name, and had almost completely lost the use
of her native language. Regina's experiences differed
greatly from those of Mary Jemison, for female life among
the Shawnees was harder than among the matriarchal Senecas.
Regina's captors did not adopt her, they treated her
harshly, and they used her as a servant.
During her first year of captivity, Regina felt
benumbed by the loss of her white family. Her captors
gave her to an old woman who treated her so cruelly that
she "lived more like an animal than a child." In time,
however, her miserable life became second nature and she
began to view her captivity as an ordeal which would end
92
some day with restoration to her family. She acquired
many traits of Indian culture, for her very survival
depended upon such an adjustment. She learned the
language of her captors and gradually lost the use of her
own except for some hymns that her mother had taught her.
She repeated these hymns before sleeping each night.
When Colonel Bouquet brought the redeemed captives
to Carlisle, Pennsylvania, in December 1764 for release to
relatives, the roster of prisoners listed Regina as the
"German Girl," because she could no longer remember her
name. Actually a fully grown woman who resembled an
Indian, she spoke only the language of the Shawnees. Her
mother searched carefully among the redeemed captives but
failed to recognize Regina. She had almost given up hope
that her daughter had been recovered when Regina stepped
forward and recited the hymns. This last link with civili
zation provided the medium for her restoration.
The Reverend H. H. Muhlenberg interviewed Regina
some three months after her redemption. He found that she
had rapidly regained an understanding of German speech,
but was unable, or at least reluctant, to speak the
language. She appeared to have accepted many traits of
Indian culture, but she had retained a central core of
her own civilization - a desire to return to it at the
first opportunity. While stressing the importance of
daily prayer in preserving some vestige of white
93
civilization, Muhlenberg believed that the miserable life
she had led in captivity was primarily responsible for
destroying any desire which she might have developed to
marry an Indian. Avoidance of sexual involvement pre
vented her, in Muhlenberg's view, from developing ties
that made it so difficult for manyfemale captives to
return to their white relatives.36
Captivity of Tomassa
While a great many Mexican females were captured
by Indians, comparatively little information has been
published about their experiences. Few narratives of
captivity written by Mexican women held in the present
United States could be located during the course of this
research. It is possible, however, to piece together
some information about the lives of Mexican captives from
the observations of Indian agents, teachers, and other
whites who worked with the tribes on reservations.
One of the most interesting Mexican female
captives was called Tomassa. Her experiences included
capture in early childhood, redemption from captivity,
running away to rejoin the Indians, refusal to marry an
Indian, marriage to two white men, study and teaching on
36 Henry Melchior Muhlenberg, "Regina, the

German Captive," Pennsylvania German Society Proceedings,
XV (1906), 82-89.
94
a reservation, and helping other Mexicans to escape from
captivity.
Tomassa was born in northern Mexico about 1841
and was swept up at an early age in one of the frequent
Comanche raids that so terrorized the region. The Indians
treated her kindly and she lived contentedly as an adopted
Comanche for several years. Then the Mexican Government
ransomed her along with other captive children.
Unable to recall her family name or where she had
come from, she could give authorities no help in notifying
her relatives. When no one claimed her, she and a
slightly older boy were assigned as servants to a wealthy
family.
Their new life of drudgery seeming less attractive
to the children than the captivity from which they had
been redeemed, they decided to run away at the first
opportunity and rejoin the tribe. After accumulating a
store of provisions, they slipped away from the hacienda
during a celebration. Helping themselves to a horse, they
struck out toward the Rio Grande with only the North Star
as a guide. After they had ridden hundreds of miles their
food supply gave out and they averted starvation by killing
the horse and drying the meat in Indian fashion. Having
many more miles of desert and mountains to cross, they
used the hide to make extra moccasins. Finally they
95
rejoined their Comanche families, a remarkable feat of
pathfinding and endurance for children ten to 12 years of
age.
Josiah Butler, teacher at the Comanche-Kiowa
Agency at Fort Sill, has described Tomassa1s experiences
subsequent to her return to the Indians:
And so she was happy to again take up life in

the lodge of her Comanche foster mother, with
whom she lived until she grew to womanhood,
when she married the white trader and ranchman,
Joseph Chandler, who was many years her senior.
A daughter and three sons were born of this
marriage. Although she was a married woman and
the mother of several children, she entered the
Comanche school at the Fort Sill Agency, when
it was first opened by Josiah Butler, to be not
only a pupil but also the teacher's interpreter.
After her husband's death, she married George
Conover, to whom three sons were born. Her
children and grandchildren all reside in the
vicinity of Anadarko, where she died, December 6,
1900, aged about fifty-five years.3?
Another official who reported a part of Tomassa's
story was the famous Indian agent, Lawrie Tatum. He
relates that she had been promised in marriage to an
Indian named Blue Leggings but insisted on marrying
Chandler instead. When the Indian declined to give her
up, she retorted that he would have to kill her in order
37 Josiah Butler, "Pioneer School Teaching at the

Comanche-Kiowa Agency School, 1870-03," Chronicles of
Oklahoma, VI (1928), 499-500.
96
to take her. Finally the red man sold Chandler his rights
to the g i r l . 38
After her marriage to Chandler, Tomassa lived on
cattle ranches in Texas and the Indian Territory. She
adopted many of the ways of white civilization and tried
to help Indians to follow her example. Frequently she
warned white people of impending raids. Once she saved
the lives of two Mexican captives by hiding them under the
floor of her house.39
Thus it appears that the assimilation of Tomassa
had come full circle. Captured in early childhood, she
became so greatly assimilated that she ran away from whites
to rejoin her captors. But upon attaining marriageable
age, she chose a white suitor over an Indian. And during
her mature years she saved Mexican children from the kind
of life with the Indians which once she had eagerly sought
for herself.
Based on the evidence gleaned from the narratives
presented above, is it possible to reach conclusions
regarding the importance of national origin in affecting
the assimilation of captives? Among the males, all three
38 Lawrie Tatum, Our Red Brothers (Philadelphia;

J. C. Winston and Company, 1899), 60-61. The purchase
price was three dollars and a crowing chicken.
39 Thomas C. Battey, The Life and Adventures of

a Quaker Among the Indians (Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1875),
155-56.
97
were captured during childhood, abused cruelly at first,
then adopted and treated almost as though they were
Indians by birth. All three became greatly Indianized,
went on raids against white people, and preferred to remain
with their captors. Their experiences have so much in
common that it is difficult to discover significant
differences which could be attributed to pre-captivity
cultural influences. Moreover, the experiences of other
male captives do not suggest that Indianization was
affected by the cultural milieu from which they came.
Jeff Smith, Comanche and Apache captive, remarked
that the Indians preferred Mexican captives, "because when
they brought them in they could raise them up and no one
could tell them from full blood Indians."40 Certainly in
the Southwest, Mexican captives outnumbered those of Anglo-
American or German stock. But this is evidence only that
Mexican captives were easier to obtain. It does not
necessarily follow that they were easier to assimilate.
John R. Swanton has written that it "may very properly be
objected that as most Mexicans themselves have Indian blood
the testimony of Mexican captives is inconclusive." He
could find no evidence, however, that they were more easily
assimilated than others.^
40 Smith, The Boy Captives, 182.
41 Swanton, "Notes on the Mental Assimilation

of Races," 497.
As a matter of fact, Andres Martinez seems to have
been less thoroughly Indianized than either Clinton Smith
or Herman Lehmann. In spite of the fact that he lived
longer with the Indians than either Smith or Lehmann, he
was the only one of the three who voluntarily returned to
his own people. It is true that he eventually rejoined
the Indians, but he became an interpreter and teacher and
helped his adopted people to learn the white man's way.
The male captives mentioned in the foregoing
narratives who became the fiercest warriors were Herman
Lehmann and Adolph Korn, both German-Americans.42 In the
Southwest, other sons of German emigrants became noted
warriors. Rudolph Fischer remained a Comanche captive for
several years, and after being restored to his parents he
took the first opportunity to run away and rejoin his
captors.42 Another noted warrior, born in Germany, was
42 A. C. Greene believes that Lehmann's original

cultural milieu was important in facilitating assimilation
"Herman came from a peculiar segment of his society: An
isolated family which saw few outsiders and did not even
speak the language of the world around it. He was more
easily assimilated into the simple structure of Indian
society because he was used to a simply-structured society
already. This thesis cannot always be applied...but it
seems safe to assume that a white child taken from a large
city...would have had more involved ties to remember and
to draw him back...." (The Last Captive, 21). Green's
thesis does not hold for Adolph Korn, for that greatly
assimilated captive was from San Antonio, a center of
population even in 1870.
43 Lehmann, Nine Years With the Indians, 217.
99
known as Kiowa Dutch. A big, blond youth, he became
notorious on the Texas frontier as he raided with the
predatory chief, Satanta, and cursed white people in their
own languages while doing his best to take their s c a l p s . 44
Is there any basis for concluding, therefore, that
German-American children were more readily assimilated
than captives of other origins? When one considers the
narratives of the female captives it is found that the
German-American, Regina Leininger, was the least assimi
lated of the three. While Tomassa ran away to rejoin the
Indians and Mary Jemison became the contented wife of a
warrior, Regina prayed in German every night in order to
retain command of her native language. Moreover, Regina's
sister, Barbara, successfully resisted assimilation. She
cherished the hope of escape, and when the opportunity
arose she risked death by torture to traverse hundreds of

A S
miles of wilderness to return to civilization. J
There appears, then, to be no significant dif
ference between the degrees of assimilation of Anglo-
American, German-American, and Mexican captives. Moreover,
when other nationalities or races are considered, no
clearer picture of the relationship between ancestry and
44 Clarence Wharton, Satanta (Dallas: B. Uphaw &

Co., 1935), 14, 59.
45 Barbara Leininger, "Narrative of Marie LeRoy
and Barbara Leininger," Pennsylvania Magazine of History
and Biography, XXIX (1905), 407-420.
ease of assimilation emerges. In the earlies period of
exploration and colonization, a considerable number of
Spaniards fell into the hands of the Indians. Among the

earliest of these was Juan Ortiz, captured in Florida in
1529, who lived with the Indians for 11 years. When white
men returned to Florida he had become almost completely
assimilated. 46 Cabeza de Vaca and the other survivors of
the Narvaez Expedition were held in captivity by various
tribes in Texas and Mexico but never gave up hope of
reaching their countrymen. They learned many of the ways
of the Indians and exerted great influence over some of
the tribes but were not content to remain with any of
them.47 On the other hand, when children of unmixed
Castilian ancestry were captured in Chihuahua, Mexico,
about 1810, by Kiowas and Comanches, they became readily
assimilated. The girls married Indians and their de
scendants became prominent warriors.48
Generally speaking, the French got along better
with Indians than did the peoples of other European
nations.49 In Canada the coureurs de bois lived among
46 Garcilaso de la Vega, The Florida of the Inca

(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1951), 63-79.
47 Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, Alvar, The Journey of

Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca (Chicago: Rio Grande Press,
1964) .
48 Hugh D. Corwin, Comanche and Kiowa Captives in
Oklahoma and Texas (Lawton, Oklahoma: Hugh D. Corwin,
1959), 14-17.
49 De Vote, The Course of Empire, 83-87.
101
the tribes and assumed many Indiaft traits but remained
essentially Frenchmen. Except for the Iroquois, most
tribes participating in the colonial wars were allies of

the F r e n c h . 50 Consequently, the French received many
English captives, while fewer of them became captives them
selves. When the Iroquois made prisoners of French
children, however, assimilation occurred much the same as
it did with children of other national origins.
Among the greatest French-Canadian heroes was
Francois Hertel. A member of one of Canada's most promi
nent families, he was ennobled by King Louis XIV for
leading attacks by French and Indians against Salmon Falls
and other New England towns. Yet 29 years earlier, Hertel
very nearly became an Iroquois warrior, ready to raid the
French settlements.
Hertel was captured by Mohawk Indians in 1661. A
deeply religious youth, he asserted that he would never
have been taken alive except for concern that his soul was
not in a state of grace. The Indians tortured him by
cutting off one of his fingers and burning another in the
bowl of a pipe. Eighteen years old at the time of his
capture, Hertel appears to have been an unlikely candidate
for assimilation, but after a year of captivity he became
an adopted Iroquois and prepared to join an Indian war
party. At that time, however, his wounded fingers became
50 Ibid., 95-99.
102
badly infected and the raiders left him behind. Thus he
remained in the Mohawk town until Father Simon Le Moyne
arrived to ransom him. At first he resisted the oppor
tunity to leave the Indians, but the priest changed his
mind by reminding him of the eternal damnation awaiting a
Christian adopting the sinful ways of the savage life.5-*-
One final group, Negroes, remains to be considered.
Here, unfortunately, fewer primary sources are available.
R. W. G. Vail records only two narratives of black captives
among the hundreds listed in his bibliography, and in
neither case was the captive held long enough to be
assimilated.52
Hundreds of Negroes lived with Indians in the South,
but most of them were runaway slaves or their descendants
who joined the tribes voluntarily. On the South Atlantic
coast, as the tribes were crushed by the whites, the sur
viving Indians intermarried with Negroes until the red men
lost their identity. But in the inland South and through
out Florida where Indian tribes maintained their power for
51 Francis Parkman, The Old Regime in Canada

(Boston: Little Brown, 1922), 121-22; Slotkin, Regeneration
Through Violence, 127. Another famous French-Canadian who
almost became an Indian was the explorer, Pierre Esprit
Radisson. His narrative of captivity, which will be
included in a later chapter, is one of the most revealing
in regard to assimilation.
52 Vail, Voice of the Old Frontier, 271-72.
a century and Negro slavery prevailed even longer, Indian-
Negro relationships followed a very different course. The
Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks, and Seminoles
(known as the Five Civilized Tribes) were too strong for
the whites to enslave and they became slaveholders them
selves. Early in colonial times many white traders
married Indian women and gained positions of leadership in
the tribes. They introduced the ways of the white man into
Indian life, among them being the institution of Negro
slavery. In South Carolina, Indians held Negroes in
slavery as early as 1748.
But these five powerful tribes did not treat Negro
slaves alike. The Cherokees, who held more than 1,000
slaves before their removal to the Indian Territory, were
such lenient masters that Negroes frequently ran away from
white plantations to live with them. On the other hand,
the Choctaws and Chickasaws were severe masters. The form
of slavery practiced by the Creeks and their offshoot, the
Seminoles, differed greatly from that of the other
Civilized Tribes. The Creeks intermarried frequently with
their slaves and treated children of their Negro wives the
same way they treated their full-blooded Indian children.
The Seminoles were on even better terms with their slaves.
In fact, black people probably were better treated by these
Florida swamp dwellers than by any other tribe. Learning
that safety and a warm welcome awaited them among the
104
Seminoles, slaves began escaping to them as early as 1738.
These runaways, known as Maroons, seldom were enslaved by
the Seminoles. By 1838, it was estimated, 1,400 Negroes
lived among the Seminoles and only 200 of them were slaves.
Even the slaves were treated as near equals, and except for
contributing a small share of their corn crops to their
masters, they lived much like members of the tribe.53
A. Irving Hallowell has noted that blacks became
assimilated "to the same role in an Indian culture that
they played in white society." The prospect of slavery to
Indian masters must have been attractive by comparison to
that under whites, however, for Negroes continued to flee
to the tribes. Even some freedmen rejected white civili
zation, choosing to cast their lot with the Cherokees.
Thus, like many white captives, thousands of Negroes
became Indianized.54
In the Ohio Valley and the Southwest, blacks as
well as whites became Indianized. Several Negroes in
Kentucky and Ohio who were captured in Virginia by the
Shawnees and Wyandots became as completely assimilated as
their white counterparts.^ In Texas and the Southwest,
53 Kenneth W. Porter, "Relations Between Negroes

and Indians," Journal of Negro History, XVII (1932), 321-25,

522.
55 John Bakeless, Daniel Boone (New York: William
Morrow and Company, 1939), 218; James B. Finley, Life Among
the Indians (Cincinnati, Cranston and Curts, n.d.,), 239-42,
105
Indians developed the practice of kidnapping blacks to
ransom or to sell to slave traders in Arkansas and the
Indian Territory.56 There was at least one black child
with Geronimo's Apache raiders at the time of his final

surrender.57
One of the most controversial captives in American
history was a Florida black man, Luis Pacheco (also known
as Louis Fatio). He was born into slavery on the Fatio
Plantation in 1800. At a time when the education of
slaves was forbidden by law, his master's daughter taught
56 Kenneth W. Porter, "Indians and Negroes on the

Texas Frontier," Journal of Negro History, XLI (1956), 287.
For an interesting account of the experiences of a black
Texas rancher, Britton Johnson, in recovering his own wife
and children as well as those of his white neighbors from
Comanche and Kiowa captivity in 1864 see J. W. Wilbarger,
Indian Depredations in Texas (Austin: Steck Company,
19 35), 579-82; Mildred P. Mayhall, Indian Wars of Texas
(Waco: Texian Press, 1965), 154-58. Among those recovered
were Johnson's infant daughter who had been born in
captivity and Lottie Durgan, sister of the famous captive,
Millie Durgan. Millie could not be recovered, for the
Kiowa chief, Aperian Crow, had adopted her and the Indians
told Johnson that she had died.
Seven years later the Kiowas killed Johnson and

three other black men on the prairie after a fierce fight.
The blacks killed their own horses and took refuge behind
them. They stood off charge after charge before being
ridden into the ground. The Indians scalped them but threw
the scalps away as the hair would not serve as a fringe for
their deerskin leggings. According to one report Johnson,
in return for obtaining the release of the captives, had
been compelled to agree to return to the Kiowas and guide
them on a raid. He failed to keep the bargain and, there
fore, was condemned to death.
57 Paul I. Wellman, Death on Horseback

(Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1947), caption of
photograph between pages 324 and 325.
106
him to read and write in Spanish, French, and English.
From an older brother who had been captured as a baby and
reared by the Indians he learned to speak the Seminole

language fluently.
During the second Seminole War, Major Francis L.
Dade's command received orders to march from Tampa to Fort
King (near present Ocala). Dade needed a guide to lead
the troops through the swamps and to avoid Indian ambushes,
and Pacheco's owner leased him to the troops for that
purpose. On December 28, 1835, the Seminoles ambushed the
column in the Great Wahoo Swamp. More than 100 soldiers
fell in the massacre, and Pacheco was believed to have died
with them. By 1837, however, Army officers learned that he
was living with the Seminoles and charged that he had
deliberately led Dade's troops into ambush.59
But according to Pacheco's own story, which re
mained untold until 1892, the Indians captured him during
the attack. He had tried to warn Dade of an impending
ambush but the major would not listen to him. When the
battle began, he hid behind a tree. The Seminoles found
him and would have killed him had he not been saved by a
58 Kenneth W. Porter, "The Early Life of Luis

Pacheco ne Fatio," The Negro History Bulletin, VII (1943),
52.
59 (Woodburne Potter), The War in Florida (Ann

Arbor: University Microfilms, 1966), 103-09; John Lee
Williams, The Territory of Florida (Gainesville: University
of Florida Press, 1962), 219.
son of Chief Jumper. The next day Pacheco pleaded with the
chief for his freedom. But Jumper refused: "Let me tell
you, you can't go back. As birds fill the air, so the
Seminoles fill the woods." Pacheco, therefore, was a
captive when he accompanied the Seminoles during their
removal to the Indian Territory.*50
Pacheco told little of his life with the Indians,
but he is believed to have become a fierce Seminole warrior
and an important leader of the tribe. Joshua Giddings
reports that he joined the fiery young chief, Wild Cat,
and took part in the attack on Port Mellon on February 8,
1837.^ On March 6, 1837, a temporary halt to hostilities
began. The Indians agreed to move to the VJest, but only on
condition that the Seminole Negroes could accompany them.
Luis was present at the council when this decision was
reached, brought there by Chief Jumper who claimed owner
ship by conquest during the battle with Dade.0^
Luis lived with the Seminoles in the Indian
Territory from 1838 until 1850. Then he moved to Mexico
with Wild Cat, where he used "his learning, his shrewdness
and tact" to help the Indians bring their Negro associates
60 Florida Times Union, October 30, 1892.
61 Joshua Giddings, The Exiles of Florida

(Columbus, Ohio: Follett, Foster and Company, 1858), 114,
136.
62 "Louis Pacheco: The Man and the Myth," Journal

of Negro History, XXVIII (1943), 68.
to freedom south of the Rio Grande. Wild Cat’s band pro
vided sanctuary for many escaping Texas slaves, and at
least once they assisted a large number of Creek slaves to
escape from the Indian Territory to Mexico.63 Luis
remained with the Indians for almost 60 years. At the age
of 92 he returned to the Florida plantation of his former
owner and insisted that he had been a captive, not a
conspirator.64
As a final attempt to ascertain the importance of
race and national origins in facilitating or retarding
Indianization, the experiences of 50 additional captives
of various racial stocks were analyzed. Factors considered
in attempting to appraise degrees of assimilation include
knowledge of an Indian language, loss of one's native
language, attaining skill in such activities as use of the
bow and arrow, marriage to an Indian (voluntary or in
voluntary) , attempts to escape, rejection of an opportunity
to be redeemed, and participation in warfare against whites.
While the evidence in some cases was incomplete it
did suggest that no significant correlation between
national origins and assimilation exists. Among captives
63 Giddings, The Exiles of Florida, 333-38.

This work includes an interesting account of Pacheco's
former owner's suit to compel the United States Govern
ment to pay for the loss of her valuable slave. The
question sparked a heated Congressional debate over the
question of "property in human flesh."
64 Florida Times Union, October 30, 1892.
substantially assimilated were the Anglo-Americans Thomas
Armstrong, Millie Durgan, Abigail French, Hanno Hurst,
John McCullough, Jeff Smith, Matthew Brayton, Temple
Friend, Dan M'Allum, John Valentine Maxie, Peter Waggoner,
John McLennan, Rebecca Kellogg, and Rachel Malone. In this
same category were the German-Americans Rudolph Fischer,
Adolph Korn, and Kiowa Dutch, and the Mexicans Asu-que-ti,
Aw-i, Bernardino Saenz, Hoah-Wah, Long Horn, and Mak-suh.
Among captives not substantially assimilated were the
Anglo-Americans T. A. Babb, Jonathan Door, James Moore,
James Smith, Hugh Gibson, Olive Oatman, John Gyles, Isaac
Bradley, and Rachel Plummer. In this category, also, were
the German-Americans Anna Metzger, Barbara Leininger, and
Sarah Strauch, and the Mexicans Pres-lean-no, Sale-beal
and Martina Diaz.

Other factors will have to be examined to learn
why some captives accepted life as an Indian while others
rejected every phase of their captors' culture.
CHAPTER IV
THE CULTURE AREA IN WHICH THEY WERE HELD
If the cultural origins of the captives had little
effect on the degree of their assimilation, perhaps the
differing cultures of their captors had a greater effect.
Of paramount importance in this regard was the treatment
of captives. This chapter will ascertain whether treat
ment of captives varied among Indian culture groups and
if so, how much? And did such variations in treatment
affect assimilation?
Most redeemed captives claimed that they and others
had been subjected to torture or abuse, yet some scholars
believe that their atrocity stories are greatly exag
gerated. Other historians, however, believe the atrocities
occurred, but justify Indian actions on the ground that
whites were equally guilty and that warriors merely
retaliated for what had been done to their people.
Nathaniel Knowles concedes that Indians gained great
emotional satisfaction from torturing captives, but he
believes that Indians must be judged in terms of their own
cultural mores and norms rather than those of white
society. And Knowles calls attention to the often
110
forgotten fact that Europeans introduced many of the most
cruel forms of torture, such as burning at the stake, to
the Indians.1
One of the most forthright defenders of the
Indians against charges of cruelty is James Axtell. He
asserts that the Indians conducted a well planned
campaign, based upon good treatment, to induce adopted
captives to accept the Indian way of life. They "showered
them with gifts" and gave them "abundant promises of future
kindness." Later the captives acknowledged "that the
Indians were as good as their word." This kind of treat
ment had great influence on the attitudes of captives
toward their captors. The Indians continued "by daily
example and instruction" to work toward the assimilation
of captives. They "made a concentrated effort to inculcate
in them Indian habits of mind and body. If the captives
could be taught to think, act, and react like Indians,
they would cease to be English and would assume an Indian
i d e n t i t y . Axtell referred especially to the treatment
1 Nathaniel Knowles, "The Torture of Captives by

the Indians of Eastern North America," American Philo
sophical Society, Proceedings, LXXXII (1940), 151.

America," 68, 75, 81. For other opinions that the Indians
were less to blame than they have been depicted see Jason
Almus Russell, "The Narratives of the Indian Captivities,"
Education, LI (Oct. 1930), 86-88; Dorothy A. Dondore,
"White Captives Among the Indians," New York History, XIII
(1932), 297; Dorothy Forbis Behan, The Captivity Story in
American Literature (Ph.D. dissertation, University of
Chicago, 1952).
112
of captives who had been selected for adoption, but he
contends that, in general, "captive testimony has chipped
away at the stereotype of Indian cruelty." Yet many of

the narratives which he cites contain graphic accounts of
torture and abuse.
While Axtell asserts that the eastern Indians were
not excessively cruel, Walter S. Campbell writes that the
"white man brought his notions of Indian warfare from the
dark and bloody ground east of the Missouri. There he had
heard of the fagot and the stake, of cruelty and torture,
and he assumed the Plains Indians would do the same
thing." Campbell searched government records and found
few instances of torture by western Indians.3 Evidently,
regional variations in treatment of captives existed, but
scholars differ in their interpretations as to their nature
and extent.
Spencer and Jennings divide the present United
States into five major native American culture areas: the
Ultra-Mississippi (mainly east of the Mississippi River
with a westward extension along the Gulf Coast); the
Plains; the Greater Southwest; the West (containing sub-
areas in the Great Basin, Plateau, and California); and

Literature and Life," in Willard and Goodykoontz (eds.),
The Trans-Mississippi West, 191-92. For an opposite view
see Slotkin, Regeneration Through Violence, 357.
the Northwest Coast (which extends from northern California
to Alaska).4 White captive-taking occurred frequently in
the first three areas, and narratives of a representative
number of captives held in all three will be analyzed to
determine whether the treatment of prisoners differed
sufficiently to affect assimilation. There are few
narratives of captives taken on the Northwest Coast or in
the West culture area. The evidence that has survived,
however, suggests that, although treatment of captives
varied from region to region, the differences did not
substantially affect the rate or degree of assimilation
among white captives.
Captivity of Juan Ortiz
Juan Ortiz was born in Seville, Spain. Eighteen
years old when he accompanied the Narvaez Expedition to
Florida, he and three companions fell into the hands of
the Timucua tribe in 1528. One of the first Europeans
ever captured by North American Indians, he remained with
them 12 years before his rescue by the DeSoto Expedition.
Chief Hirrihigua wanted revenge because members of
the Narvaez Expedition had tortured him and murdered his
mother. He kept Ortiz under guard while compelling the
three other captives to run around the plaza until his
4 Robert F. Spencer and Jesse D, Jennings, The

Native Americans (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), 1-5,
114
warriors killed them with arrows. Then the chief ordered
Ortiz out to suffer the same fate, but his wife and
daughters begged for the boy's life, pointing out that he
had had no part in the atrocities. Hirrihigua agreed
reluctantly to spare Juan's life, but made him a slave and
treated him cruelly. He forced the youth to guard the
tribal burying grounds against wild animals every night
and compelled him during feasts to run continuously in the
plaza for the entire day. Juan wished many times that he
had died with his companions.
Convinced finally that Ortiz would survive his
harsh treatment, Hirrihigua determined to torture him to
death:
So to finish with the youth he gave the order on

a certain feast day to kindle a great fire in the
center of the plaza, and when he saw many live
coals made, he commanded that they be spread out
and that over them there be placed a grill-like
wooden structure which stood a yard above the
ground, and upon which they should put his captive
in order to roast him alive. Thus it was done,
and here the poor Spaniard, after being tied to
the grill, lay stretched out on one side for a
long time. But at the shrieks of the miserable
youth, the wife and daughter of the Cacique
rushed up, and, pleading with their lord and even
scolding him for his cruelty, removed the boy
from the fire, not, however, before he was half-
baked and blisters that looked like halves of
oranges had formed on one of his sides. Some of
these blisters burst and much blood ran from them,
so that they were painful to behold.5
5 Garcalaso de la Vega, The Florida of the Inca,

63-64.
115
Ortiz on many other occasions had reason to be
grateful to the chief's wife and daughter. Finally, when
Ortiz survived this terrible ordeal, and Hirrihigua
determined once more to put him to death, the young Indian
woman helped him to escape.® She guided him to a village
ruled by Mucozo, a chief who desired to marry her. As a
favor to the girl, Mucozo treated Ortiz kindly. He even
risked war with Hirrihigua and gave up his hopes for the
marriage by his refusal to deliver up the captive.
After eight years with Mucozo, Ortiz became
greatly assimilated. When DeSoto arrived in Florida, the
kindly chief sent Ortiz to him as a messenger of peace and
to rejoin his countrymen. The captive rejoiced at the
prospect of rejoining the Christians but, unfortunately,
he had forgotten his native language. The Spaniards
mistook him for an Indian and would have killed him had
he not made himself known as a Christian by means of the
sign of the cross.?
Although Ortiz welcomed the opportunity to rejoin
his own people, it is probable that this early sixteenth
century captive was the first European to become partially
6 The annals of frontier literature contain

several references to captives owing their lives to the
intercession of Indian women. In this instance
Hirrihigua's daughter preceded Pocahontas by more than a
century.
7 Garcilaso de la Vega, The Florida of the Inca,

64-79.
116
assimilated into an Indian tribe. Had the DeSoto expe
dition not passed his way, it can be assumed that his
transculturation would have advanced at an increasing
rate. Probably he would have lived out his life as a white
Indian.
Captivity of Elizabeth Hanson
One of many women captured in New England by
Canadian Indians was Mrs. Elizabeth Hanson, a young New
Hampshire housewife. Taken captive on June 27, 1724, she
remained with the Indians and French for about a year.
Her narrative provides one of the best insights into the
capriciousness of Indians, a trait which frequently
determined whether a captive died a fiery death or lived
as a cherished adopted relative.
The Indians killed and scalped two of Mrs. Hanson's
children, but on the long march to Canada the red men
offered Mrs. Hanson much assistance. The leader of the
party carried such a load of plunder that other Indians
had to help him up with it, but he managed to carry Mrs.
Hanson's baby for her when she became too weary to do so.
In crossing the mountains during the 26 day journey he
pulled her up steep slopes by hand or pushed her in front
of him so that she could maintain the pace. Without his
assistance she and her small children would have died on
the trail.
At last the captives reached the Indian village.
Then Mrs. Hanson's older children were sent away to other
towns, leaving only her baby and a small boy with the
distraught mother. At that time the captor who had shown
not a little compassion during their sufferings, had a
change of attitude. When he came home from hunting with
out having killed any game he became increasingly reluctant
to share the scanty food supply with the captives.
Seeming to blame them for his lack of success on the hunt,
he struck the little boy and drove the captives from his
lodge. The warrior's mother took pity on them, treated
them kindly in her own lodge, and tried to shield them
from her son's wrath.

Then, one day the old woman announced sadly that
her son had decided to put Mrs. Hanson to death. Her only
chance of survival would be to avoid him until his anger
subsided. The captives immediately hid themselves in a
shelter of boughs concealed in the snow. Fortunately,
within a few days the warrior's attitude took a different
turn and he decided to sell the captives rather than kill
them. He took Mrs. Hanson to Fort Royal and offered to
sell her to a Frenchman for 600 livres. The Frenchman
objected that the price was too high. At this refusal the
Indian flew into a rage and threatened to burn the captives
within full view of the town. The Frenchman secretly
reassured Mrs. Hanson that he would redeem them, but he
told the Indian to make his fire and offered to help him
118
collect the wood. His bluff having failed, the warrior
agreed to release the prisoners for 600 livres.
Mrs. Hanson's narrative illustrates the fact that
a captive's life could depend upon chance or whim.
Especially during the attack and the retreat to the Indian
village, a prisoner's fate hinged upon circumstance and
caprice. Some raiders desired to avenge the deaths of
lost relatives, while others intended to kidnap victims to
hold for ransom. Life or death for the captive thus
depended upon which warrior laid hands on him first. Even
those captives intended for ransom could lose their lives
if they showed weakness, if pursuers threatened to overtake
them, or if the Indians obtained liquor.
One other aspect of Mrs. Hanson's captivity is
worthy of mention— the absence of rape among eastern
Indians. "The Indians are very civil towards their captive
women," she reported, "not offering any incivility by any
indecent carriage, (unless they be more overcome in
liquor,) which is commendable in them."**
Captivity of David Boyd
David Boyd, a 13-year-old western Pennsylvania lad
of Scotch-Irish descent, was captured by the Delaware
8 Elizabeth Hanson, "God's Mercy Surmounting Man's

Cruelty," in Samuel G. Drake (ed.), Tragedies of the
Wilderness (Boston: Antiquarian Bookstore and Institute,
1846), 114-26.
119
Indians and adopted into the tribe. Few narratives of
captivity better illustrate the love which developed
between Indian parents and an adopted white son than
David's oral account of his experiences as transcribed by
his grandchildren.
David was captured on February 10, 1756, and
remained with the Indians until 1760. The raiders killed
his mother and baby brother and forced him to carry their
scalps on the journey to the Indian village. In spite of
this cruelty, David quickly developed a feeling akin to
friendship for one of the Indians, a chief who secretely
gave him food to eat along the way. This act of kindness,
the first of many by the old chief, was an opening wedge
in an attempt to influence him to embrace Indian civili
zation.
For some time after David's arrival at the
Delaware village the Indian boys amused themselves by
making him run the gauntlet. Finally his friend, the
chief, told him that if he could defeat one of the boys in
a fist fight the others would stop tormenting him. The
next day when the boys renewed their harassment he turned
on the leader and thrashed him soundly. Then several
warriors raced toward him with tomahawks raised. Ignoring
the threat, David continued to punish his enemy. Pleased
by his bravery, they put aside their weapons and patted him
vigorously saying, "make fine Indian."
120
In January 1757 David's friend, the chief, adopted
him. The Indians dipped him into the river three times
while chanting "go down white man, come up red man."
Then they shaved his head and dressed him in Indian style.
This ceremony was extremely effective in facilitating
assimilation. When David saw his reflection in the water,
he was amazed at his new appearance and began to believe
that the adoption ceremony had actually transformed him
into an Indian. During the festivities the Indians opened
a keg of whisky. Then the chief withdrew with his newly
adopted son, fearing that some drunken warrior might
attack the boy. His wife welcomed him as her son and did
her best to make him content.
Following his adoption, David quickly accepted
Indian civilization as his own. Believing that every
member of his white family had been killed or captured, he
felt that he had no home except with the Indians. And he
pointed out that at his age any boy would have enjoyed
Indian life, roaming the woods, hunting and fishing, and
learning to become a warrior. His adopted father knew,
however, that David's white father had escaped from the
raiders and still lived on the farm where David had been
captured. When the chief's wife died, the old man became
increasingly melancholy, believing that his own time of
death was approaching. Overcome with remorse for having
121
stolen the boy and concerned for David's future, after
lengthy deliberation he decided to return him to his white

father.^
In the spring of 1760 the old chief loaded two
ponies with furs and he and David set out for the settle
ments. The Indian risked death during this journey, for
the Pennsylvania frontiersmen were so inflamed against the
red men that they could be expected to ignore his flag of
truce. When they reached Carlisle, they encountered an
uncle of David's. This man seized the boy and was barely
prevented from killing the chief. The old Indian had
planned to present the boy to his white father at
Shippensburg but was not allowed to proceed. He then sold
the ponies and furs and gave the money to David, in
structing him to buy white man's clothing in order to make
himself presentable.
When David reached home, he found it difficult to
resume life as a white boy. He missed the wild, free life
of the Indians and was greatly dissatisfied by life on the
farm. It was necessary to stand guard over him for a long
time before he gave up his determination to rejoin his
adopted people.10
9 This is the only instance this researcher

could find of such a decision.
10 Mrs. Elvert M. Davis, "History of the Capture

and Captivity of David Boyd Prom Cumberland County,
Pennsylvania, 1756," Western Pennsylvania Historical
Magazine, XIV (1931), 28-39.
122
Captivity of Barbara Leininger
Barbara Leininger was the 12-year-old sister of
Regina, the "German captive," whose experiences were de
scribed in an earlier chapter. Along with a 12-year-old
girl friend, Marie LeRoy, she was captured at Penn's Creek,
Pennsylvania, on October 16, 1755, and taken to the Indian
town of Kittanny. After four years of captivity, the two
girls escaped. Their account of their adventures is one
of the best examples available of female captives'
willingness to risk death by excruciating torture in order
to regain their freedom.
The experiences of these girls show how precarious
the safety of captives could be during the return of a
raiding party to its native villages. A Delaware warrior
named Galasko acquired Barbara Leininger and Marie LeRoy
and two stolen horses. He permitted the girls to ride
while he walked on the trail to his village, but his
kindness turned to cruelty when Barbara tried to escape.
He overtook her almost immediately and threatened to burn
her to death. Because of the intercession of a young
Indian, however, Galasko agreed to spare her life.H
Upon arrival at the village Barbara and Marie were
welcomed according to Indian custom. It consisted of three
blows each on the back. They were, however, administered
11 Leininger and LeRoy, Narrative, 407^409.
123
with great mercy. Indeed, Barbara recalls, "we concluded
that we were beaten merely in order to keep up an ancient
usage, and not with the intention of injuring us."I2
During her first year of captivity Barbara
suffered more from a general shortage of food than from
the hard labor assigned to her. Then, in September 1756,
the situation changed abruptly. Led by Colonel John
Armstrong, an army of frontiersmen attacked and burned
the town and redeemed 11 captives. The Indians fled into
the wilderness, taking the remaining captives with them.
Barbara witnessed the torture of several prisoners who
had tried to escape during the battle. The Indians scalped
one woman, laid flaming fagots upon her body, and cut off
her ears and fingers and forced her to eat them. Her
ordeal lasted most of the day. Finally, a French soldier
shot her to put an end to her torment. Then the Indians
prepared to burn a male prisoner who had just been re
captured. For three hours he walked around a stake,
attempting to evade burning brands thrust at his body.
When a downpour of rain prevented the Indians from keeping
up the flames, they amused themselves by firing gunpowder
at his body. "At last, amidst his worst pains, when the
poor man called for a drink of water, they brought him
12 Ibid., 409.
124
melted lead, and poured it down his throat. This draught
at once helped him out of the hands of the barbarians, for
he died on the instant."13
After witnessing such scenes, it becomes readily
apparent why many captives became too terrified to attempt
to escape:
It is easy to imagine what an impression such
fearful instances of cruelty make upon the mind
of a poor captive. Does he attempt to escape
from the savages, he knows in advance that, if
retaken, he will be roasted alive. Hence he
must compare two evils, namely, either to remain
among them a prisoner, forever, or die a cruel
death. Is he fully resolved to endure the
latter, then he may run away with a brave heart.14
Barbara and Marie, regardless of the horrors they
had witnessed, refused to abandon hope of escape.
Following the burning of Kittanny, the Indians sought
protection and food from the French at Fort Duquesne.
There the girls worked for French families while their
Indian owner collected their wages. After the Delawares
suffered a sharp defeat at the Battle of Loyalhannon on
October 12, 1758, they abandoned most of their towns and
moved to Moschkingo, more than 150 miles to the west. It
was then that Barbara and Marie decided to make their
attempt to escape. They enlisted the aid of two young male
captives, David Breckenridge and Owen Gibson, and fled on
13 Ibid., 410-411. 14 Ibid., 411.
125
the night of March 16, 1759.^ Barbara wrote of her
apprehensions as follows:
It is hard to describe the anxious fears of a

poor woman under such circumstances. The extreme
probability that the Indians would pursue and re
capture us, was as two to one compared with the
dim hope that, perhaps, we would get through in
safety. But, even if we escaped the Indians, how
could we ever succeed in passing through the
wilderness, unacquainted with a single path or
trail, without a guide, and helpless, half naked,
broken down by more than three years of hard
slavery, hungry and scarcely any food, the season
wet and cold, and many rivers and streams to
cross?!®
But the four young escapees were as resourceful as they
were of "brave heart." They traveled at night, crossed
the numerous rivers on rafts, and killed game with a toma
hawk. After a trip of almost 200 miles in two weeks, they

reached safety at P i t t s b u r g h .
Barbara's captivity narrative describes several
incidents which merit analysis. Not many 12-year-old
girls would have tried to escape alone during the journey
to the Indian village. For her temerity she says that she
would have suffered death by the most terrible torture had
she not been saved, in a reverse of the Pocahontas legend,
by a young warrior's plea for her life. It seems probable,
however, that her captor threatened her with death to
prevent other attempts at escape but would not have burned
her because of her age and sex.
15 Ibid., 411-13. 16 Ibid., 414.
17 Ibid., 415-16.
126
Upon reaching the Delaware town she apparently
experienced a symbolic and humane form of running the
gauntlet, the ordeal which frequently injured male captives

so severely that they became unfit for adoption. In no
other narrative has this researcher seen reference to a
ceremonial laying on of three light blows to the back. If
she correctly ascribes the act to keeping up an ancient
usage, it probably reflects ceremonial practices unique to
the Delawares, a nation considered by all of the eastern
Algonquian tribes to have been their "grandfather."
Her experience of working for a French family for
wages paid to her Indian master was unusual for the mid-
eighteenth century, although forced employment was common
a half century earlier among captives taken to Montreal or
Quebec. While thus employed at Fort Duquesne she refused
to be ransomed, because "she could not abide the French"
and she considered chances better to escape in the forest
than in the fort. Such a decision required tremendous
courage and, while it must have seemed foolish to the
French people who could have protected her, the success of
her flight to Pittsburgh proves that she possessed wisdom
as well as bravery and self-reliance.
Captivity of John M'Cullough
John M'Cullough was eight years old when captured
on July 26, 1756, near Fort Loudoun, Pennsylvania, by
Delaware Indians. A warrior adopted him to replace a
127
brother who had been killed. After remaining with the
Indians several years, he met Andre Wilkins, a trader, who
told John's father of his whereabouts. Mr. M'Cullough
twice entered the Indian country, but on neither occasion
did he succeed in bringing his son home. Eventually, the
Bouquet Expedition forced the Indians to release the boy.18
After his redemption, John wrote an account of his
captivity. It provides one of the best illustrations of
the determination of captives to resist return to their
white families.
As soon as John's father learned of his whereabouts
he went to Fort Venango, prepared to purchase the boy's
freedom. He sent word to John's Indian brother to bring
the boy to the fort. John did not know of the plan or he
would have hidden himself in the woods. While John waited
outside, his Indian brother entered the fort and accepted
the ransom money. The narrative of John's captivity relates
how he felt about this unexpected turn of events:
He told me that I must go home with my father, to

see my mother and the rest of my friends; I wept
bitterly, all to no purpose; my father was ready
to start; they laid hold of me and set me on a
horse, I threw myself off; they set me on again,
and tied my legs under the horse's belly, and
started away for Pittsburg; we encamped about ten
18 John M'Cullough, "A Narrative of the Captivity

of John M'Cullough," in Archibald Loudon (ed.), Selections
of Some of the Most Interesting Narratives of Outrages
Committed by the Indians, I (Carlisle, Press of A. Loudon,
1808), 252-86.
128
or fifteen miles from Venenggo; before we lay

down, my father took his garters and tied my
arms behind my back; however, I had them loose
before my father lay down; I took care to keep
it concealed from them by keeping my arms back
as if they were tied. About midnight, I arose
from between my father and John Simeons, who
was to accompany us to Pittsburg; I stepped out
from the fire and sat down as if I had a real
necessity for doing so; my father and Simeons
arose and mended up the fire; whilst they were
laying the chunks together— I ran off as fast
as I could.19
John made good his escape even though his father
had prepared for such an event by bringing along a trail
dog. He ran to the Indian village and the warriors con
cealed him. When his father arrived the next day they
denied having seen him. They promised, however, to bring
him to Pittsburgh as soon as possible. Mr. M'Cullough
waited in Pittsburgh in vain, for the Delawares took John
along on their extended fall hunt.
John remained with the Indians two more years. He
witnessed the murder of a number of traders but did not
take part in any raids. After Colonel Bouquet invaded the
Indian country, John was among the first captives sur
rendered under the terms imposed upon them.^O
Captivity of John Hunter
John Hunter was captured about 1801 by Kickapoo
Indians, probably in Missouri. He retained no memory of
his white family. He never knew his real name, but he
19 Ibid., 276-77. 20 Ibid., 277-86.
129
became so adept at killing game with a bow and arrow that
the Indians called him "Hunter,” and he retained the name.
After living with the Indians many years, Hunter

had to flee when he warned a party of white men of an
impending massacre. At the approximate age of 20 he
enrolled in school and quickly exhibited a talent for
writing. He traveled to the East and to Europe, being
acclaimed in the highest circles as the personification of
the noble savage. One of his foremost admirers was Robert
Owen, and he associated with British nobility, including
the king. While in England he wrote his narrative, which
was published in 1823. Soon afterwards he returned to
America, determined to save the Indians from destruction
by teaching them to walk the white man's road. Four years
later, in an attempt to help the Cherokee in Texas, he
became involved in a tribal dispute connected with the
Fredonia Rebellion and an Indian shot him to death in an
ambush.
Hunter's account of his experiences, especially
those relating to contacts with other captives, is useful
in analyzing the effect of kind or cruel treatment on
assimilation. His earliest distinct recollections are of
his association with two other captive children, a boy and
a girl. One day the little girl cried and a warrior
murdered her with his tomahawk. The killer then threatened
Hunter with a similar death, an experience which kept him
terrified for a long time.
130
Not long after the girl's death, the Indians
separated Hunter from the other captive and he never saw
him again. As observed by Barbara Leininger and several
other redeemed captives, the separation of white prisoners

was the general practice. Hunter believed that the
practice "originated more with a view to hasten a recon
ciliation to their change" than as a manifestation of
cruelty. The strategy succeeded in Hunter's case, for
after the disappearance of the other boy he became terri
fied at the thought of being abandoned to die by the
Indians, and he made every effort to keep up with them
during their long marches through the wilderness. Thus he
quickly began to regard the red men as protectors rather
than oppressors.
Subsequent relationships with white captives were
instrumental in destroying any remaining desire to return
to his own people. Indian children taunted young captives,
saying white people were all squaws. As a result,
captives curried favor with their captors by imitating the
Indians and demonstrating disdain for each other. Of
particular note in this regard was a white woman who
joined in scalp dances with more enthusiasm than the
Indians themselves. Hunter at first hoped that this
woman would befriend him, but she refused to so much as
take note of his presence.
131
Hunter's life with the Kickapoos came to an abrupt
end when the Kansa Indians captured him during a battle.
His new captors treated him kindly and a family adopted
him to replace a son killed in battle. His adopted mother
treated him as her natural born son, and when she died he
sadly mourned her loss:
She was indeed a mother to me; and I feel . . .

gratitude at the recollection of her goodness
and care of me during this helpless period of
my life. I have no hope of seeing happier days
than I experienced at this early period of my
life...with the Kansas nation.21
Captivity of John Rodgers Jewitt
John Jewitt was born in England in 1783. At the
age of 20 he sailed on the ship Boston to China by way of
the Pacific Coast of North America. On March 12, 1803, the
ship arrived at Nookta Sound to trade trinkets to the
Indians for furs which would be exchanged for valuable
21 John D. Hunter, Manners and Customs of Several

Indian Tribes Located West of the Mississippi ^Minneapolis:
Ross & Haines, 1957), 12-35. The authenticity of Hunter's
narrative has been disputed for a century and a half. His
veracity was attacked first by Lewis Cass in 1825. Other
authorities on Indians who charged him with being an
imposter were William Clark and Auguste Chouteau. A
staunch defender was George Catlin. Among historians his
chief detractor was Reuben Gold Thwaites (See Early
Western Travels, XVIII, 368n.) The ethnologist, John R.
Swanton, has declared the narrative to be of the greatest
value, however, and it is included here for that reason.
For further reading on the career of John Hunter, see Berry
Brewton, "The Education of John Hunter," Social Science, XV
(July 1940), 258-64; Richard Drinnon, White Savage, the
Case of John Dunn Hunter (N. Y . , Schocken Books, 1972).
132
goods in China. The captain insulted Chief Maquina of the
Nootka tribe, and the Indians seized the ship and beheaded
every man on board except Jewitt (an armorer) and one
Thompson (a sailmaker) whose skills could be used. The
chief protected them from the warriors who wanted to kill
them. He became fond of John and treated him well. John
eventually became an adopted member of the tribe and a
slave owner, as was the custom among the Indians of the
Northwest Coast. Finally, after two years with the Nootkas,
he and Thompson escaped to a passing s h i p , 22
John kept a journal during his captivity. It is
unique among narratives examined for this study, not only
because of the rarity of white captives among the Indians
of the Northwest Coast, but also because of the frank
account of enthusiastic participation by captives in the
activities of a culture which they refused to embrace. As
an example, Jewitt and Thompson became fierce warriors and
slave holders, apparently feeling no remorse for their
actions:
The Aytcharts, taken by surprise, were unable to

resist. Except for a few who escaped, all were
killed or taken prisoner. I had the good fortune
to take four captives. Maquina, as a favor, per
mitted me to consider them as mine, and occa
sionally employ them in fishing for me. Thompson,
who thirsted for revenge, succeeded in killing
seven stout fellows, an act which won him the ad
miration of Maquina and the chiefs.
22 John Rogers Jewitt, "The Headhunters of

Nootka," in Frederick Drimmer, Scalps and Tomahawks (New
York: Coward-McCann, 1961), 216-55.
133
After putting to death all the old and infirm

of either sex and destroying the buildings, we
re-embarked for Nootka with our booty. We were
received with great joy by the women and children,
accompanying our war song with a most furious
drumming on the h o u s e s . 23
Another unusual facet of Jewitt's narrative in his
account of his captor's attempt to expedite his assimi
lation through a forced marriage.
He said the sooner I adopted their customs the

better, and that a wife and family would make
me more contented with their mode of living. I
objected strongly, but he told me that, should I
refuse, both Thompson and myself would be put to
death. He added, however, that if none of the
women of his tribe pleased me, he would go with
me to some of the other tribes, where he would
purchase for me any woman I would select. With
death on the one side and matrimony on the other,
I thought proper to choose the lesser of the two
evils.24
Although John was reluctant to marry, he conceded
that he was fortunate in his choice of brides. The
daughter of a chief, she was the most attractive girl
among the neighboring tribes, very clean and neat, and
always affectionate and attentive to his needs. "With a
partner possessing so many attractions, many may conclude
that I must have found myself comparatively happy," he
wrote. "But a compulsory marriage, even with the most
beautiful and accomplished person in the world can never
prove a source of real happiness. I could not but view
23 Ibid., 241-42. 24 Ibid., 242.
134
my marriage as a chain that was to bind me down to this
savage land."^
The chief's next step in attempting to force the
captives to accept Indian civilization was a decree that
they must wear native garb. John strongly objected to
this ultimatum, correctly anticipating that the scanty
Indian clothing would provide little protection against
the cold. In a short time he became seriously ill and in
formed the chief that if he could not resume wearing
European clothing he would die from exposure. As the chief
sorely missed his weapons-making capabilities, he con
sented to John's request and even permitted him to send
his wife home to her father. The girl departed sorrow
fully and left her two slaves to take care of John's
needs.2(>
The Jewitt captivity narrative is valuable because
of its focus on one reason for captive-taking which is
seldom mentioned by other redeemed prisoners— that is, in
order to secure the captives' skills which would be of
value to the tribe. In all probability, this unusual
motivation was caused by the unique acquisitive nature of
peoples belonging to the Northwest Coast culture area.
These tribes were the most property conscious of all North
American native peoples. They raided each other constantly
25 Ibid., 244. 26 Ibid., 245-46.
135
to obtain property, including slaves, until the potlatch
evolved as a less violent method of proving one's superi
ority. Although as with most other tribes a captive's
fate frequently was determined by caprice, the Indians of
the Northwest Coast may have been more inclined than other
red men to calculate the potential utility of a captive in
creating wealth for his captor.
Captivity of Mrs. Sarah Ann Horn
Mrs. Sarah Ann Horn was born in Huntington,
England, in 1809. In 1835 she, with her husband and two
small children, joined the colony of Dr. John C. Beals on
Las Moras Creek, near its juncture with the Rio Grande, in
southwestern Texas. The colonists, chiefly from New York,
England, and Germany, lacked frontier experience, and when
the Texas Revolution broke out they abandoned the settle
ment and fled in small groups.
The Horn and Harris families attempted to reach
safety at Matamoros, Mexico, but in route they fell into
the hands of the Comanches on April 4, 1836. Horn and
Harris were killed. Mrs. Horn remained in captivity for
more than a year until a trader redeemed her.27 she
wrote an account of her experiences in an attempt to
obtain funds to help rescue her lost children, John, aged
27 Carl Coke Rister, Comanche Bondage (Glendale:

Arthur H. Clark, 1955), 105-187.
136
six, and Joseph, not quite five years old. Like most
adult female captives of Plains Indians, she suffered too
many ordeals to survive long after her redemption.
"...soon my hopes and fears shall be hushed in death," she
concluded her story, and then she died.2®
Sarah Horn's narrative is useful in providing
information on the treatment of captive women and children
by a Plains tribe that held hundreds of prisoners. It also
provides striking evidence of the role of Indian women in
the treatment of captives:
There was one Indian woman among them, who be

longed to the party that claimed Mrs. Harris
for their prisoner;— she was very small in her
person, and I should think not more than twenty
years of age; but of all the depraved beings I
have seen . . . I think she excelled. I have
often seen her take her by the throat and choke
her, until the poor unresisting creature would
turn black in the face, and fall as if dead at
her feet; and then, to finish the tragedy, her
cruel master would jump on her with his feet,
and stamp her, until I have thought her suf
ferings were at an end.29
The cruelty of the Comanches to captive children
is clearly established by the torture of Mrs. Horn's small
sons. They tied the prisoners to the backs of mules and
seldom permitted them to eat or drink. During the crossing
of a stream, Joseph fell into the water. He tried to
scramble up the steeo bank, but a warrior stabbed him below
the eye with his lance, forcing him back into the current.
28 Ibid., 184. 29 Ibid., 138-39.
137
With blood streaming from his face over his naked body, the
boy made another effort and reached the top of the bank.
A short time later several of the Indians took John and
Joseph back to the stream, and when they returned Mrs. Horn
thought that the boys were dead. Their bodies were
distended from having been thrown repeatedly into the
stream, and water flowed constantly from their noses and
ears. Mrs. Horn rushed to her childrens' assistance, but
one of the warriors forced her away, lashing her repeatedly
with his whip. Miraculously, the boys survived.30
After moving west into New Mexico, the Indians
took Mrs. Horn's children from her and gave them to other
Comanche bands for adoption. Joseph's adopted mother, a
Mexican who had been captured as a child, treated him well.
White traders attempted to redeem the family, but the
Indians refused.
In June, some Mexican Comancheros (traders) tried
to purchase Mrs. Horn, but her master would not sell her.
They succeeded in redeeming Mrs. Harris. About three
months later, the Comanches camped near San Miguel, New
Mexico. There they informed Mrs. Horn that she would be
sold to a trader, but she protested. "Indeed," she
explained, "I felt that the only remaining tie (my dear
children) which bound me to this wretched planet, was among
30 Ibid., 150-51.
138
them, and while this was the case, I infinitely preferred
remaining with or near them, to any condition."31
After a year and five months of captivity,
Mrs. Horn was redeemed by a San Miguel citizen. The
traders then sent an expedition to try to recover the
children. When they returned with information that John
had frozen to death and Joseph could not be purchased at
any price, Mrs. Horn abandoned hope of their recovery.
She died soon afterwards.32
An interesting facet of Sarah Horn's narrative is
her comment upon the brutality of Plains Indian women
toward white female captives. Similar charges have been
made by other redeemed captives. Mrs. Jane Adeline Wilson,
a 16-year-old Texas woman who was captured by Comanches in
1853, said that the presence of squaws led to increased
torture and abuse:
I never saw them exhibit the first sign of

pity to me. It made no difference how badly
I was hurt, if I did not rise immediately
and mount the animal which had just thrown me,
they would apply their riding whips . . . or
the end of a lariat to my unprotected body with
the greatest violence. The squaw would also
help me to rise by wounding me with the point
of a spear which she carried.
Mrs. Wilson also corroborated Mrs. Horn's accu
sation that the Comanches often denied the prisoners food
and drink:
31 Ibid., 154-67. 32 Ibid., 160-87.
139
I have gone two days at a time without tasting

food. I suffered exceedingly from thirst; I
was not allowed to drink except when in camp.
We frequently crossed beautiful streams during
the day, and I would beg the privilege of dis
mounting to quench my thirst. But the Indians
would always deny my request with contempt.
It was in vain I pointed to my parched tongue
and head blistered in the rays of the sun.
Nothing could soften them into pity, and I
ardently desired death that my torments might
come to an end.33
Captivity of Olive Oatman
Olive Oatman, a 14-year-old Illinois farm girl,
was the daughter of Ross Oatman, a Mormon who answered the
call of the Reverend James Brewster to establish a new
Zion on the Colorado River. The father, mother, and seven
children traveled as part of a large wagon train to Tucson,
Arizona, where a dispute caused the party to break up. On
March 11, 1851, the Oatman family pushed on alone into the
Arizona desert. On March 18 fierce Tonto raiders attacked
them with warclubs, killing the father, mother, and four
children and capturing Olive and her younger sister, Mary.
They left Lorenzo, the oldest boy, for dead, but he sur
vived and spent the next five years trying to locate and
redeem his sisters. Finally, with the help of the Army and
33 Jane Adeline Wilson, "A Narrative of the

Sufferings of Mrs. Jane Adeline Wilson, During Her Captivity
Among the Comanche Indians," New York Commercial Advertiser,
February 2, 1854.
140
a Yuma Indian, he obtained Olive's release.34 The story
of her captivity provides one of the best accounts of the
treatment of female prisoners by Indians of the South
western deserts.
The Tontos moved off into the desert, forcing the
captives to follow them through a wasteland of cactus and
sharp stones. Mary, unable to keep up the pace, fell and
refused to go farther. When blows failed to move her, one
of the warriors carried her on his back. The raiders
desired to keep the girls alive in order to use them as
slaves, but on their march they encountered another Indian
band with different designs. This party had sustained
losses in a recent battle with whites, and one warrior who
had vowed to take revenge on the first white person he saw
shot an arrow at Olive. For a time it appeared that the
two bands would do battle over the girls, but after a
lengthy argument they went their separate ways.
Olive's account of their treatment upon arrival at
the Tonto village provides an insight into the humiliation
and terror experienced by female captives in the South
west. The warriors collected a pile of brush and forced
the girls to climb upon it. Then, all of the villagers,
male and female, danced around in a circle, striking the
girls, throwing clods at them, and spitting into their faces.
34 Howard H. Peckham, Captured by Indians, 195-98.
141
Olive fel-- sure that the brush would be used as her
funeral pyre, but the Indians had a different fate in
store for them.
The Tontos were a primitive people made up of a
mixture of Coyotero Apaches, Yavapais, and other hunting
and gathering peoples roaming between the White Mountains
and the Colorado River. They treated their own wives and
daughters as virtual slaves, allowing them so little food
that many of them died of starvation and those who survived
suffered greatly from malnutrition. These wretched squaws
proved to be cruel masters to their captive slaves. The
Indians fed the captives refuse and scraps. The girls
would have starved if they had not eaten some of the roots
which their masters required them to gather for the tribe.
The girls had been about six months in captivity
when a visiting band of Mohave Indians purchased them for
two horses, three blankets, some vegetables, and beads. As
so frequently happened when moving from one tribe to
another, the captives experienced a marked change in treat
ment. The Mohave tribe lived by farming on river bottom
land, and unless lack of rainfall prevented the usual
spring overflow, they enjoyed much more stable subsistence
patterns than did their neighbors who lived by hunting and
gathering. Olive considered them to be much more lenient
masters, lacking the cruelty that was characeristic of the
Tontos.
142
The Mohaves were fierce warriors, however, and one of their
cultural traits created a terrifying threat to the
captives. It was their custom when one of their warriors
died in battle to sacrifice a captive woman to furnish him
a slave in the next world. Olive witnessed the crucifixion
of a Cocopah captive woman, and she lived in constant fear
that she would suffer a similar fate.

The Mohaves tatooed the girls to signify that they
were available for marriage but did not compel them to
engage in sexual union. For more than a year the captives
lived in comparative comfort in the huts of their captors.
Then, in 1853, the river failed to overflow the crop lands
and famine brought an end to kind treatment. The Indians
sent the girls to scour the desert for food. If they found
any, their captors seized it for themselves. Soon Mary
became too weak to scavenge. As Olive could no longer bring
her any food, the younger girl starved to death.35
Olive remained in captivity five additional years,
and it is evident from her narrative that she was beginning
to accept the Indian way of life in spite of its terrors
and hardships:
To escape seemed impossible and to make an un

successful attempt would be worse than death.
Friends or kindred to look after or care for
me, I had none. . . . I thought it best to
35 J. P. Dunn, Jr., Massacres of the Mountains

(New York: Archer House, n.d.), 146-64.
143
receive my daily allotment with submission. . .

Time seemed to make a more rapid flight; I
hardly could wake up to the reality of so long
a captivity among savages, and really imagined
myself happy for short p e r i o d s . 36
Captivity of Nelson Lee
Nelson Lee was born in 1807. In 1855 he set out
with several companions to trail a herd of horses and mules
from Texas to California. About 350 miles northwest of
Eagle Pass, Texas, the Comanches captured four of the
drivers during a night-time raid on the camp. After three
years of captivity Lee escaped by killing his captor. His
narrative is included in this study because it contains a
graphic description of torture of captives.37
The Comanches held a council to decide upon the
fate of the captives. Lee, knowing that adult male
captives almost always died under torture at the hands of
Plains Indians, held little hope as the guard escorted
him to a site obviously designed for that purpose:
36 R. B. Stratton, Captivity of the Oatman Girls

(New York: Published for the author, 1858), 231.
37 Gaines Kincaid of Austin, Texas, is writing a

book about Comanche captives. He believes the Nelson Lee
captivity to be fictitious. (Gaines Kincaid to J. Norman
Heard, Jan. 24, 1975, in author's possession). As
previously noted, Walter Prescott Webb is convinced of
its authenticity. The work is cited frequently by Ernest
Wallace and E. Adamson Hoebel in their standard work.
The Comanches, Lords of the South Plains (Norman: Univer
sity of Oklahoma Press, 1952T7
144
There was Aikens, Martin, and Stewart, stripped

entirely naked, and bound as follows: High
posts had been driven in the ground about three
feet apart. Standing between them, their arms
had been drawn up as far as they could reach, the
right hand tied to the stake on the right side
and the left hand to the stake opposite. Their
feet, likewise, were tied to the posts near the
ground.
Martin and Stewart were strung up side by

side. Directly in front of them, and within ten
feet, was Aikens, in the same situation. A
short time sufficed to . . . place me by the side
of the letter. Thus we stood, or rather hung,
Aikens and myself facing Stewart and Martin.38
Slowly a line of Indians, led by the war chief,
advanced toward their victims. "Their pace was half walk,
half shuffle, a spasmodic, nervous motion, like the
artificial motion of figures in a puppet show." Each
brave brandished a knife and a tomahawk. Suddenly, two
warriors near the head of the line rushed to Stewart and
Martin and scalped them. This practice, while extremely
painful, removed only a portion of the hair covering the
skull and usually did not kill the victims. Stewart and
Martin screamed in agony as the blood flowed down their
faces and dripped from their beards. Lee steeled himself
for similar torture, but the Comanches circled around
without touching him, each giving the war whoop as he
passed.
After a few minutes rest, the warriors resumed
their deadly procession. As they approached Stewart and
38 Lee, Three Years Among the Comanches, 104-105.
1 45
Martin the second time, they brandished tomahawks in the
faces of the captives and then slashed pointed stones
across their victims' stomachs. Amazingly, Aikens and
Lee were not molested until they tried to avert their eyes
from the scene. Then the Indians seized them by the hair,
jerking their heads back violently and forcing them to
stare at the torments of their companions. Lee believed
that this act was the prelude to their own destruction.
How many times they circled round, halting to

sound the war whoop, and going through the
same demoniac exercise, I cannot tell. They
persisted in the hellish work until every inch
of the bodies of the unhappy men was hacked
and covered with b l o o d . 39
After two hours the Indians halted their dance and
stood in a circle around the captives. Two of their
leaders then began the war dance, "raising the war song,
advancing, receding, now moving to the right, now to the
left, occupying ten minutes in preceding as many paces."
They danced in front of the doomed men for some time, then
dispatched them with blows of their tomahawks.
The guards then untied Lee and Aikens and led them
back to the camp. The captives could see that the Indian
dogs had converged on the corpses to lap up the blood that
still seeped from their bodies.
While such treatment of captives by Comanches was
common, Ernest Wallace and E. Adamson Hoebel point out
39 Ibid., 105-106. 40 Ibid., 106-108.
that these Indians had had no opportunity to learn the
white man's "so-called humanity." They killed many adult
captives because they lacked prisons in which to confine
them or sufficient food to provide for them. Because a
warrior "gave no quarter he expected none in r e t u r n . "41
Captivity of Fanny Kelly
During the Civil War, thousands of settlers from
northern states rolled westward in wagon trains. In 1864
one of these wagons contained a 19-year-old bride named
Fanny Kelly, her husband, and a small adopted daughter.
She was a native of Canada who grew up in Kansas. Soon
after she married Josiah Kelly, they decided to move to
Idaho. They had not gone far when Sioux warriors attacked
the train and captured Mrs. Kelly. Some incidents of her
interesting narrative are included here because they
illustrate the precarious existence of many captives in
times of stress.
The Indians took Mrs. Kelly to their village, 300
miles to the north. There the aged chief, Silver Horn,
claimed her as a servant to his six wives. If she had
been given to a younger man, she almost surely would have
been raped, but because of his age, the chief did not
41 Wallace and Hoebel, The Comanches, 259.
147
molest her and the women treated her well.42 Then a
change in the fortunes of war placed her life in great
peril. General Alfred Sully invaded the Sioux country
and drove the Indians into the badlands. Many warriors
died in battle and their relatives sought revenge on the
captive. When the chiefs and warriors met in council, she
knew that her life was at stake:
Soon they sent an Indian to me, whoasked me

if I was ready to die— to be burned at the
stake. . . . He said that he had been sent
from the council to warn me, that it had be
come necessary to put me to death, on account
of my white brothers killing so many of their
young men recently. He repeated that they
were not cruel for the pleasure of being so;
necessity is their first law, and he and the
wise chiefs, faithful to their hatred for the
white race, were in haste to satisfy their
thirst for vengeance; and, further, that the
interest of their nation required it.43
Chief after chief recommended killing the captive,
demanding vengeance against the white race for invading
Indian lands to hunt and trap, for sending an army to
drive out the rightful owners, and for murdering the
people who had sought only to defend themselves and their
wives and children. Then Ottawa, an old chief, arose and
saved the captive's life by urging the council to temper
vengeance with justice:
42 Kelly, Narrative of My Captivity, 11-13,

75-80.
43 Ibid., 107-108.
148
It is the undoubted right of the weak and

oppressed; and yet it ought to be pro
portioned to the injury received. Then why
should we put this young, innocent woman to
death? Has she not always been kind to
us. . . ? Why, then, should we put her to
so cruel a death for the crimes of others, if
they are of her nation? Why should we punish
the innocent for the guilty?44
Fanny was not one of the many adult female captives
of Plains Indians who considered death to be preferable to
life in captivity. "Though terrible were my surroundings,"
she wrote, "life always became sweet to me, when I felt
that I was about to part with it."45
Captivity of Mary Fletcher
Mary Fletcher was born in Eastwood, England, on
August 19, 1851. With her parents she immigrated to
America in 1861. Two years later a sister named Lizzie was
born in Illinois. As Mrs. Fletcher's health was poor, the
family decided to move to California. In July 1865, they
left Fort Laramie with a train of 75 wagons. On July 31
they camped a short distance from the other wagons on
Rock Creek, Wyoming. Suddenly a band of Cheyenne Dog
Soldiers attacked their wagon. The raiders killed Mrs.
Fletcher and wounded her husband so severely that he never
recovered. They captured Mary, aged 13 and Lizzie, aged
two. Mary tried to stay with her baby sister, but a
44 Ibid., 107. 45 Ibid., 109.
149
warrior carried Lizzie away and they never saw each other
again during captivity. The Indians told her that Lizzie
had cried until they had to kill her.4^

Mary remained with the Indians for about a year.
When the band returned to the reservation to collect
annuities, her captor ordered her to stay out of sight.
Learning, however, that a white trader had come to the
village she ran toward him, begging for help. The trader,
Charles Hanger, ransomed her for $1,665. He delivered her
to Major W. W. Wynkoop, Special Indian Agent, who helped
her find employment in the family of Judge William L. Cook
of Davenport, Iowa. In 1867 she married William E. Cook,
the judge's son. Her unpublished narrative of captivity,
written in longhand, is in the collection of the American
Philosophical Society. An excerpt is included here
because it illustrates how living conditions, as well as
deliberate cruelty, played a role in making life intol
erable for female captives:
As for telling my experiences with the Indians,

I cannot command the language that would convey
the remotest idea to one not experiencing it,
of the freezing cold, sleet and rain, and the
torture I would receive from these Indians, or
I ought to say, fiends.47
46 This report was false. Lizzie grew up as an

Indian, married a warrior, and had several children by him.
Her story will be related later in this study.
47 Mrs. A. M. Cook, Captivity Narrative, Archives,

American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
150
They sent her out during periods of heavy snow to
climb trees and strip bark to feed the pony herd. Without
regard to weather conditions, she labored all day in scanty
clothing, and when she returned to the lodge in the
evenings her captors refused to give her a blanket to cover
herself.
Unlike Fanny Kelly, Mary Fletcher would have
welcomed death as a deliverance from captivity. She
repeatedly begged her captors to kill her, and she believed
that they refused to do so because they preferred to
prolong her sufferings. She acquired a life-long hatred
of Indians which made it especially difficult for her to
accept the fact that her sister had married a warrior.
"Yes, they were far worse than any name I can give them,"
she wrote. "If I could have my way about it there would
not be one left alive."48
Experiences of Nick Wilson
E. N. (Nick) Wilson was born in 1842 in Illinois.
In 1850 his parents moved by ox cart to Grantsville, Utah,
where they established a sheep ranch. Some Gosiute Indians
worked on the ranch and Nick learned their language and
admired their way of life. He was deeply distressed by the
death of an Indian friend, and in later life he wrote in
48 Ibid.
151
his autobiography that he loved him as much as if he had
been his own brother.
After Pantsuk died, I had to herd the sheep by

myself. The summer wore along very lonely for
me, until about the first of August, when a
band of Shoshone Indians came and camped near
where I was watching my sheep. Some of them
could talk the Gosiute language, which I had
learned from my little Indian brother. The
Indians seemed to take quite a fancy to me, and
they would be with me every chance they could
get. They said they liked to hear me talk their
language, for they had never heard a white boy
talk it as well as I c o u l d . 49
The Shoshones enticed Nick into joining them by
offering him a pony and telling him what an exciting life
he would lead with their tribe.
My parents knew nothing about it. They would

never have consented to my going. And it did
look like a foolish, risky thing to do; but I
was lonely and tired and hungry for excite
ment, and I yielded to the temptation. In five
days the Indians were to start north to join
the rest. . . . I went with them, and for two
years I did not see a white man. This was in
August, 1854. I was just about twelve years
old at the time.50
The Shoshones took Nick to their chief, the
celebrated Washakie, who adopted him as a brother. His
adopted mother (Washakie's mother), treated him kindly.
He learned that her two youngest sons had been buried
alive in a snowslide and she had dreamed that one of them
would return to her as a white child. Washakie did not
49 E. N. Wilson, The White Indian Boy (Yonkers:

World Book Company, 1919), 9.
50 Ibid., 11.
152
want war with the whites and refused to allow his tribe to
capture a child, but he had consented to the plan to
persuade Nick to join them voluntarily.
Nick enjoyed his life with the tribe, but at times
he felt an urge to return to his white family. When
Pocatello's band arrived, waving white man's scalps, anger
against the Indians burned within him for the first time.
But he loved his Indian mother and assured her that he
preferred to remain with the tribe.51
Nick lived two years with the Indians and became
strongly attached to many aspects of their way of life.
When they fought Indian enemies he wanted to join in the
battle. However, he was old enough when he joined the
Shoshones to regard their customs with a certain amount of
critical discrimination. Therefore, he became only
partially assimilated.^2
Eventually, Washakie sent Nick home to his family
in order to avoid trouble with the whites. Departing
reluctantly, he promised his Indian mother that he would
return at the first opportunity. But his white father
persuaded him to become a Pony Express rider, a life which
he liked, and gradually he lost his desire to return to
the Indians. Once while he was away from home, his Indian
51 Ibid., 1, 8-9, 15, 25, 39-41.
52 Swanton, "Notes on the Mental Assimilation of

Races," 498.
153
mother came to Grantsville looking for him. Cordially
received by his white mother, she stayed at the ranch for
two months, but when Nick did not come home she returned
to the mountains. When he learned of this visit, he went
in search of her and found that she had died. He and
Washakie remained lifelong f r i e n d s . 53
Conclusions
Based on the foregoing narratives and others, it
is clear that treatment of captives varied considerably in
different native American culture areas, particularly
between eastern and western tribes. This is to be expected
because of the tremendous differences in culture traits
among tribes and regions.
In all regions, however, happenstance and caprice
frequently determined a captive's fate. Death, servitude,
or adoption depended upon the whim of the warrior who first
touched the captive.54 if a relative had been killed
recently, the warrior might take revenge by tomahawking
the first white person to fall into his hands. On the
other hand, if his grief had had time to subside, he might
save the captive as a replacement. The threat of death
53 Wilson, The White Indian Boy, 117-18, 140,

192-96.
54 In some cases the character of the captor was

consistently cruel. Wallace and Hoebel had knowledge of
a Comanche who always castrated boy captives. (The
Comanches, 259-60).
hung over most captives until they achieved adoption, and
even afterward if they proved to be unsatisfactory
substitutes.
The treatment of captive children before adoption
varied little among native culture areas. Most children
received brutal treatment at the time of capture. The
raiders frequently killed babies and toddlers immediately
and dispatched other small children during the rapid
retreat to the Indian villages if they cried, failed to
keep the pace, or otherwise indicated a lack of fortitude
needed to become a worthy member of the tribe. Upon
reaching the village, the child might face such trials as
running the gauntlet or dancing in the center of a throng
of threatening Indians. The prisoner might be too
seriously injured during these ordeals to qualify for
adoption. If he survived and showed bravery, he was
probably adopted eventually.55
The adoption ceremony completely changed the
child's status. In the eastern woodlands, adoption of
children usually followed quickly after capture. In the
eyes of their adopted families, these children deserved
kind treatment no less than did the deceased relatives
55 Knowles, "The Torture of Captives," 151-225;

Wallace and Hoebel, The Comanches, 260, 264.
155
they r e p l a c e d . 56 Life was less arduous in the semi-
sedentary villages east of the Mississippi than on the Great

Plains. The captive child probably did fewer chores than
he would have been assigned by his white family. The
narratives of such captives as David Boyd indicate that
genuine affection developed between the Indian family and
the adopted child.
The famous Moravian missionary, John Heckewelder,
frequently witnessed scenes of affection between Indian
families and white captive children.He reported one such
instance in a letter to a friend:
When in the year 1782 at Tuscarawas while

walking with the great War Chief Shingass . . .
I had cast a look to where his Prisoner boys
were playing with his young sons, and which he
observing he asked me, "who those were that
I was looking at?" "Your Prisoners," re
plied I. "No," said he. "I had indeed once
taken them as such but they and my children
play together as you see, and eat together
out of one dish. Not as with the White People,
who make Slaves of the Negroes because they
have not their colour! They beat these about
as tho they were Dogs, and so they would serve
me, had they it in their power." Now the
meaning of what he said, was to prove that
they, the Indians, felt an attachment to the
great family of Mankind— took indeed in time of
56 Wilcomb E. Washburn believes that "the varied

treatment of adopted captives can be explained in the
same terms in which Indian treatment of their natural
children can be explained: if either group measured up
to the traditional standards applied by the group, they
would be treated equally; if they acted in a way which
seemed to be a violation of those standards they might be
badly treated or rejected." Wilcomb E. Washburn to
J. Norman Heard, February 11, 1977 (in author's possession).
156
War, human beings Prisoners, but kept them not

as slaves— on the other hand incorporated them
with themselves— of course had more respect
for him who created Man, and put each of his
creatures (Prisoners) who by the fate of War had
fallen into their hands, on a level with
themselves. . . .57
West of the Mississippi captive children experi
enced many hardships. Tribes dependent upon hunting or
gathering for subsistence, such as those of the Plains,
West, and Southwest (the Pueblos excepted), frequently
experienced hunger, especially when hard-pressed by
enemies. During such times, non-adopted captives were the
last to be fed and the first to be blamed for tribal
misfortune.
Adoption of white captives frequently was delayed
in the West, and the children served their masters as
menials. The sale or trade of captive children from one
tribe, or band, to another occurred more frequently among
western Indians, thus delaying the opportunity for
affection to develop.
Probably few children suffered more than a 13-year-
old Texas girl named Matilda Lockhart when captured by
Comanches in 1838. At the time of her redemption two years
later, her parents could barely recognize her. Battered
and covered with sores, her nose burned off to the bone,
57 John Heckewelder to Peter Ponceau, Sept. 5,

1818 (copy), Archives, American Philosophical Society,
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
157
she related that if she fell asleep, the Indians would wake
her by "sticking a chunk of fire to her flesh, especially
to her n o s e . "58 Jeff Smith, too, charged that Apache
squaws awakened him by poking flaming fagots into his

f l e s h . 59 Martha Webster, taken in Texas by Comanches at
the age of four, related that "the devils burned and
whipped me, and would often tie a rope around me and throw
me into the river because I cried. I have scars on my
body to this day from burns."50 LaFayette Smith fell
into Comanche captivity near Austin, Texas, about 1841.
So severely beaten that he could not stand alone, he was
thrown into a mud hole and left to die. The Indians
happened to encounter a party of Mexican traders later in
the day. Realizing that they could obtain a ransom for
the boy if he still lived, they returned for LaFayette
and sold him for $60 in silver.51
In regard to the treatment of white female
captives taken as adults, a distinct difference is
indicated between eastern and western tribes. The
58 Rister, Border Captives, 87.
59 Robbie M. Powers, "White Captives Among the

Comanches," Bracketville, Texas, Mail, October 9, 1931.
60 Martha Virginia Webster Strickland Simmons,

Narrative (Typescript), University of Texas Archives,
Austin.
61 Lewis Jones to Mrs. Angeline Smith,

September 17, 1843, ibid.
158
seventeenth century New England captive, Mary Rowlandson,
pointed out that white women were in little danger of
sexual abuse: "Though I was gone from home and met with
all sorts of Indians . . . yet not one of them offered the
least imaginable miscarriage to m e . "62
Among eastern Indians, purificatory rites preceded
and followed raids, and sexual continence might be required
of warriors during extended periods of hostilities. The
Shawnees, for instance, avoided violating women prisoners
because it would anger the Great Spirit.63
James Axtell credits the avoidance of rape of
white women by eastern Indians to the possibility that the
captive would be adopted into the family or clan. "Under
the strong incest taboos, no warrior would attempt to
violate his future sister or cousin. Were he to indulge
himself with a captive taken in war, and much more was he
to offer violence in order to gratify his lust, he would
incur indelible d i s g r a c e .
It has been claimed that English colonial female
captives were safer with Indians than with the French. An
62 Mary Rowlandson, Narrative of Captivity of

Mary Rowlandson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1930),
33.
63 Knowles, "The Torture of Captives," 153, 177,
207.
64 Axtell, "White Indians of Colonial America,"
68.
159
unidentified English seaman held captive in Quebec in 1746
kept a diary in which the following entries appear:
Wed., Dec. 17, 1746. "Died Mary the Wife of

Mr. David Woodall. She has left him here with
2 Small Children and a Daughter of about 19
years Old is now in the hands of the Indians.
Sat., May 9, 1747. "This Day fair weather

and warm; at about 10 A. M. Saw a young Girl
without the Piquets which proved to be the
Daughter of Mr. David Woodall as Mentioned the
18th of December past; She was in Company with
an Indian his Squaw and 2. of his paposes; the
Girl was Dressed after the Manner of the
Indians with a great Quantity of Wampumpeg
which the Indians Call Extraordinary Embelish-
ments; her Father and two of her Brothers got
leave to goe without the Gate to Speak with her
for about 15. minutes when the Indian and his
Squaw etc. march'd off and took the Girl Away
with him again; About 2 hours after Came in
one of the Rever'd Fathers of the Church whom
Mr. Woodall would have Interested in his favour
to recover the Girl out of the hands of the
Indians; but the Rever'd Father's advise was—
that 't were more Safe for the Girl to remain
with the Indians then to be Taken from them
and brought into Town amongst the French officers
where he might be very well assured She would be
ruined by them. The more Shame to them who
profess Christianity that a wild Barbarian Should
out doe them in this point of Honour with regard
to a Female Captive whose virtue they ought to
protect."65
While forcible rape of white females by Indians
east of the Mississippi was rare or non-existent, women
captured as adults in that region frequently became the
"The Journal of a Captive," as quoted in Isabel M.

Calder (ed.), Colonial Captivies, Marches, and Journeys
(Port Washington, N. Y.: Kennikat Press, 1967) , 39, 61.
The correct name of this family of captives is Woodwell.
They were captured at New Hopkinton on the Merrimac River.
160
wives of warriors. It would be enlightening if more infor
mation were available regarding pressure placed on captive
women to marry Indians. Francis Parkman has asserted that
young women who refused to marry Indians "are treated with
a singular forebearance, in which superstition, natural
temperament, and a sense of right and justice may all claim
a share."66 a case in point is that of Mrs. Hannah Dennis,
a young Virginia woman captured by Shawnees in 1757. She
protected herself by professing witchcraft and curing the
sick.67
Dramatically different, however, is a case de
scribed by Mrs. Richard Bard, a Delaware captive in 1758.
She met a woman from her home community who had been in
captivity several years, had married an Indian, and had a
child by him. Mrs. Bard rebuked her for sexual involve
ment with Indians, but the woman insisted that the
Delawares had threatened to burn her at the stake if she
refused. This captive insisted that all white women, once
66 Francis Parkman, The Conspiracy of Pontiac

(New York: The Macmillan Company, 1929), 364.
67 Alexander Scott Withers, Chronicles of Border

Warfare (Cincinnati: The Robert Clarke Company, 1895),
89-93.
161
they could speak the Indian language, were given a choice
between marriage and death.
It is evident that hatred of Indians by frontier
people constituted a strong deterrent to marrying a
warrior. Captive women knew that if they consorted with
Indian men, and later returned to their white families,
they would be disgraced. A case of this kind involved the
Smith family of Mill Creek, western Virginia. Mrs. Smith
and several of her children were captured in 1758. About
three years later, Smith recovered his wife. Married to
a chief, she had a child by him whom she refused to
abandon. Smith did not abuse his wife, but he hated the
child. The boy ran away to rejoin the Indians as soon as
he became old enough.69
The living conditions of women held by eastern
Indians may have been no more arduous than those of the
average pioneer woman. It is possible, also, that some
were better treated by the Indians than by their white
families. The Indians believed this to be the case, and
68 Archibald Bard, "An Account of the Captivity

of Richard Bard," in Archibald Loudon, A Selection of
Some of the Most Interesting Narratives of Outrages
Committed by the Indians, 11, 52.
69 Willis De Haas, History of the Early Settle
ment and Indian Wars of Western Virginia (Wheeling:
H. Holitzell, 1851), 205-206.
162
some white captive women east of the Mississippi lent
credence to the claim by their actions, if not by their
words.
In August 1762, the Indians surrendered a large
number of captives at Lancaster. An Iroquois named Thomas
King spoke as follows on that occasion:
You have told us of the Six Nations that we

must assist you to see your flesh and blood.
We have done what we can. . . . I have got
a great many of them, though at first with
great difficulty. When I brought them by
the English forts they took them away from
me. . . and I believe they made servants of
them. This the reason why I brought so few
of them. No wonder they are so loath to
come, when you make servants of them.7°
Comparatively few women were burned at the stake
in eastern North America, death by this means being con
sidered an honor reserved for w a r r i o r s . 71 Occasionally,
however, after failing to take male captives, Indians
inflamed with a desire to avenge deaths of relatives would
burn a white woman. Such a fate befell Mrs. James Moore
70 C. Hale Sipe, The Indian Wars of Pennsylvania

(Harrisburg, Telegraph Press, 1931), 825-26. One of the
captives brought in by this warrior was his own wife. He
was compelled to surrender her two different times. The
first time she ran away immediately and arrived back at
the Iroquois village before her husband did. "Brother,"
said King, "you know it is hard for a man to part with
his wife. I have delivered her. Therefore, take care of
her and keep her safe."
71 Narratives of captivity indicate, however, that

the Indians frequently threatened women with a fiery death
to discourage escape attempts.
163
and her 16-year-old daughter, Jane, in 1784. To com
pensate for the loss of two warriors, the Indians lashed
the captives to a post and burned them to death by
thrusting flaming pine splinters into their flesh.
West of the Mississippi, white female captives led
a precarious existence. Albert Schwandner, a six-year-old
Kinney County, Texas, boy, witnessed the murder of his
mother during Comanche captivity. In a hopeless attempt
to escape, she struck one of the Indians with a rock,
grabbed the boy by the hand, and ran. The raiders rode
her down, tied her to a tree, and killed her with a r r o w s . 7 3
Frequently, western Indian warriors subjected
captive women to sexual abuse. Carl Coke Rister asserts
that a female captive became the property of the first
warrior who laid hands on her. The raider might sell her
to anyone who wanted her. Besides becoming a drudge in
the lodge, she usually had to submit to sexual abuses.
"Because of this well known face," Rister explains, "white
women along the frontier generally regarded death as pre
ferable to c a p t i v i t y ."74 Richard Slotkin states that "the
western tribes had no taboo against rape and, in fact," made
72 Withers, Chronicles of Border Warfare, 374.
73 Austin Callan, "When Trying Times Beset the

Pioneers," Honey Grove, Texas, Citizen, March 2, 19 33.
164
it part of their celebrations of triumph, along with the
torturing and mutilation of male captives."75
Mrs. Jane Adeline Wilson, after escaping from

Comanche captivity in 1854, charged that "every indignity
was offered to my person which the imagination can
conceive." The obvious fact that she would give birth to
a child within a few weeks did not deter the warriors from
forcing their attentions upon her.76
In 1865 Kiowas killed James Box, a Texas rancher,
and captured his wife and four daughters. The raiders
brained the youngest daughter against a tree when she
would not stop crying. They tortured Ida, aged seven, but
did not sexually molest her. They raped Mrs. Box and her
two teen-aged d a u g h t e r s . 77
75 Slotkin, Regeneration Through Violence, 357.

Lonnie J. White describes the experiences of several white
women who were raped while in captivity and gave birth to
half-Indian babies in his article: "White Woman Captives
of Southern Plains Indians," Journal of the West, VIII
(July 1969), 327-54.
76 Wilson, "A Narrative of the Sufferings of
Mrs. Jane Adeline Wilson."
77 Rister, Border Captives, 51. The fact that

not even children were safe from sexual abuse is shown in
the narrative of Carrying Her Sunshade, captured in Mexico
at the age of seven by Comanches who had set fire to the
school house and snatched up the children as they ran from
the burning building. A young Indian attempted to rape
her, but a warrior saved her, saying he would marry her as
soon as she became sufficiently mature. From that time
until she had his child at the age of fifteen, he protected
her from rape by taking her with him wherever he went. See
Wallace and Hoebel, The Comanches, 260-63, for her amazing
story.
165
Many women redeemed from captivity in the West
denied that they had been raped, claiming that some unusual
circumstance had spared them. Rosita Rodrigues wrote to
her father after she had been purchased from her captors
by traders:
I remained a prisoner among the Comanche Indians

about one year, during which time I was obliged
to work very hard, but was not otherwise badly
treated as I became the property of an old squaw
who became much attached to me, and would not
allow me to be ill t r e a t e d . 78
Charges of rape were made, however, during court
trials and official investigations of Indian depredations.
One such instance occurred during the trial of Sioux
warriors as a result of the Minnesota uprising of 1862 in
which more than 800 settlers lost their lives. Mary
Schwandt, aged 14, was captured by 50 warriors while
trying to reach safety at New Ulm. She testified that
"they took me out to an unoccupied tepee near the house
and perpetrated the most horrible and nameless outrages
upon my person." The girl charged, also, that her com
panion, Mary Anderson, who was dying from a gunshot wound
in the stomach, received the same t r e a t m e n t . 79
While Mary Schwandt was raped by many warriors in
the Sioux uprising, Josephine Meeker was raped many times
78 Rosita Rodrigues to Miguel Rodrigues, Jan. 15,

1846, University of Texas Archives, Austin.
79 C. M. Oehler, The Great Sioux Uprising (New

York: Oxford University Press, 1959), 45.
by one warrior during the Ute uprising of 1879 in Colorado.
Her father, the Ute agent at White River, died in the
attack on the agency. In addition to Josephine Meeker,
the Utes captured her 64-year-old mother and the young wife
and two children of one of the slain government employees.
All three women were raped.
Josephine Meeker testified that the warrior,
Persune, kept her in his lodge 23 days. His two squaws
urged her to submit, saying that "it was pretty good," and
tried to make her understand that, in terms of Ute culture,
Persune was paying her a high honor in becoming her pro
tector against other Indians. This young warrior had been
so attracted to Josephine that he had attended the agency
school where she taught. Shortly before the attack on the
agency, he had invited her to become his third wife. When
word reached him of her death in Washington in 1882, he
mourned as if she actually had been married to him.80
West of the Mississippi, few, if any, white females
captured as adults willingly became the wives of warriors.
After being compelled to do so, however, they sometimes
chose to remain with their Indian husbands. In 1838 the
Santa Fe trader, Josiah Gregg, observed a Mexican woman
80 Robert Emmitt, The Last War Trail (Norman:

University of Oklahoma Press, 1954), 210-14; Marshall
Sprague, Massacre, The Tragedy at White River (Boston:
Little, Brown, and Company, 1957), 150-51, 234-38, 259,
277-84, 294, 320-21: Dunn, Massacres of the Mountains,
612-13.
among the Comanches. She had been kidnapped from the home
of the Governor of Chihuahua. Her father offered a reward
of $1,000 for her release, but she refused to leave her
captors. "She sent word to her father that they had dis
figured her by tatooing; that she was married . . . and
that she would be made more unhappy by returning to her
father under these circumstances than remaining where she
was."83.
John Salmon (Old Rip) Ford, frontier editor and
Indian fighter and a founder of the Texas State Historical
Association, encountered a white woman captive among the
Comanches while surveying a trail from Austin to El Paso
in 1849. Her face was disfigured by scars made by a knife
which showed that she had lost a husband or close adopted
relative in the tribe. Ford observed that the young
woman's "face seemed the personification of despair." She
did not appeal to him for assistance, and he speculated
that she feared her white family would not welcome home
"the wife of a savage, the mother of young savages, though
she was made so by force and cruelty."82
The treatment of mature male captives was much
alike in most North American tribes. Indians considered
a captured man to have forfeited his life. Usually, he
82 John Salmon Ford, Rip Ford's Texas (Austin:

University of Texas Press, 1963), 119-20.
168
would be killed immediately, but some especially brave
enemies would be taken to the captors' village and
tortured to death.
East of the Mississippi, Indians occasionally
adopted mature white male captives, especially formidable
adversaries, in the hope that they could make Indians of
them. That was the case in 1778 when the Shawnee chief,
Blackfish, captured Daniel Boone. So confident was
Blackfish of the superiority of Indian civilization that
he believed even Boone could be assimilated. Boone used
this circumstance to advantage in saving the lives of 30
companions who fell into Blackfish's grasp while making
salt at the Blue Licks, in Kentucky. On that occasion he
convinced the Indians that he could persuade the entire
settlement of Boonesborough to adopt the Indian way of
life. Declared Boone:
Brothers} What I have promised you, I can

much better fulfil in the spring than now;
then the weather will be warm & the women
& children can travel from Boonesborough to
the Indian towns, and all live with you as
one people. You have got all the young men;
to kill them, as has been suggested, would
displease the Great Spirit, & you could not
then expect future success in hunting or war;
and if you spare them they will make you fine
warriors, and excellent hunters to kill game
for your squaws and children. . . . spare
them and the Great Spirit will smile upon you.83
83 Joseph Jackson, statement to Lyman C. Draper,

April 1844. Draper MSS., 11 C:62 ff. Wisconsin Historical
Society, Madison. Jackson was one of the salt makers.
169
Boone's oratory prevented an attack on the settle
ment. Taken to the Indian village, the salt makers, with
one exception, eventually escaped or were bought by the
British. Boone became Blackfish's adopted son and gave
every indication of contentment with Indian life. But
when he detected the Shawnees preparing to raid Kentucky,
he escaped and returned to Boonesborough in time to prepare
the fort for defense.84
While eastern Indians occasionally adopted out
standing white male captives like Boone, adoption of mature
white prisoners was attempted less frequently west of the
Mississippi. In western native culture areas, white men
captives almost invariably lost their lives except on the
Northwest Coast. In that unique culture area, true
slavery existed. Indian masters sometimes saved male
captives because of their value as property in this most
property-conscious of all Indian societies.
There were, then, notable differences in the treat
ment of captives in various regions. But did such
differences significantly affect assimilation?
84 Bakeless, Daniel Boone, 176. Until Boone began

shooting at him, Blackfish believed that his adopted son
had returned to the settlement only to fulfill his promise
to persuade the white people to live with the Indians.
Mistaken in his belief in Boone's assimilation, Blackfish
did not fail entirely in his attempt to convert a white
man to Indian civilization. One member of the salt-
making party lived out the rest of his life as an Indian.
85 Hodge, Handbook of American Indians, I, 203-206.
170
William N. Fenton believes that they did: "Learning a new
culture requires motivation such as sympathy and kindness,
which some of the narratives mention. It is never an
automatic process."86
Based upon the analysis of hundreds of cases, it
appears that rarely did a child successfully resist assimi
lation in any native culture area. In the Ultra-
Mississippi area, early adoption of children led to strong
ties of affection. This circumstance probably smoothed
the course of assimilation. In the West, Southwest, and
Plains culture areas, captive children were treated
brutally for a considerable period of time. Adoption
might be delayed indefinitely while the child was traded
from one band to another. In most cases, however, the
captive eventually would be assigned to Indians who treated
him with sufficient kindness for him to consider his new
surroundings a deliverance from previous ordeals. The
available evidence indicates that, at that point in the
captive's life, assimilation began to occur at a much more
rapid rate. Brutal treatment of captive children, there
fore, delayed their assimilation but did not prevent it.
The assimilation of white adults was a great deal
more difficult than the Indianization of children. Among
eastern tribes, the fact that some captive women who were
86 William N. Fenton to J. Norman Heard,

February 7, 1977 (in author's possession).
reluctant to be redeemed had both white and half-Indian
children proves that they had been captured as adults and
had participated in Indian marriages. Yet this is
scarcely conclusive evidence of assimilation. They may
have loved their warrior husbands and been reluctant to
part with their mixed-blood children, or they may simply
have feared ostracism if they returned to white civili
zation.
Among western Indian tribes much more positive
conclusions can be drawn as to the assimilation of mature
white female captives. Very few, if any, of them became
Indianized. Unlike eastern captives who lived in the
lodges of semi-sedentary Indians, these western captive
women lived among tribes that wandered much of the time in
pursuit of the buffalo. Hardships inherent in this life,
coupled with slavery and sexual abuse, proved unbearable
to most of these women. To many, death seemed preferable
to the Indian way of life, and many of them died.
The difference in treatment of women prisoners
taken as adults in various culture areas, therefore, played
only a minor role in assimilation. West of the Mississippi,
women resisted Indianization or died in the attempt. In
the East, it is obvious that most captive women retained
the desire to return to their white families, and there is
no clear evidence that any female taken beyond the age of
puberty became thoroughly assimilated.
172
Assimilation of adult male captives was rare. Most
mature men captured by western Indians lost their lives.
In the eastern woodlands, men captives were sometimes held
for ransom, and during Colonial and Revolutionary War
times many captive men as well as women and children, were
sold to the French in Canada or to the British at Detroit.
Almost without exception, they chose to return home at the
first opportunity. A few renegades or outlaws remained
with the Indians in order to escape j u s t i c e , 87 but not even
the notorious Girty brothers, who spent a part of their
childhoods as captives and returned to the Indians years
later as British agents to lead raids into Kentucky,
became greatly assimilated.

Differences in treatment of adult captives, then,
did not significantly influence degrees of assimilation.
Kind treatment made survival possible in an alien culture,
but there is little evidence to indicate that it led to a
desire to remain with the Indians. Even such deferentially
treated captives as Daniel Boone, a man who long before
87 As a case in point, Timothy Dorman was an out

law in England before coming to Virginia. When captured
by Indians near Buchannon Fort, he joined them in raiding
the settlements. Once he led the Indians across the
Alleghany Mountains and attacked the home of a former
employer. When the Indians captured one of the girls in
the family, Dorman tomahawked and scalped her. See
Withers, Chronicles of Border Warfare, 341-43.
173
captivity learned to detest the restraints of white
civilization and to enjoy many of the freedoms associated
with Indian culture, retained in the end a preference for
the way of life of their own people.
Chapter V
LENGTH OF TIME IN CAPTIVITY
Other factors being equal, a long captivity was
more likely to lead to Indianization than a short one, and
yet some captives remained with the Indians many years
without losing the desire to escape, while others adopted
their new way of life in a matter of months. The relation
ship between Indianization and length of captivity,
therefore, is complex and unclear.
The following case histories, arranged in ascending
order of length of time held in captivity, illustrate the
degree of assimilation attained by captives remaining with
Indians for brief and extended periods.
Captivity of Matthew Wright Martin
Matthew Wright Martin, aged nine, was captured
during the spring of 1834 near the present site of Madill,
Oklahoma. His captors, believed to have been Wichitas,
tortured his father, Judge Gabriel M. Martin, to death.
Matthew had been in captivity only a few weeks when
Colonel Henry Dodge and a company of Dragoons arrived at
the Wichita village to negotiate a treaty. They had
174
175
redeemed three Indian children from captivity among the
Osages and Dodge traded them to Matthew's captors for his
release. As the boy had been adopted, the Indians gave
him up with great reluctance.
The soldiers observed that Matthew was already
becoming assimilated. Well satisfied with his status as
an adopted Indian, he denied at first that his captors had
killed Judge Martin even though he had been compelled to
watch his father's ordeal.^
After redemption, Matthew recalled with gratitude
how kindly he had been treated by the warrior who
eventually adopted him. This man protected him from other
raiders who threatened to kill him during the retreat to
the Indian village. When the boy became ill as a result
of hardship and lack of food, this warrior took care of
him until he recovered sufficiently to participate in the
adoption ceremony. Matthew's experiences give credence to
an assertation by William N. Fenton that kind treatment
was crucial in initiating assimilation of children and
that time had little to do with it.^
Captivity of Oliver M. Spencer
Oliver M. Spencer, another captive whose expe
riences illustrate the importance of kindness in initiating
1 Rister, Border Captives, 24-29.
2 William N. Fenton to author, February 7, 1977

(in author's possession).
176
rapid Indianization, was held a prisoner only seven months.
At the age of ten, he was captured by Shawnee Indians near
Cincinnati while returning home from a Fourth of July
celebration in 1792. While on the way to the Indian
village, he attempted to escape. The warrior who had
captured the boy aimed a rifle at him, but a Mohawk who
lived with the Shawnees saved his life and became his new
owner. Unlike the captor of Matthew Martin, a bereaved
Plains Indian in search of a replacement for a lost
relative, this woodland warrior was motivated by mercenary
considerations. In his view, it was foolish to turn down
a profit by killing a captive who could be held for ransom.
Because Spencer had been severely beaten and forced to
walk barefooted through brambles for 100 miles, he reached
the village in critical condition. To protect his invest
ment the Mohawk turned him over to an aged medicine woman,
Cooh-coo-cheeh, and her granddaughter, Sotonegoo, to nurse
back to health. They treated him kindly and a mutual
affection developed almost immediately.
Within a few months the boy began to enjoy aspects
of the Indian way of life:
I had now acquired a sufficient knowledge of

the Shawnee tongue to understand all ordinary
conversation and, indeed, the greater part of
all that I heard (accompanied, as their con
versation and speeches were, with the most
significant gestures); and often in the long
177
winter evenings listened with much pleasure

and sometimes with deep interest to
Cooh-coo-cheeh, as she told of the bloody
battles of her nation, particularly with the
Americans.3
In February 1793, a British agent from Detroit
purchased the boy from his Mohawk master. Cooh-coo-cheeh
and Sotonegoo were distressed at his leaving. The old
woman had begun to regard him as a son and she urged him to
return to visit her when he grew up. The boy admitted
later that he was deeply affected by her sorrow, but he had
not become sufficiently assimilated to want to remain with
or return to the Indians.^
Captivity of John Leeth
John Leeth, an orphan youth, experienced one of
the least painful captivities on record. His immediate
adoption saved him from torture and, although he remained
a prisoner for only eight months, he lived with the Indians
voluntarily for many years. John worked for a trader near
the present community of New Lancaster, Ohio. In 1774,
shortly after his arrival, warfare broke out between the
Shawnee Indians and the settlers of western Virginia. The
Shawnees seized his goods and threatened to kill him, but
3 0. M. Spencer, The Indian Captivity of 0. M.

Spencer (New York, Citadel Press, 1968), 120.
4 Ibid., 126-29.
178
an aged Delaware brought him to safety in his own lodge
and reassured him as follows:
Your mother has risen from the dead to give

you suck; at the same time pointing to his
wife's breast; then laid his hand on his own
breast, and said, — "Your father has also
risen to take care of you, and you need not
be afraid, for I will be a father to you."^
Shortly after John's adoption, an army of Virginia
frontiersmen advanced to the Ohio. The Delawares withdrew
into the wilderness, tieing John's hands to prevent his
escape. As soon as hostilities ended, the old Indian
informed him that he could return to his own people, but
the youth liked the Indian way of life. Still considering
himself a member of the tribe, he resumed his life as a
trader. In 1779 he married a captive, named Salley Lowery,
and they lived among their adopted people for many years.6
Leeth's narrative illustrates how quickly Indian
civilization could make a permanent appeal to an adven
turous 17-year-old. He did not become a white Indian, but
he chose to live most of his days as a white man among
Indians.
Captivity of Anna Metzger
Anna Metzger, aged 11, was the daughter of Peter
Metzger, a German who settled in Gillespie County, Texas.
5 John Leeth, A Short Biography of John Leeth

(Cleveland, Burrows Brothers Company, 1904), 27.
6 Ibid., 7-34.
179
In 1864 Kiowa Indians captured Anna and murdered her sister.
She remained with the tribe only nine months before being
redeemed by a trader.
Anna became a servant to the chief's two wives, one
of whom treated her cruelly and the other kindly. Her most
pleasant task was to look after the Indian children. "The
older ones chattered to me," she recalled, "and I readily
learned their language." Anna's experiences illustrate how
quickly friendships could develop between a young captive
and an Indian child, a factor which almost certainly
assisted assimilation: " . . . there was a little Indian
girl who was an unswerving friend of mine. . . . In all
my troubles she showed her devotion, though often at the
cost of a severe beating to herself. I shall never forget
her words of healing sympathy at times when they were so
much needed by me."7
Anna retained a strong desire to return home and
risked death to run away from the Indians to a trader's
house. Nevertheless, it is a remarkable fact that in less
than a year she learned the Indian language and almost
forgot her own. "I had forgotten my language to a great
extent," she admitted, "understanding what my brother . . .
said, but in some ways I could not speak the German words.
7 J. Marvin Hunter, The Bloody Trail in Texas

(Bandera, Texas, J. Marvin Hunter, 1931), 170-71.
180
I made myself understood by means of gestures. In this
I had become very proficient."^
Captivity of Santiago McKinn
Santiago McKinn was captured by the famous Apache
raider, Geronimo, in 1885. When Geronimo surrendered in
March 1886, McKinn was with him, and the Army took charge
of the boy. Although the captive had been with the
Apaches only ten months, he had already become thoroughly
assimilated. Charles F. Lummis, scholar and newspaper
editor, witnessed the surrender, and he reported that
Santiago was wilder than the Indian boys. The 11-year-old
captive had already become fluent in the Apache language
and had either forgotten or refused to speak Spanish or
English. He "acted like a wild young animal in a trap,"
insisting that he wanted to remain with the Indians and
wailing in anguish when the wagon carried him away from
the fort on the journey home to his parents' ranch.
Lummis noted that the Apaches loved children and
treated them well. They had treated the young captive as
kindly as if he had been a natural-born Indian. As
Geronimo's band remained constantly on the move to avoid
the troops, Santiago had experienced long marches across
deserts and mountains, but his enjoyment of the wild, free
8 Ibid., 178.
life more than compensated for the hardships encountered.
His case provides one of the most remarkable examples

Q
available of the rapidity of the Indianization process.^
Captivity of Frank Buckelew
Frank Buckelew was born in Louisiana in 1852.
Orphaned at an early age, he went to live with a sister on
the Sabinal River in western Texas. At the age of 13, he
was captured by Lipan Indians, and he remained a prisoner
for 11 months. The Lipan chief, Custaleta, could speak
English. He informed the boy that the tribe tortured all
white captives except Germans to death. Frank refused to
deny his English ancestry and a brave show of defiance won
Custaleta's admiration.
Although Buckelew retained his desire to return to
white civilization, it is evident that he acquired some
traits of Indian culture. Repulsed at first by the food
that they ate, in a short time he began to enjoy his meals,
9 Charles F. Lummis, General Crook and the Indian

Wars (Flagstaff, Arizona, Northland Press, 1966), 45-46.
A similar instance was reported by Jane Wilson. Her two
young nephews, captured by Comanches, were given bows and
arrows and mounted on fine horses during their second day
in captivity. "Their faces were painted in Indian fashion,
and they looked like young savages. They appeared to enjoy
this new mode of life, and were never treated with
excessive cruelty." (See "A Narrative of the Sufferings
of Mrs. Jane Adeline Wilson, During Her Captivity Among
the Comanche Indians," New York Commercial Advertiser,
February 3, 1854).
including raw meat. He quickly became adept at the use of
the bow and arrow, and he developed an attachment for
Chief Custaleta.10
Buckelew's experiences indicate that captives
differed in the rapidity of their adoption of various
Indian culture traits. While most young captives learned
Indian languages in an amazingly short time, Buckelew was
slow in acquiring the ability to master the difficult
Athapascan pronunciation. On the other hand, Buckelew
learned the hunting techniques of his captors, which were
essential for survival in the Mexican mountains where he
was held until he escaped in 1866.
Captivity of Rachel Plummer
Mrs. Rachel Plummer was captured by Comanche
Indians at Fort Parker Limestone County, Texas, on
May 19, 1836. Taken, also, were her 15-month-old son,
Jimmy; her eight-year-old niece, Cynthia Ann Parker; and
her seven-year-old nephew, John Parker. All three of the
children became white Indians, but the young mother de
tested and rejected every aspect of Comanche culture.
10 F. M. Buckelew, Buckelew, the Indian Captive

(Mason, Texas, printed by the Mason Herald, 1911), 19-26,
44-47, 73, 96-104. For an interesting discussion of the
crucial importance in assimilation of overcoming loathing
of Indian food, see Richard Van der Beets' "The Indian
Captivity Narrative as Ritual," American Literature, XLIII
(January 1972), 555-57.
The Comanches separated the captives and Mrs.
Plummer never saw the children again. Five months after
her abduction, she gave birth to a child. As white
infants had little value to Plains Indians, a warrior
choked it until it stopped breathing. The desperate mother
managed to revive it, but the Indians threw it into the
air, permitting it to fall on frozen ground until it died.
Mrs. Plummer became the property of an old Indian
whose wife and daughter treated her as a slave. After a
year of captivity, a party of Santa Fe Comancheros redeemed
her, but rescue came too late. Unable to adjust to constant
moving, icy weather, and cruel abuse, she had lost the
desire to live. While confined to bed, she wrote an
account of her experiences which closed with prophetic
words: "With these remarks, I submit the following pages

to the perusal of the generous public, feeling assured
that before they are published, the hand that penned them
will be cold in death." She died within the year.11
Mrs. Plummer's experiences, like those of Mrs. Sarah
Horn, indicate an immediate and complete rejection of
Indianization. Not even redemption could undo the effects
of a year of exposure to Indian civilization. As mature
females, they had become too firmly fixed within the bounds
11 Rister, Border Captives, 68-76.
of their own culture to cross over into a way of life
which they had been conditioned to regard as savage, sub
human, and revolting.
Captivity of Alexander Henry
Alexander Henry, like Rachel Plummer, was an adult
when captured by Indians. Like Mrs. Plummer, he remained
in captivity only one year, but his response to Indian
civilization differed dramatically from hers.
Henry was captured by Chippewa Indians during the
massacre at Fort Michilimackinac in 1763. A warrior named
Wawatam saved his life and adopted him as a son. His
experiences prove that even mature male captives could
adjust to a new culture with surprising rapidity: "By
degrees, I became familiarized with this kind of life,"
the captive observed, "and . . . if I could have forgotten
that I had ever been otherwise . . . I could have enjoyed
as much happiness in this, as in any other situation."12
Henry was one of many captives protected from
death by an adopted father, a circumstance which must have
hastened development of bonds of affection and rapidly
weakened barriers to assimilation built up by years of
racial animosity. And he had a second reason to be
12 Alexander Henry, Travels and Adventures in

Canada (Ann Arbor: University Microfilms, 1966), 132.
185
eternally grateful, for Wawatam watched for the right
opportunity and assisted his beloved white son to escape:
My son, this may be the last time that ever you

and I shall smoke out of the same pipe! I am
sorry to part with you. You know the affection
which I have always borne you, and the dangers
to which I have exposed myself and family to pre
serve you from your enemies. I am happy to find
that my efforts promise not to have been in v a i n . -1-3
The Indian cultural traits which Henry acquired
during his brief captivity served him well in later life,
for he became one of America's foremost explorers and fur
traders.
Captivity of Pierre Esprit Radisson
Another great explorer and trader who escaped from
Indian captivity was the French-Canadian, Pierre Esprit
Radisson. Captured at the age of 16 near Three Rivers,
Radisson was held by the Mohawks from the spring of 16 52
to the summer of 1653. He very nearly resolved to spend
his life as a white Indian.
Radisson, upon first arriving at the Mohawk
village, was saved from running the gauntlet by an old
warrior and his wife who adopted him. They allowed him
much freedom and their daughters taught him their language
and customs.
A few months after his adoption, Radisson went on
a hunting expedition with three Mohawk warriors and a Huron
13 Ibid., 161-62.
1 86
captive. One night the Huron proposed to him that they
kill the Mohawks and escape. Radisson was reluctant, for
he enjoyed the life of his adopted people. But, as he

reported in his valuable narrative, he agreed to help the
Huron after he thought about the large number of friends
and relatives who had been killed by the Iroquois. After
killing the sleeping Mohawks, Radisson and his companion
fled in a canoe. Two weeks later, a band of warriors over
took them and returned Radisson to the Mohawk town to be
tortured to death. The Indians pressed blazing fagots
against his flesh, but during his torments his adopted
parents continued to plead for his life, and at last they
secured his release.
Radisson resumed the life he had led before his
escape. In a short time he decided to become a warrior,
announcing his desire to attack Indian enemies and then,
after some experience, to take up the hatchet against the
French at Quebec, Montreal, and Three Rivers. On a raid
against the Hurons, he helped massacre men, women, and
children. He brought back a female prisoner as a slave
for his adopted mother and two warriors' heads, which he
presented as trophies to his sisters.
After a year of captivity Radisson accompanied an
Iroquois delegation on a visit to the Dutch city of
Orange. There the governor offered to purchase his
freedom, but Radisson refused because he was reluctant to
leave his adopted people. Soon after returning to the
187
Indian village, however, he recalled his enjoyable life
before captivity and he began to regret turning down the
governor's offer. At length, having made the difficult
decision to leave his adopted people, he disappeared into
the wilderness and made his way to freedom at O r a n g e . - ^
It is evident from Radisson's narrative that within
a year he had become greatly assimilated. He truly walked
the thin line which separated captives who became white
Indians from coureurs de bois who lived with Indians but
retained a core of French civilization. His French back
ground did battle with his love of Indian life, and for a
time gratitude to his adopted parents swayed him toward
remaining with the Iroquois. An unexpected incident, the
visit to the Dutch city, finally resulted in rekindling in
him a sufficiently strong inclination to return to European
civilization.
Captivity of T. A. (Dot) Babb
In September 1865, Comanches raided the Babb ranch
in Wise County, Texas, killing Mrs. Babb and taking the
13-year-old boy prisoner. He remained in captivity two
years. Early in 1866 he tried to escape. Caught and
threatened with death, he defied his captors so bravely
that they decided to spare him. After a year of captivity,
a warrior adopted him and took him on raids against other
14 Pierre Esprit Radisson, Voyages (New York,

Peter Smith, 1943), 1-85.
Indians. He enjoyed the wild, free life, but he did not
forget his white family and managed to send word of his
situation to his father.
Babb's story is included here because of the unique
opportunity he received to choose between living with his
white or Indian relatives. In his case, escape was un
necessary. In 1867, through the intercession of Chief
Esserhaby, his adopted father gave him the choice of re
maining a Comanche or returning to his white father. The
Indians were confident that Babb had completely accepted
their civilization and would reject the opportunity to
return to the ranch, but without hesitation the youth
chose to return to his white relatives.
Later, however, the youth wavered in his allegiance
to white civilization, for two years with the Indians left
their mark for his lifetime. After the Comanches went on
the reservation, he visited them regularly. Twenty years
after he returned to the ranch, he claimed land in the
Indian Territory as a member of the tribe and took his
white family to live there.
15 T. A. Babb, In the Bosom of the Comanches

(Dallas, Press of Hargreaves Printing Co., 1923), 19-64.
Babb was one of a considerable number of captives who
shared in the division of tribal lands under the Dawes
Severalty Act of 1887.
1 89
Captivity of Martina Diaz (Martha Day)
Another Texas teenager who remained in Comanche
captivity two years was Martina Diaz. Her experiences
were much more disagreeable than Babb's, and she had no
inclination to become an Indian. She gained her freedom
with the assistance of the agent, Lawrie Tatum. Held by
a warrior named Black Beard, she feared for her life if
she should attempt to escape. Nevertheless, when her band
came to the agency for rations, she fled the camp during
the night and hid beneath the front porch of the agency
until morning. Tatum reported that Black Beard and other
Indians watched the building all day in the hope of
seizing or shooting her. Meanwhile, the agent's wife spent
the day sewing dresses to replace her Comanche costume.
By the end of the day, Martina's appearance had changed
dramatically. No longer the semblance of an abused,
wretched squaw, she had been transformed into an attractive
young Mexican woman, radiant in the expectation of being
restored to her own people. Her appearance deceived the
Indians, and Tatum was able to slip her onto the stage
without their recognizing her. When a delegation of chiefs
called upon him to request her return, she was out of their
reach.
190
Before leaving for home, Martina told Tatum of
other Mexican captives in the Comanche camp who wished to
escape. With this information as a starting point, Tatum
recovered 11 boys and returned them to their families.
It is evident that Martina Diaz stoutly resisted
assimilation. There can be little doubt that sexual abuse
was a factor in driving her to run away from her oppressor
at the risk of her life.
Captivity of Arthur Campbell
Arthur Campbell, aged 15, was another captive who
remained in Indian hands two years. Having volunteered
for militia duty in western Virginia, in 1756 he partici
pated in a fight against Indians from Lake Erie. While
firing down on the Indians from concealment in a tree, he
received a wound in the leg and fell into enemy hands. His
case is unusual because he deliberately adopted Indian
customs, pretending to become assimilated in order to gain
an opportunity to escape.
Young Campbell was a brave and resourceful captive.
While running the gauntlet, he greatly impressed an aged
chief by his manly qualities. Eventually the chief
adopted him. Within a few months, Campbell mastered their
16 Corwin, Comanche & Kiowa Captives, 178-83.

One of these was Pres-lean-no, an adopted son of chief
Parry-O-coom. The chief cried in the agency office when
the little captive left for home.
191
language and became adept at tracking and hunting with the
bow and arrow. He quickly earned the confidence of the
chief and accompanied him on hunting trips.

In 1758 Campbell learned that the John Forbes
Expedition against Fort Duquesne was approaching, and he
determined to escape and join his countrymen. He ducked
out of sight while hunting and found his way through
hundreds of miles of wilderness to safety. The army at
once made use of his knowledge as a guide. When he
returned to Virginia, his services merited a grant of
1,000 acres. Eventually, he served in the Virginia
Assembly.
Captivity of Elias Sawyer
Elias Sawyer, a 15-year-old Lancaster,
Massachusetts, youth, was captured with his father, Thomas,
on October 15, 1705. His case is of particular interest,
because it indicates how quickly love of an Indian girl
could change a captive's attitude toward assimilation.-*-^*
17 Robert L. Kincaid, The Wilderness Road

(Indianapolis, Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1947), 83.
18 Savoie Lottinville, scholar, historical editor,

and Osage Sycamore, believes that love between captives
and captors, rather than shame over sexual involvement
with members of a hated race, prevented prisoners from
wanting to return to their white families: Savoie
Lottinville to author, February 17, 1977 ( in author's
possession).
Their Abenaki captors carried the Sawyers to
Montreal, where Thomas, a blacksmith, bargained with the
governor to build him a sawmill in exchange for their
freedom. The governor agreed, but the Indians refused to
sell them, insisting that they had sentenced Thomas to
death. They tied him to a stake and prepared the fagots
when suddenly a priest rushed forward, declaring that he
held the key to Purgatory and that he would send all of
the Indians there immediately if they did not release the
prisoner.
For the next year Elias and his father worked on
the sawmill. Then Thomas was permitted to return to
Lancaster. Elias desired to accompany his father, but his
captors retained him for another year, believing that they
could assimilate him. During this second year of
captivity, he fell in love with an Abenaki maiden, and
when the French arranged his release he at first declined
to leave the Indians. Some time later, he reconsidered
and decided to go home for a visit, but he promised to
return and marry the girl. His family insisted that he
remain at home, however, and after some years he married a
Massachusetts woman. Until the day of his death, he re
gretted leaving the Indians, however, and wore a love tote

IQ
which the Abenaki Indian girl had given to him.
19 Coleman, Hew England Captives Carried to

Canada, I, 310-12.
193
Captivity of Temple Friend
Temple Friend, a small boy, was captured by
Comanche Indians in 186 8 and remained with them until
Lawrie Tatum obtained his release in 1872. His case
illustrates how rapidly a child could lose and regain his
native language. So completely assimilated that he tried
to hide from his redeemers, he was unable to identify
himself and Tatum placed him in the agency school while
attempting to locate his relatives. The boy's grandfather,
the Reverend L. S. Friend, travelled 15,000 miles in search
of him, following false leads to Indian reservations in New
Mexico and Arizona before Tatum summoned him after reading
an advertisement in an Austin, Texas, newspaper.
Mr. Friend recognized his grandson immediately and
called him by name. Although the boy had no recollection
of life before captivity, he nodded when he heard the name.
Temple had forgotten the English language, but he quickly
regained its command while attending the agency school.
Since language predominance is a major element in assimi
lation, it was possible for the boy to regain some
recollection of his life before captivity once he could
converse with his grandfather.20 Having become a white
Indian within a short time, he managed to revert to his
original culture with equal rapidity.
20 Corwin, Comanche Kiowa Captives, 176-78;

Rister, Border Captives, 143-47.
194
Captivity of John Gyles
John Gyles, aged nine, was captured at Pemaquid,
Maine, by Maliseet Indians on August 2, 16 89. The Indians
captured his father, mother, one brother, and two sisters.
They murdered his father almost immediately. The mother
and sisters were redeemed in a few years. His brother,
James, escaped but fell into Indian hands a second time,
being tortured and burned to death in 169 2. John made the
march to Canada, living with his captor in New Brunswick
for six years before being sold to the French. His case
is unusual for a child his age, for he successfully
resisted assimilation.
John's life at the Indian village of Meductic was
threatened by visiting Micmac Indians who tortured him on
several occasions. Within a year, he learned the Maliseet
language and developed into a proficient hunter, but he
retained a strong desire to return to white civilization.
After six years, a dispute arose between his original
captor and the widow of a second master to whom he had been
sold. Some of the Indians suggested settling the dispute
by killing the captive, but a priest arranged for his re
demption by a French trader. John lived with a French
family three years, serving as an interpreter. In 1698 the

91
French permitted him to return to New England.
21 Van der Beets, Held Captive by Indians, 104-107,

121-29.
195
Upon his reunion with his brothers and sisters,
John immediately entered government service as an inter
preter. He could speak French, Maliseet, and Micmac, and
he served skillfully in this capacity for many years, being
well trusted by his former captors in all matters of trade,
prisoner exchange, and peace negotiation.22
Captivity of Frank Grouard
Frank Grouard, the son of an American missionary
and a Polynesian woman, was born on a South Pacific Island
on September 20, 1850. His father brought him to
California in 1852, and at an early age he lived with a
Mormon family in Utah. At the age of 15, he ran away and
worked as a freighter. Four years later, while carrying
mail to Fort Hall, he was captured by Sitting Bull. He
lived with the Sioux for six years before simply riding
away from them to the nearest military post.
At first, the Sioux warriors wanted to kill
Grouard, but Sitting Bull protected him. As he showed a
sincere interest in Indian customs, these warriors became
increasingly friendly, many of them believing because of
his dark skin that he was a natural-born Indian who had
been captured and reared by their white enemies. He
proved himself to be an excellent hunter, several times
22 Coleman, Mew England Captives Carried to

Canada, I, 169-72.
1 96
bringing in game during times of famine. By the end of
his second year in captivity, he could speak the Sioux
language fluently and appeared to be so completely assimi
lated that he was allowed to roam without restraint.
In 1872 the Indians tested Grouard's fitness for
tribal membership by cutting many pieces of flesh from his
arms. He withstood torture without flinching and, having
proved his manhood, he obtained permission to marry an
Indian girl. His marriage, instead of resulting in
increased Indianization, became the indirect cause of his
leaving the Indians. Some dispute arose with the girl's
relatives which led him to reconsider his future and,
eventually, to return to white civilization.22
How assimilated was Grouard? He could have
returned to white civilization several years earlier, but
he asserted that he remained in order to learn as much as
possible about the topography of the Indian country.2^
He enjoyed Indian life and greatly admired Sitting Bull,
Crazy Horse, and other Sioux leaders. When he rode into
Fort Robinson, he could barely speak English. One suspects
23 Joe De Barth, Life and Adventures of Frank

Grouard (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1958),
xiv, 3-4, 30-87; John F. Finerty, Warpath and Bivouac
(Chicago: Donohue and Henneberry, 1890), 99.
24 Grouard gained such knowledge of the Plains

and Rockies that he became one of the most valuable scouts
in military campaigns against the Indians.
197
that had he not become embroiled in tribal factionalism
and disputes with his Indian in-laws, he would have become
a white Indian.
There can be little doubt, however, that Grouard
became less completely Indianized during six years of
captivity than did Santiago McKinn in less than a year.
Like Pierre Esprit Radisson and perhaps some other captives
whose cases are reported in this chapter, he reached a
point on the assimilation scale where a slight change of
circumstances could have resulted in lifelong attachment
to Indian civilization.
Conclusions
It appears, then, that the degree of assimilation
was not directly related to the length of captivity. This
conclusion gains support, moreover, when the experiences
of Herman Lehmann, Jeff and Clinton Smith, and many other
captives are considered. While some captives became sub
stantially Indianized in less than two years, others
attempted to return to white civilization after living 20
or 30 years with the Indians. Matthew Brayton, for
instance, was a captive for 34 years; he was traded seven
times from tribe to tribe and did not achieve adoption for
a decade. He lost all recollection of life before
captivity and came to regard white people as enemies. lie
married an Indian and fathered half-breed children. Yet
he eventually abandoned his Indian family and spent years
198
searching for his white relatives.^5 Another captive who
remained more than 30 years with the Indians was Mrs.
Kepple Groves. When seen in a Miami Indian village in 1791
by Colonel Thomas Procter, she was too ill to try to
escape, but she begged him to get her white relatives to
help her.^6
These case histories and others show that a
lengthy captivity did not inevitably lead to Indianization.
Among captives held for 30 years, some quickly adopted the
culture of their captors, while others acquired Indian
traits but welcomed the opportunity to return to the
whites. More than 40 additional case histories showed the
same scattering of results. Clearly, then, length of
captivity was not the most crucial factor in assimilation.
25 Matthew Brayton, The Indian Captive (Cleveland,

Fairbanks, Benedict, 1860), 11-14; Peckham, Captured by
Indians, 168-83.
26 Thomas Procter, "Narrative of Colonel Thomas

Procter," American State Papers, Indian Affairs, I.
(Washington, Gales and Seaton, 1832), 155.
CHAPTER VI
THE CRITICAL AGE
Narratives of captivity indicate that the age when
captured was the most crucial factor in determining assimi
lation. James Axtell has concluded that captives over 15
or 16 years old usually did not become assimilated.-*- Was
there a critical age which determined the individual's
inclination to remain with the Indians or to return to his
white family? And if so what was it? Was the critical
age the same for boys and girls? The following case
studies, presented in approximate ascending order of age
at time of captivity, should answer these questions.
Captivity of Tom Graves
Tom Graves was captured in infancy by Cherokee
Indians. He never knew who his real parents were or where
he had been captured. The Arkansas Gazette characterized
him as "said to possess, to their fullest extent, all the
habits and principles of an Indian or savage."2 In 1820
1 Axtell, "White Indians of Colonial America," 82
2 Arkansas Gazette, April 29, 1823.
199
2 00
when Major Stephen H. Long descended the Arkansas River,
he shared a meal with Graves. He reported that his host
appeared to be white but was unable to speak English.-^
In 1821 Tom Graves led a Cherokee raiding party
that attacked an Osage Indian camp occupied only by old
men, women, and children. The Cherokees massacred 29
women and children and took 90 prisoners. Graves murdered
three of the prisoners, a woman and two children, after
they arrived at the Cherokee village. A white man named
Scott witnessed the crime and reported that Graves "threw
their bodies to be devoured by the hogs." Indian Agent
Richard Graham charged that "this murder was perpetrated
by one Graves, a white, who was taken when very young by
the Cherokees and brought up by them and is now a Captain
and commanded 100 of the Party and is a farther evidence
to me that there is more savage verocity [sic] in the
whites brought in Indian life and the half-breeds than in
the genuine Indian."4
3 Edwin James, Account of an Expedition From

Pittsburgh to the Rocky Mountains, Performed in the Years,
1819, 1820, Reuben Gold Thwaites (ed.), Early Western
Travels (Cleveland: The A. H. Clark Company, 1905) , XVII,
17. Volumes 14-17 of this excellent work contain an
account of the Stephen H. Long expedition, written by
James, which was originally published in Philadelphia in
1822. James was one of the foremost authorities on Indian
civilization of his day.
4 Grant Foreman, Indians and Pioneers (Norman:

University of Oklahoma Press, 1930), llOn.
201
Graves stood trial at Little Rock in 182 3 for these
murders and others committed against Osage children. The
court released him, however, for lack of jurisdiction in
crimes committed on Indian land which followed tribal
custom. In 1823 the Osages retaliated by killing Red Hawk,
a nephew of Tom Graves. This murder prevented the
establishment of peace between these tribes for many
years.5 The experiences of Tom Graves provide an excellent
illustration of the importance of a captive's inability to
recall anything of his life among white people. In his
case, assimilation was unnecessary, for he was an Indian
in every regard except color almost from birth. Even his
color was hardly an obstacle, as the Cherokees had many
light skinned tribal leaders because of marriages between
white traders and daughters of chiefs.
Captivity of Lizzie Fletcher
Another captive who retained no memory of a white
family was Lizzie Fletcher. On July 31, .1865 , at the age
of two, she was captured by Cheyenne Indians at Rock Creek,
Wyoming. The Indians also abducted her older sister, Mary,
5 Ibid., 105-10, 127. Graves continued to play a

prominent role in Cherokee affairs. In 182 7 he went to
Washington as a delegate to settle a dispute with the
Federal Government. He received $1,200 at that time as
restitution for his imprisonment while awaiting trial for
the murder of the Osage children. He signed a treaty which
proved to be unpopular with the tribe, and only he and
George Guess (Sequoyah) among the delegates dared come home
to confront their fellow Cherokees.
202
but separated them almost immediately. Mary regained her
freedom in 1866, but Lizzie's whereabouts remained unknown
for 35 years.
In 1900 a band of Arapahoe Indians visited Casper,
Wyoming. One of the women aroused much curiosity because
she appeared to be white. Dressed and painted in Indian
fashion and unable to speak English, the woman ignored
inquiries about her history. An Indian who could speak
English explained that the white woman had been captured
in early childhood, had been raised by the Cheyennes, had
married an Arapahoe named John Brokenhorn, and had had
several children by him.
Mary Fletcher (then Mrs. A. M. Cook) read an
account of this incident in a newspaper and, believing
that the white woman might be her sister, took the stage
to the Arapahoe agency to find out. She positively
identified the woman as Lizzie and urged her to rejoin her
family at Davenport, Iowa. But Lizzie refused. "She
declared that she was an Indian, that she was satisfied to
live as she had always lived? to call a tepee her home, to
wear a blanket, to do the drudgery as all the squaws were
doing, and to claim a fullblooded Indian as her husband."
Sadly, Mrs. Cook returned to Iowa, leaving her long
lost sister with people she hated because of her own
memories of captivity. She lamented that, "although she
had had many bitter experiences, when her sister refused
to give up her wild life and live like a woman civilized,
it was the hardest blow she had endured since she saw her
mother killed by being thrust through the body with a spear
by a blood-thirsty Indian."6
This case illustrates how capture at an early age
could lead to a preference for Indian life. Lizzie's
preference was, however, not shared by her children. After
they learned that they were half-white, they adopted
varying degrees of white civilization. One of her sons
became a preacher.7
Captivity of Thomas Armstrong
Another child who became a captive at the age of
two was Thomas Armstrong. His case is included here
because it exemplifies difficulties experienced when a
child with such a heritage was exposed to white civili
zation. Thomas was captured in Pennsylvania by the Seneca
Indians during the American Revolution. A patriot army^
defeated the Senecas and compelled them to release their
6 "A White Indian Woman," (typescript), American

Philosophical Society Library, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
(Taken from "History of Natrona County, 1888-1922,"
417-21) .
7 F. S. Cook to William Ash, April 26, 19 35,
Archives, American Philosophical Society Library,
8 John Sullivan's campaign against the Six Nations

of 1779.
204
captives, but a considerable number, including Thomas ,
chose to remain with the Indians. While still a youth, he
married a white girl, captured in infancy and so completely
assimilated that an observer described her as an Indian in
every way except birth.
At the time of his marriage, Armstrong lived on
a reservation where he frequently came into contact with
whites and acquired some use of the English language. He
related that he had no recollection of life before
captivity, but his appearance left no doubt of his ancestry,
and he gradually developed a longing to learn about his
white family. The Indians told him that he had a sister
still living at the place of his capture. When about 20
years old, he went to Pennsylvania and located his sister.
Although she did not recognize him, she invited him inside
her house and treated him kindly. He made no attempt to
converse with her, and after about an hour, he returned to
the wilderness. Asked why he had not made himself known,
he replied that his sister's home and its furnishings
looked so grand that he always would have felt out of place
in that kind of life.®
9 Orlando Allen, "Incidents in the Life of an

Indian Captive," American Historical Record, I (1872),
409-10.
205
Captivity of John Ward
Another captive who lived with the Indians until
his death was John Ward. Captured in 175 8 at the age of
three by Shawnee Indians, he became completely assimilated,
married an Indian, and fathered several children. His case
is chosen for inclusion because he had the unusual
experience of fighting against members of his own white
family on at least three separate occasions. As a young
warrior he fired from ambush with his Shawnee companions
on a force of white frontiersmen near the mouth of the
Kanawha River. In that battle the Shawnees killed his
father. His half-Indian daughter narrowly escaped death
at the hands of his white brother, James, when the
Kentucky militia made a surprise attack on the Shawnee
village in 1791. A year later, the militia attacked the
village again and John Ward received a mortal wound. He
had lived with the Indians 34 years at the time of his
death.10
Captivity of Mrs. Dixon
The Boaz Thorp family settled in the Whitewater
country of Indiana Territory in 1813. In the fall of
1814, Indians caught the Thorp children at play, seized a
10 Charles McKnight, Our Western Border

(Philadelphia: J. C. McCurdy & Co., 1879), 598-603.
2 06
four-year-old daughter, and carried her into the wilder
ness. Boaz Thorp spent several years visiting Indian
villages in the role of a trader, but he could find no
trace of his daughter. Many years later, however, he
learned that a white woman about the age of his daughter
lived in a Miami Indian village in northern Indiana. This
time his quest was successful, for he identified the woman
as his daughter by a scar on her body. But he could not
induce her to come home. She had married a Miami Indian,
known as Captain Dixon, had had several children by him,
and refused to leave him despite his "profligate, dis
solute, and thriftless character."
The case of Mrs. Dixon is unique among accounts of
captivity located by this researcher, for she was the only
captive among them who committed suicide. In 1850 a
Potawatomi Indian killed Captain Dixon in a drunken brawl.
About this same time, his "white Indian" wife drowned her
self in the Mississinewa River.H By this act she went
far beyond the practice of self-disfigurement, such as
cutting off a finger, which squaws frequently performed as
an act of grief over a husband's death.
11 Nellie Decker Hubbard, "A Tale of Whitewater

County," Indiana Magazine of History, XXVIII (1932),
188-90.
Captivity of Robert Armstrong
Another child who was captured at the age of four
was Robert Armstrong. Unlike Mrs. Dixon, he retained some
memory of his life with the whites and could speak a few
words of English. He was captured by Wyandot Indians near
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1786. Adopted into the Big
Turtle band, he became an expert hunter and married an
Indian. A missionary who saw him said that he had become
almost completely Indianized and had lost the use of
English except for a few words.
But this minimum retention of the language and
fleeting memories of an earlier life assisted in leading
to a desire to renew his association with white people
after he moved to a reservation. There he eventually
regained a sufficient knowledge of English to serve some
missionaries as an interpreter. He became a Christian and
attempted to convert the Wyandots to that faith. His
second wife was half white, the daughter of a famous
captive named Ebenezer Zane.-1-^ His experiences show that
contact with whites on or near a reservation could lead an
assimilated captive part of the way back to his original
civilization.
12 Finley, Life Among the Indians, 455-56.
208
Captivity of White Chief
A child captured at the age of four who became an
Iroquois chief gave an account of his experiences to
missionaries many years later. He did not remember his
family name, and the Indians called him White Chief. His
case is included here because it illustrates a small
child's need of a mother figure during times of crisis.
Having lost his own mother, he instinctively turned to a
surrogate and this feeling of security she gave him
assisted the progress of his assimilation:
The last I remember of my mother, she was

running, carrying me in her arms. Suddenly
she fell to the ground . . . and I was taken
from her. Overwhelmed with fright, I knew
nothing more until I opened my eyes to find
myself in the lap of an Indian woman. Looking
kindly down into my face she smiled on me, and
gave me some dried deer's meat and maple sugar.
From that hour I believe she loved me as a
mother. I am sure I returned to her the
affection of a son. . . . I always had a warm
place at the fire, and slept in her arms. . .
After a few years of captivity, the boy became more
adept than his companions at racing and other Indian con
tests. While his prowess pleased the Iroquois warriors, it
angered the young Indians he had bested and they taunted
him about being white. "I immediately hung my head and
ran. . . to my mother, and . . . cried bitterly and
13 Harriet S. Caswell, Our Life Among the Iroquois

Indians (Boston: Congressional Sunday-School and
Publishing Society, 1892), 53.
209
loudly," he acknowledged. "She soothed me as well as she
could, asking what was the matter. After a while I was
able to tell her the bitter taunt I had received. She
took me in her arms and said, 'Well, my son it is true.
You are a white boy. You can't help it; but if you
always do right and are smart, you will be none the worse
for belonging to that wicked race.'"^
When he matured White Chief took the warpath
against enemy tribes, but never against the whites. He
became a chief at an early age, married an Indian maiden,
and fathered three sons, all of whom eventually became
chiefs. His achievements continued to antagonize some of
the Indians, and for a time their enmity lead him to con
sider leaving the tribe to live with the whites. But his
Indian relatives prevailed on him to remain, and he told
the missionaries that he never regretted his decision to
live out his days with the tribe.
The cases of Robert Armstrong, White Chief and
others indicate that the age of four may have been a
breaking point between children who lost, and those who
retained, memories of life before captivity. While
becoming greatly assimilated, some children captured at
age four seem to have called up these early memories in
later life and considered returning to white civilization.
14 Ibid., 53. 15 Ibid., 55.
210
Captivity of Caty Sage
Caty Sage was kidnapped at the age of five in Elk
Creek Valley, Virginia, in 1792. She grew up with the
Wyandot Indians and became greatly assimilated. Her
experiences show how completely a young captive could
sever her ties with one civilization and immerse herself
in that of another. During more than 60 years with the
tribe she survived three Indian husbands, two of whom, the
Crain and Between-the-Logs, were important chiefs.
In 1848 her brother, Charles, located her in Kansas
after the Wyandots had been removed to that territory. She
could neither speak nor understand English, and she
declined to return to Virginia to visit her relatives. She
told her brother to inform her aged mother that she had
always been treated tenderly by her husbands, and she had
no reason to complain about her life as an Indian.^6
Captivity of Jacob Nicely
Another captive taken at the age of five wasJacob
Nicely. Captured by Seneca Indians in Westmoreland County,
Pennsylvania, he vanished without a trace for almost 40
years. Finally, in 1828, his family located him at the
Seneca Reservation. Jacob's brother visited him and found
16 Bonnie Sage Ball, Red Trails and White (New

York: Exposition Press, 1955), 19-20, 37-38, 40-41, 51,
58, 61-62.
211
that he had acquired an Indian wife, a considerable amount
of property, and a preference for the Seneca way of life.
Jacob's brother urged him to make a visit to his
aged mother in Pennsylvania, and finally he agreed to do
so. The brothers rode south on horseback, but they had
not gone far when Jacob changed his mind. He was com
fortable, content, and secure with the Indians. Why risk
crossing over into an alien, perhaps hostile, environment
to see a woman whom he could barely remember? He promised
to make the trip the following summer, but he never left
the Indians again . ^
Captivity of Thomas Lee
Thomas Lee, aged six, was taken during a foray
into Union County, Pennsylvania, on August 13, 1782. His
father and mother died in the attack on their cabin. The
raiders bashed his baby brother against a tree and left
him for dead, but neighbors found him still alive and
nursed him back to health. Thomas was the youngest at the
time of captivity of any of the children discussed in this
chapter who became fully restored to white civilization.
Thomas lived with the Indians until ransomed by
relatives in 1788. He had become a white Indian, and it
was necessary to bind him in the canoe on the way back to
17 Sipe, The Indian Wars of Pennsylvania, 696.
212
Pennsylvania. When the party reached Wilkes-Barre, they
untied him and he immediately leaped from the canoe and
fled into the nearby woods. After several hours of
searching, they located the boy and guarded him closely
during the remainder of the trip. For a long time he
remained sullen and yearned to return to the Indians, but
gradually he became reaccustomed to white civilization.
His restoration shows that even a captive redeemed against
his will could re-enter his original milieu if given
sufficient time and understanding.
Captivity of Marie Bucheur
Marie Bucheur, the daughter of a French trader who
settled on the Frio River in southern Texas (then a
province of Mexico) was captured at the age of seven by
Comanche Indians. Her story points to the possibility
that a conflict of civilizations for a captive's allegiance

existed between Indian tribes as well as betweei. Indians
and whites.
Bucheur had been on excellent terms with the
Comanches, who regularly exchanged their furs for his goods.
He had no warning that Mexicans had murdered a band of
Comanche hunters on the Rio Grande, resulting in a cry for
vengeance against all white people. Thus the French family
18 Ibid., 675-76.
became easy prey. Warriors burned the trader and his wife
at the stake while compelling Marie and her ten-year-old
brother to watch. Then they separated the children and
Marie never saw her brother again.
A Comanche warrior adopted Marie, and she roamed
the plains with his family for seven years. Then, the
young maiden caught the eye of a visiting Delaware chief,
Kistalwa, and he purchased her for two horses and a supply
of ammunition and tobacco. The Delawares, agriculturally-
inclined Indians who had migrated from the East and
settled on rich lands near the Sabine River, were on
excellent terms with white settlers. They could offer
Marie a much easier life than she led with the hunting-
gathering Plains Indians. But Marie, like most captives
her age, had become greatly assimilated, and she regarded
the Comanches as her own people. She objected strongly
to joining the Delawares, even though Kistalwa explained
that he wished to rescue her from the people who had
murdered her parents. The bargain, however, was final, and
Marie tearfully parted from her adopted parents.
Two years later, Marie married Kistalwa. They had
two sons who became chiefs, Black Wolf and Light-foot.19
19 P. J. DeSmet, Western Missions and Missionaries

(Shannon: Irish University Press, 1972), 231-39. Father
DeSmet was one of the foremost missionaries in the West.
214
Captivity of Peter Klengleschmidt
A German family named Klengleschmidt settled on the
Pennsylvania frontier during the American Revolution. An
Iroquois war party attacked them, killing everyone except
Peter, a boy about eight years old. They carried him into
captivity and in a short time he became an adopted member
of the tribe.
Although Peter became greatly Indianized, his life
before captivity provided him with memories enough of a
different civilization to pull him part of the way back.
At the close of the Revolution, some of the Iroquois
settled on the Grand River Reserve. Peter lived with them
awhile, then left the reserve and built a cabin near a
white settlement on the Nanticoke River. He married two
different Indian women, having two children by the first
and raising two mulatto orphans with his childless second
wife.
Peter worked at times for a white family named
Hoover. This family, having once lived in Pennsylvania,
knew the story of the missing Klengleschmidt boy. When
Peter related what he could remember of his life before
captivity, they persuaded him to accompany David Hoover on
his next visit to the family home. They found
Klengleschmidt relatives still living in the area, and
Peter convinced them of his identity by showing them the
spot where the Indians had killed his mother.
215
Peter returned to the Indians, but he lived on the
fringes of settlement and had to repress an urge to recross
the chasm to white civilization. He often said "in his
imperfect English: If my Second Wife Molly was a whiteman
I could go and live with my folks."2®
Captivity of Silas and Timothy Rice
Silas Rice, aged nine, and his brother, Timothy,
aged seven, were captured by Iroquois Indians in 1704.
Taken to a village on the St. Lawrence,, they were adopted
into the families of chiefs as replacements for sons killed
in battle. Their story is included here because of the
insight it provides into the importance of achievement and
attainment of positions of leadership in facilitating
Indianization.
As the boys grew into young manhood, they adopted
the ways of their captors. They married Indians and
exhibited such qualities of leadership that they became
the most prominent chiefs among the remnant of the Six
Nations at Cauhnawaga. Having reached an exalted position
in their new way of life, it is not surprising that they
had little desire to return to a civilization in which
they would be regarded as unfortunate curiosities.
20 Irma Peters to editors of the Standard,

1895 [?] (typescript), American Philosophical Society
Library, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
216
In 1749 a relative of the Rices found Timothy and
induced him to visit his original home. He remembered the
site and the events of his capture, but he had no desire
to abandon his Indian family.
Timothy lived until 1777, and Silas until 1779.
They left almost 700 descendants, many of whom became
Iroquois leaders.21
Captivity of Kiowa Dutch
In 1837 a band of Kiowas raided the Matagorda Bay
area of Texas and massacred a German family. They spared
an eight-year-old boy and carried him into captivity. He
remained with them for 60 years. Like the Rice brothers,
he attained renown, but it resulted from his role as a
warrior rather than as a peacetime leader of his adopted
nation. He grew into a fearsome raider, known throughout
the Texas frontier as Kiowa Dutch. An enormous blond, no
amount of exposure to the sun could make him resemble his
Indian companions, but culturally he became as much a
Kiowa as if he had been born into the tribe.
In August 1866, the band of the famous raider,
Satanta, attacked an Army wagon train near the Llano River
in Central Texas. A severe fight lasted most of the day.
21 Edward P. Spillane, "An Iroquois Chief,"

United States Catholic Historical Society Historical
Records and Studies, IV, Part 1 (February, 1911), T0 3-104.
217
Finally, the Indians broke off the engagement, but before
they left the scene Kiowa Dutch rode close enough to the
wagons to curse the soldiers in English, spoken with a
German accent.22 He warned them that he would get their
scalps before they reached Buffalo Gap.
By 1890 the Kiowas were living peacefully on a
reservation in Oklahoma. There an Indian agent interviewed
Kiowa Dutch. The captive recalled attending school in
Germany for one year and then moving with his family to
Texas where they settled on a river near the sea. After
the Indians killed his parents, he had never felt any
desire to return to white civilization, and he entered with
immediate enthusiasm into the wild, free life of the most
predatory of all the Plains t r i b e s . 23
Captivity of Jonathan Alder
Jonathan Alder, aged nine, was captured by Shawnee
Indians in Wythe County, Virginia, in March 17 82. A chief
named Succohanos adopted him as a replacement for a dead
son. His case is of interest because his assimilation
progressed at a slower pace than that of most captives his
age. Jonathan's adopted parents treated him kindly, but
22 The age of seven at the time of captivity seems

to serve as an approximate breaking point between children
who retained the use of native languages during lengthy
captivities and those who forgot them.
23 Wharton, Satanta, 14, 59.
218
for a long time he cried to return to his white family.
After he learned their language, he became better satisfied
with his new life and would have been content had it not
been for repeated attacks of fever and ague.
In time Alder became an adequate hunter. By the
age of 13, he had become sufficiently Indianized to go on
his first horse stealing raid into Kentucky. But he did
not lose his memories of a different way of life before
captivity. In 1796 he encountered some white settlers who
reported that he retained some knowledge of the English
language. The comparatively slow pace of Alder's assimi
lation assisted him to recross the chasm between civili
zations. Among the captives whose experiences were
described in sources consulted during this study, he was
one of a few taken below the age of ten who voluntarily
sought out and returned to his white relatives. After
General Anthony Wayne's victory at Fallen Timbers brought
peace to the area, Alder and his Indian wife built a cabin
near a white settlement. Gradually, assoc^ition with whites
weakened his ties to the Indians, and he decided to seek
his white relatives. A neighbor advertised in the news
papers that Alder was attempting to contact his relatives
and as a result he located a brother. Alder then separated
from his Indian wife, giving her all of his property, and
went home to Virginia to live as a white man.24
24 McKnight, Our Western Border, 602-603, 728-31.
219
Captivity of Cynthia Ann Parker
The case of Cynthia Ann Parker is of unusual
interest, not only because of the rapidity and complete
ness of her assimilation, but also because she became the
mother of a great chief. On May 19, 1836, a war party of
800 Comanches, Kiowas and Wichitas struck at Parker's Fort
in east central Texas, killing five men and taking four
captives, including Cynthia Ann (aged nine). In 1846 an
Army officer saw Cynthia Ann and tried unsuccessfully to
purchase her. By that time she had become completely
Indianized and probably was married.25 Six years later,
Captain Randolph B. Marcy saw her while exploring the Red
River for the United States Government. He reported as
follows:
This woman has adopted all the habits and

peculiarities of the Comanches? has an
Indian husband (Peta Nocona, a war chief)
and children, and cannot be persuaded to
leave them. The brother (John Parker) of
the woman . . . was sent back by his
mother for the purpose of endeavoring to
prevail upon his sister to leave the
Indians, and return to her family; but he
stated to me that on his arrival, she
refused to listen to the proposition,
saying that her husband, children, and all
that she held most dear, were with the
Indians, and there she should remain.25
25 Peckham, Captured by Indians, 184-92.
26 Randolph B. Marcy, Exploration of the Red River

of Louisiana in the Year 1852, (Washington: A. 0. P.
Nicholson, 1854), 103.
220
In 1860 Texas Ranger Captain L. S. Ross recovered
Cynthia Ann and her infant daughter during a surprise
attack on a Comanche camp. Ross sent word to her uncle,
Isaac Parker. After attempting to converse with her,
Parker concluded that she could not be Cynthia Ann. But
the name had a familiar sound to the long-lost captive.
She pointed to herself and repeated "Cynthia Ann." Thus
identified, she went with her uncle to become his house
keeper. She left two sons among the Comanches. One of
them became the famous war chief known as Quanah P a r k e r .^
Captivity of Samuel Gill
Samuel Gill, son of Sargeant Samuel Gill of
Salisbury, Massachusetts, was almost ten years old when
captured by Abenaki Indians on June 10, 1697. Taken to
Canada, he lived with the Indians the rest of his life.
The course of his assimilation was one of contrasts, for
he enjoyed his life as an Indian, but he never lost the use
of the English language and he chose a white girl for his
wife. About 1715 he married a captive named Rosalie (not
otherwise identified, since the record was destroyed by
Major Robert Rogers in his attack on St. Francis during
the French and Indian War.) Samuel and Rosalie had several
children. Their sons married Indians and became important
27 Peckham, Captured by Indians, 192-94.
R eproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
221
members of the Abenaki tribe. Although Samuel made no
attempt to visit his white relatives, he must have in
stilled a desire to do so in his children for, in 176 8,
they composed the following memorandum:
We . . . have come together to choose one among

us to seek the relatives of our late father, a
native of New England. We have never known
exactly where he was taken, only that he was
brought 80 years ago to St. Francis. His name
was Same Gillie. We know also that our grand
father, Sagen Gill, sent twice to seek him, but
he, having been taken so young, had become
attached to the nation and never wished to
leave. . . .2^
Captivity of John and Zechariah Tarbell
John and Zechariah Tarbell, like Silas and
Timothy Rice, were captured by the Iroquois and lived with
them all of their lives. Unlike the Rices, however, they
were never chiefs, and their assimilation, while sub
stantial, did not obliterate memories of home. Captured
at Groton, New Hampshire, they made the long march to
Canada, along with an older sister, Sarah, who was ransomed
by the French. John was 11 years old, and Zechariah was
seven, at the time of their capture in 1706.
John and Zechariah lived at the Indian towns of
Cauhnawaga and St. Regis. They married Indians and were
well satisfied with Iroquois life. But a desire to renew
28 Coleman, New England Captives Carried to

Canada, II, 360-64.
222
contacts with white relatives persisted and, in 17 39, they
visited Groton. Many citizens, including the Governor,
attempted to induce them to remain, offering money and
land, but they returned to their Indian families.
Thomas Hutchinson, a Colonial official who later
became Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts and one of the
foremost historians of his time, recalled that he met John
Tarbell at Albany in 1744 when the captive came in with
the Indians to trade. He reported that Tarbell was said
to be one of the richest men of the tribe. "He made a
visit in his Indian dress and with his Indian complexion
(for by means of grease and paints but little difference
could be discerned) to his relatives at Groton but had no
inclination to remain there,"29
Captivity of John Longley
One of the first New England captives to become a
white Indian was John Longley. Born in 1682 and captured
at Groton at the age of 12, he is of interest as a proto
type of the adventurous youths who adopted Indian ways
quickly and completely. The Indians killed his parents
and five brothers and sisters during a raid. They carried
John and two younger sisters to Canada. Both sisters died
in Canada, one after living many years as a nun. John was
redeemed after four years of captivity. But unlike his
29 Ibid., 293-97.
223
contemporary captive, John Gyles, he did not rejoice at the
prospect of exchanging his exciting experiences with the
Indians for the staid, hard Puritan life style. He was
ransomed against his will, and his deliverers had to bind
him hand and foot on the trip home to keep him from
running away and returning to the Indians.3°
Captivity of Warren Lyons
Warren Lyons was captured in 1837 by Comanches in
Lavaca County, Texas. Thirteen years old when taken, he
remained with the Indians ten years. He had several
opportunities to escape, but knowing that the Indians had
killed his father and suspecting that his mother had left
the area, he believed that he no longer had a home except
with his captors. In 1847 he went with some Comanches to
San Antonio to trade. There friends of the family
recognized him, told him that his mother still lived in
Lavaca County, and urged him to return home. Warren, who
still retained the use of English, protested that he had
two young Indian wives and did not wish to leave them. He
received a large number of presents as an inducement to
visit his mother, but he remained obdurate until given two
beautiful blankets, one for each wife. Then he promised
only to make a brief visit before returning to his Indian
30 Ibid., I, 284-85.
224
wives and friends. His white relatives were equally
determined to redeem him, however, and finally a brother
who belonged to the Texas Rangers persuaded him to join

that organization.
At the time of his capture, Warren was at an age
to be caught up in a contest of civilizations. Memories
of his early life tugged strongly against the satisfactions
of his new surroundings. Teetering on the margin between
civilizations, he could have been propelled by a chance
occurrence to leap in either direction. A solution was
found by offering him a life of adventure as a Texas
Ranger, the best of both worlds for a youth with his back
ground.
Captivity of the Girty Brothers
The importance of age at the time of capture in
determining the course and degree of assimilation is
clearly demonstrated when studying the cases of siblings.
One of the most interesting captivities of this kind was
that of Simon Girty, the infamous "white savage," who
terrorized Kentucky from 1778 to 1794. Girty was taken
along with his mother, stepfather, three brothers, and a
stepbrother at the fall of Fort Granville, Pennsylvania,
in 1756 .
31 James T. DeShields, The Border Wars of Texas

(Tioga, Texas: The Herald Company, 1912), 229-31.
225
The Indians tortured John Turner, the stepfather,
to death while forcing the family to watch. The Delawares
held Mrs. Turner and her small son, John, until 1759. They
took the four Girty boys - Thomas, Simon, James, and
George, to Kittanning. Only a few weeks after their
arrival there, an army led by Colonel John Armstrong
attacked the town and rescued Thomas, the eldest brother.
The Indians escaped into the wilderness, forcing the other
captives to flee with them. Simon, aged 15, was held by
the Senecas; James, aged 13, by the Shawnees; and George,
aged 11, by the Delawares. Each of them remained with the
Indians three years, being released in 1759.32
During the American Revolution, the three younger
Girty brothers joined the British Indian service and
participated in many raids against the Kentucky settle
ments. Simon became so notorious for acts of cruelty and
treachery that his very name struck terror throughout the
frontier. It was commonly believed that he had become a
complete Indian, more dangerous than the warriors he led.
But Consul W. Butterfield, biographer of the Girtys,
contends that Simon was not thoroughly Indianized: "Girty
was at times . . . ferociously cruel, and exhibited the
utmost savagery, but he was not at heart an Indian; nor
32 Consul Willshire Butterfield, History of the

Girtys (Columbus: Long's College Book Co., 1950), 8-16.
226
did he leave Pittsburgh to throw in his lot with 'the dusky
companions of his forest life,' but with 'their allies,'
the British."33 jn 1784 Simon married Catherine Malott, a
captive held by the Delawares since 1780. He secured her
release from captivity, and they built a cabin in Canada
near Detroit. Although Simon spent much of his time with
Indians, he and his wife lived as whites.
James Girty married a Shawnee and became more
Indianized than his older brother. Although less notorious
than Simon, he also has been characterized by frontier
settlers as a complete savage. But Butterfield contends
otherwise: "He had a cruel and savage nature, it is true,
but he had by no means given himself up to the . . . life
of an Indian, living upon scanty food like the red men,
hunting as they did, dressing like them, or depending upon
gifts from the British, or obtaining the necessaries of
life by selling skins to the traders. He was himself a
trader, and a thrifty one. . . ,"34
The youngest Girty brother, George, like Simon and
James, participated in many raids against the settlements.
But, unlike his brothers, he eventually returned completely
to the Indian life style, married a Delaware, and fathered
33 Ibid., 56. 34 Ibid., 231-32.
227
several children. He is said to have attempted whenever
possible to influence white captives to accept the Indian

way of l i f e . 35
Captivity of Joanna Ordway
Joanna Ordway, aged about 18, was captured in
Massachusetts in 1704. Although conclusive evidence is
lacking, one can surmise that she became substantially
assimilated. For several years she roamed the woods with
the Abenakis. In the spring of 1707, a party of Deerfield
scouts encountered a band of raiders near Lake Champlain
and wounded one of them. A scout rushed forward to obtain
a scalp, then stared in amazement when the intended victim,
a white woman, scrambled away into the wilderness. From
his description, she was thought bo be Joanna Ordway.
On June 22, 1710, a French priest baptized Joanna's
Indian baby girl, "born six months ago in the woods, that
an English girl, named Jeanne Owardway, taken at Haverhill
in New England in the winter of 17 04 by the Abenakis of the
river of Bequancour, has had by an Abenaki s a v a g e . "36
35 Ibid., 292-93, 315.
36 Coleman, New England Captives Carried to

Canada, I, 351.
228
Joanna named the baby Marguerite Abenaki. Later
the Indians sold the captive to the French, for she was
living in Montreal in 1713.37
Captivity of James Smith
James Smith was 18 years old when captured by Oka
and Delaware Indians while on a road-cutting expedition
near Fort Loudoun, Pennsylvania, in May 1755. His
narrative is one of the most valuable of any eighteenth
century captive in portraying the manners and customs of
an eastern woodland tribe. The Indians took him to Fort
Duquesne and forced him to run the gauntlet, but spared his
life while burning several other captives. Expecting a
fiery death, he was, instead, adopted by a Cauhnawaga
Indian family. After his redemption, he wrote a valuable
account of his experiences:
At length one of the chiefs made a speech. . . .

"My son, you are now flesh of our flesh, and
bone of our bone. By the ceremony which was
performed this day, every drop of white blood
was washed from your veins; you are taken into the
Caughnewago nation, and initiated into a warlike
tribe; you are adopted into a great family. . . .
My son, you have nothing to fear, we are now under
the same obligations to love, support, and defend
one another, therefore you are to consider your
self one of our people." -- At this time I did
not believe this fine speech, especially that
of the white blood being washed out of me; but
since that time . . . I never knew them to make
37 Ibid., 352.
229
any distinction between me and themselves in

any respect whatever until I left them. --
If they had plenty of clothing, I had plenty,
if we were scarce, we all shared the same
fate.38
Although Smith was past the age of most captives
who became greatly assimilated, he adopted many Indian
culture traits, going on hunting trips with the Indians
almost from the day of his adoption and quickly learning
their language. His band raided the settlements several
times, but did not take him along. "Though they had been
exceedingly kind to me, I still detested them, on account
of the barbarity I beheld after Braddock's defeat. . . .
but I began now to excuse the Indians on account of their
want of information," he wrote.39
During the severe winter of 1757-58, Smith lived
with an elderly and crippled adopted Indian brother and
a little boy. At the point of starvation, he determined
to escape to the nearest settlement. After traveling about
12 miles, he saw buffalo tracks and followed them until he
made a kill. Then, surprisingly, he realized that he had
acquired an affection for his Indian brothers. "When
hunger was abated, I began to be tenderly concerned for my
old Indian brother, and the little boy I had left in a
38 James Smith, "An Account of the Remarkable

Occurrences in the Life and Travels of Colonel James
Smith," in Drimmer, Scalps and Tomahawks, 32-33.
39 Ibid., 41.
230
perishing condition," he recalled. "I made haste and
packed up what meat I could carry . . . and returned

homewards."40
Home, in this case, meant his Indian family. Smith
remained with them for another year and a half. Then, he
accompanied some Indians to Montreal where he managed to
get aboard a French ship carrying English prisoners to be
exchanged. He reached home in 1760.41
Conclusion
The foregoing narratives indicate that the critical
age for Indianization was about 12 years. Most children
taken below that age were easily assimilated. Those older
than 12 accepted many Indian ways, but, in most cases they
retained the desire to return to their white f a m i l i e s . 42
Pinpointing the critical age which separated captives who
became Indianized from others who resisted assimilation is
difficult because of the imprecision of the available
evidence. Many of the captives did not remember their own
40 Ibid., 57. 41 Ibid., 60.
42 In order to test this thesis, an analysis was

made of the assimilation of approximately fifty captives,
aged eighteen and under. Factors considered in deter
mining the extent of assimilation include knowledge of
Indian languages, acquiring skill in Indian activities,
attempts to escape, attachment to individual Indians,
participation in warfare against other tribes, raids
against whites, Indian marriages, and acceptance or re
jection of opportunities to return to white families.
231
names and it is highly unlikely that they could recall their
ages at the time they were captured. In many cases, how
ever, the exact date of the capture was known to relatives
who recorded it or told it to the captives when they were
redeemed. In other instances, painstaking research by such
scholars as Emma Lewis Coleman verified ages of captives
through court or church r e c o r d s . 4 3
In addition to the case studies above, approxi
mately 50 more cases were analyzed of children who were
captured at 18 years or under. These cases confirm the
high correlation between age at time of captivity and the
extent of assimilation. They suggest also that the
"critical" age at time of abduction was somewhat lower for
girls than boys.
Few captives deviated significantly from the
pattern. Joanna Ordway was 18 when captured by Abenakis.
She roamed the woods with her captor and had a child by
him. If the Deerfield scouts had correctly identified
her, she could have been redeemed if she had not run away.
Apparently she never saw her white family again, but
evidence exists that she left the Indians to live in
Montreal. If more were known of the pressures placed on
43 There is a further complicating factor when

considering the assimilation of children taken to Canada.
Most of these young captives were sold to the French and
became transformed into French-Canadian Catholics rather
than Indians. For purposes of this study, only those New
England children who remained several years in Indian
hands are included.
232
her to submit to a sexual relationship, perhaps it would be
learned that she had attempted to resist assimilation to
the same extent as other girls her age.
Of the cases examined, the captive who deviated
most from the pattern was Leonard Schoolcraft. Taken at
16, he showed the qualities the Indians sought in a
potential warrior when, instead of dodging his assailants
while running the gauntlet, he attacked them with his
fists. The reliable antiquarian, Alexander Scott Withers,
reports that he was never positively identified again, but
frontiersmen accused him of becoming a complete savage and
a threat to his own people. Wine years after his capture,
a war party struck the settlement of Hacker's Creek.
Withers includes an account of the raid in his Chronicles
of Border Warfare which describes the deeds of a white man
believed to have been Schoolcraft. The raiders murdered
everyone at the home of Edmund West except an 11-year-old
girl. They tomahawked and scalped her and, believing her
to be dead, they threw her body over a fence, gathered up
their plunder, and prepared to depart. But Schoolcraft
detected signs of life in the child and directed one of the
warriors to stab her with a knife. With unbelievable
courage, the girl continued to feign death during these
233
torments, and she lived to describe her ordeal at the hands
of the savage white man and his Indian companions to out
raged neighbors who nursed her back to health.44
Was Schoolcraft by nature more savagely inclined
than other captives taken at his age? Or was the renegade
really some other captive who had been with the Indians
since early childhood? Probably the answer will never be
known.
Fortunately, there is additional information about
the attitudes of a captive who appears to have been less
completely assimilated than others taken at his age. He
was John Slover, captured at the age of eight by the Miamis
and held for 12 years. In 1773 some Shawnees brought him
to Pittsburgh. There some relatives recognized him and
urged him to return home. He yielded reluctantly, having
become strongly attached to the Indians and their way of
life.
During the American Revolution, an army under the
command of Colonel William Crawford invaded the Indian
country and pressed Slover into service as a guide. He
accepted the assignment reluctantly. The Shawnees and
Delawares defeated Crawford's forces, and Slover found
himself a prisoner once more. The Indians upbraided him
for turning against his brother and, urged on by James
Girty, they threatened to burn him at the stake.
44 Withers, Chronicles of Border Warfare, 377-80.
234
Slover knew many of the chiefs, spoke their
language fluently, and defended himself ably in the council
called to decide his fate. He reminded them that during
the whole 12 years of his former captivity he had given
ample proof of his fidelity to the Indians. Although he
had had a hundred opportunities, he had never once attempted
to escape. Several warriors present at the council could
testify that at the Treaty of Fort Pitt he had left them
reluctantly, in compliance with the urging of his family.
He had then taken leave of them publicly, in time of peace,
and with their approval. He had had no idea that he would
ever be called upon to oppose them in a future war, but
when war broke out duty compelled him to accompany his
countrymen to the field against the Indians, as he would
have fought for the Indians against the whites if he had
remained with them. In conclusion, he stated that "it was
the undoubted duty of every warrior to serve his country,
without regard to his own private feelings of attachment;
that he had done so; and if the Indians thought it worthy
of death, they could inflict the penalty upon him!"45
Slover's spirited defense failed to sway the
Indians. They fastened him to a stake and made ready to
burn him. But suddenly a downpour of rain extinguished
the fire, postponing his execution until the next day.
45 John A. M'Clung, Sketches of Western Adventure

(Cincinnati: H. S. & J. Applegate & Co., 1851), 141-42.
During the night his guards fell asleep, and he loosened
his bonds and escaped into the darkness. Several days
later he reached safety at Wheeling.46

These cases notwithstanding, the crucial importance
of age at time of capture to assimilation is clear. The
evidence does not support James Axtell's conclusion that
the critical age separating those who were assimilated
from those who were not was 15 or 16. Instead, the
evidence indicates that, other factors being equal,
children captured below the age of 12 usually became
greatly Indianized. With few exceptions, teen-aged female
captives, although they accepted many features of Indian
life, retained the desire to return to their white families.
However, male captives taken during their early teens were
attracted to many aspects of Indian life, and the critical
age for them was approximately 14. For both boys and girls
the critical age coincided with the age of puberity.
46 Ibid., 143-47.
CHAPTER V I I
AFTER RESTORATION
The number of captives living out their lives with
Indians probably was considerably smaller than the number
restored to their white families. For many redeemed
captives, restoration to white civilization had remained
the most cherished of desires, and rapid readjustment re
sulted. But there is evidence that hundreds of former
captives found reacculturation a slow and painful process.
Some of them died without ever losing the desire to return
to the Indians. For others the transformation required a
long period of time and great patience on the part of their
relatives. In some cases the former captives eased the ad
justment by obtaining employment, such as interpreting or
trading, which allowed them to work with Indians. In other
instances, male ex-captives were enticed into giving up the
wild, free life of the Indians by diverting them into
scouting or other dangerous careers in the wilderness or on
the plains. Some of them became mountain men and adopted a
life style featuring traits of both civilizations. It is
the purpose of this chapter to present case studies which
illustrate variations in patterns of reassimilation.
236
Captivity of Margaret Paulee
Margaret Paulee was captured by Shawnee Indians in
Monroe County, Virginia, on September 23, 1779. Her
husband, John Paulee, was killed in the attack and the
raiders murdered her infant daughter by bashing her head
against a tree. Margaret remained in captivity until 17 84.
Her case is included here because it illustrated the com
parative case of readjustment to white civilization
experienced by adult redeemed female captives who did not
marry Indians.
Margaret was adopted by the Shawnee chief,
Wa-ba-kah-kah-to, and very nearly murdered by him when his
son died in a battle against the Kentuckians. Six months
after her capture she gave birth to a boy. The Indians
were delighted and prized the child highly. Margaret's
greatest concern was that her captors would compel her to
marry against her will. A female captive who had married
an Indian urged her to do likewise, insisting that she
would be killed if she refused. She received reassurance,
however, from the renegade, Simon Girty, who denied that
the Shawnees forced women to marry if they chose not to do
so .
For several years a trader attempted to ransom
Mrs. Paulee, but the chief refused to part with his adopted
daughter. Margaret, knowing that she would never be free
as long as he lived, prayed for his death. "My prayer,"
she recalled, "however sinful it may seem, was followed by
his death." She and her son were ransomed soon afterwards.
Except for the fact that she found it impossible
to sleep in a bed for a time, Margaret quickly reacquired
all of the cultural traits of her white relatives. She
married a man named Erskine within a year after her re
demption and they had five children. She lived to the age
of 91 and enjoyed telling stories of her captivity to her
numerous grandchildren.^
Captivity and Restoration of Mercy Short
In the French and Indian raid led by Francois
Hertel against Salmon Falls in 1690, Mercy Short witnessed
the murder of her parents, brothers, and sisters. The
15-year-old survivor made the march to Canada, where she
experienced a year of Indian captivity. After her re
demption the Massachusetts authorities placed her with a
Boston family. Her experiences provide the most dramatic
evidence available of the torments endured by some redeemed
Puritan captives. They led directly to involvement in the
witchcraft hysteria.
In 1692 Mercy began having hallucinations of
captivity among demons. Cotton Mather attempted for weeks
to free her from possession. After a time her tormenters
1 John H. Moore, "A Captive of the Shawnees,

1779-1784," West Virginia History, XXIII (1962), 287-96.
239
began to assume the form of Indians, and she gave such
vivid descriptions of war dances that people in the room
slashed the air around her bed with swords in an attempt
to destroy the invisible savages.
At last Mather's exorcism freed the girl of pos
session, but she soon entered into a far more destructive
hysteria. The witchcraft delusion spread in Massachusetts
and she joined a number of other girls in condemning in
nocent citizens. Richard Slotkin advances the interesting
theory that she was undergoing "a psychotic form of the
neurosis" which all Puritan returned captives shared to
greater or lesser degree. Their captivity experiences so
damaged the psyche that a deliverance from the devil was
necessary. In a majority of cases the deliverance was
partial at best. Many had accepted Indian traits and
superstitions sufficiently to scandalize the Puritans.
Others were so emotionally scarred by memories of their
ordeal that their hold on reality remained tenuous and they
gave way to paroxysms of guilt over having succumbed to the
temptations of the Indian life style. Feelings of guilt
frequently were tinged with resentment against neighbors
for a supposed lack of sympathy for their plight.
In the case of Mercy Short, the exorcisms of Cotton
Mather failed to free her from feelings of guilt for having
survived the massacre of her family. She imagined that her
neighbors suspected her of having indulged in sexual
240
activities with Indians and she felt that they persecuted
her for refusing to conform completely to the Puritan code
of behavior.
Slotkin asserts that many former captives developed
a "pathological urge to public confession." While seeking
the status of martyr a redeemed captive at the same time
wished to condemn New England society for its smug igno
rance of the nightmare of captivity. These feelings of
alienation led Mercy Short to level accusations of witch
craft against respectable citizens who had befriended her
or, at least, had done her no wrong.2
Captivity of Elizabeth Studebaker
Elizabeth Studebaker, a small child, was captured
in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, in 175 5. During nine
years of captivity she developed into a beautiful maiden
and a great favorite of her captors. Her case is included
here because she typifies redeemed captives who totally
rejected white civilization. In November 1764, Colonel
Henry Bouquet invaded the Indian country and compelled the
Delawares and Shawnees to surrender 206 white prisoners.
Many of them, Elizabeth Studebaker included, resisted
restoration. A soldier named William Smith described the
scene:
2 Slotkin, Regeneration Through Violence, 116-4 5.
241
Among the children who had been carried off

young, and had long lived with the Indians,
it is not to be expected that any marks of
joy would appear on being restored to their
parents or relatives. Having been accustomed
to look upon the Indians as the only con
nexions they had, having been tenderly treated
by them. . . it is no wonder that they con
sidered their new state in the light of a
captivity, and parted from the savages with
tears. But it must not be denied that there
were even some grown persons who shewed an
unwillingness to return. The Shawanese were
obliged to bind several of their prisoners
and force them along to the camp; and some
women, who had been delivered up, afterwards
found means to escape and run back to the
Indian towns.3
On the road to Fort Pitt it was necessary to watch
many former captives closely to prevent their running away
to rejoin the Indians. One of the most determined to
escape from what she considered a "captivity" was Elizabeth
Studebaker. Ten days after the march began she slipped
away into the wilderness to rejoin her adopted people, the
Delawares.4
3 Smith, An Historical Account of the Expedition

Against the Ohio Indians, in 1764, 26-29.
4 Sipe, Indian Wars of Pennsylvania, 482, 843.

David Boyd's sister, Rhoda, accompanied Elizabeth in her
flight back to the Indian village. Two other young
Pennsylvania girls redeemed against their will were
Elizabeth Hawkins and a Miss Benjamin (sister of William
Benjamin). Both had married Indians and were miserable
because of the separation. In both cases their white
families permitted them to return to the Indians after it
became evident that they would never be content with their
white relatives. Ibid., 521, 633-34.
Captivity and Restoration of John McLennan
In the spring of 1836, a seven-year-old Texas boy
named John McLennan was captured by Kichai Indians.5 His
parents were killed and two younger brothers died in
captivity. John lived with the Indians ten years until
government agents signed a treaty with the tribe. Then
Texas Rangers went to the Kichai village to obtain the
prisoner. Upon their arrival they found the chief still
reluctant to surrender him. One of the Rangers asked if
this reluctance resulted from John's skill as a warrior.
The chief replied that John did not measure up as a
warrior, but his skill as a horse thief would be sorely
missed.
John's poignant story is of interest because it
illustrates how traumatic an experience it was for young
captives to re-enter a world which was as foreign to them
as if they had never belonged to it.
He refused to go with the Rangers voluntarily.
When they tied him up, some of the young warriors strung
their bows. The chief averted a battle by restraining his
men and telling John that if he did not like life with the
whites, he would be welcome to return to the tribe.
W. J. Stokes, one of the Rangers, relates that "the
night we started with him, it snowed. We put a hickory
5 A Caddoan tribe with a language similar to that

of the Pawnees.
shirt on him, but after a little he complained that it
scratched his arms. We gave him pants, but he cut off the
waist and wore them as leggins. By the time we were half
way home, he looked as much like an Indian as he had when
we started."
The Rangers turned John over to his uncle, Neil
McLennan. The first night at home, the youth refused to
go inside the house. He stood under the stars all night
long with both hands gripping his pony's mane. "In
different to the cold and the wind," he "refused to enter
that frightening other world to which they said he now
belonged."
John finally adjusted to white civilization,
married, and became a successful farmer, but he never was
quite sure that he had stopped being a white Indian, He
joined the Rangers for awhile, then returned to the Indians
briefly. On several occasions he brought large stores of
gifts to his adopted mother. When the Kichais hunted in
the vicinity of his farm, he went with them. His wife
always wondered whether he would return.

When John stayed overnight in Waco, he slept on the
floor of the second story of the courthouse. One night in
1866 he fell through a floor-length window and broke his
neck when he hit the ground.^
6 R. Henderson Shuffler, "Christmas in the Cross

Timbers," Texas Parade, XXV (1964), 10-13.
244
Restoration of Cynthia Ann Parker
Cynthia Ann Parker, whose captivity by Comanches
was discussed in the preceding chapter, was redeemed by
Captain Sul Ross on December 18, 1860. With her was an
18-month-old daughter, Topsannah (Prairie Flower).
Mildred P. Mayhall, Texas ethnohistorian, characterizes
Cynthia Ann as one of the many captives who "entered the
life of the tribe with zest" and "grew to love the free
life, even preferred it to the hum-drum existence of
civilized communities." Her experiences demonstrate what
a tragic disservice was done to captives in this category
when they were compelled to return to white society.
Thirty-four years old at the time of her re
demption, Cynthia Ann went to live at the home of an uncle.
Gradually she regained the use of English and became a suc
cessful housekeeper, but she remained bitter and miserable.
Several times she tried to escape, only to have relatives
catch up with her. Anxious about the fate of her half-
Indian sons, she scarified her chest, put the blood on
tobacco and burned it, wailing to the spirits to preserve
the lives of her children. Civilization seemed not to agree
245
with little Topsannah who soon sickened and died. After
this loss, Cynthia Ann became so broken in spirit that she
literally starved herself to death.?
Restoration of Lizzie Ross
Captain Sul Ross, the Ranger who reclaimed Cynthia
Ann Parker, was the central figure in redeeming another
female captive, this time with quite different results. In
September 1858, during a battle near the present Rush
Springs, Oklahoma, he saw a white girl among the Comanches
and seized her as she fled. This case provides a remark
able example of ease of reassimilation where one would
expect great difficulty.
The girl, about eight years old, at first con
sidered herself a "captive" of the whites. She did not
recall any life but that of the Indians, and her identity
was never discovered. Ross adopted her, naming her Lizzie
after his fiancee. He saw to it that she obtained a good
education and she lived with his family while he attained
high political office, including the governorship of

Texas.3 His mother reared and educated her as one of her
own daughters. She became a beautiful and accomplished
7 Mildred P. Mayhall, The Indian Wars of Texas

(Waco: Texian Press, 1965), 108-16; Dallas Times Herald,
June 19, 1875. After her death, one of her sons visited
the settlements in search of his mother.
8 Corwin, Comanche and Kiowa Captives, 117-21.
246
woman. On a visit to California she met and married a
wealthy merchant, living a life of culture and refinement#
apparently with no regrets over removal from Indian civili
zation. ^
Captivity and Restoration of Dan M'Allum
Dan M'Allum was captured at the age of two by
Mohawk Indians soon after the beginning of the American
Revolution. His case indicates that love of adopted
parents acted as a strong deterrent to reassimilation.
When the war ended, the Indians surrendered their captives,
but Dan tried desperately to rejoin his beloved Mohawk
mother. George Peck, a neighbor of the boy's parents, de
scribed Dan's difficulties in readjusting to white civili
zation: "And now another trial awaited the poor boy. The
usages of civilization were like the chains of slavery to
him. To wear pants and jacket, and sleep upon a bed, and
to eat bread . . . all this was so strange - everything so
unnatural. ..."
Peck, who knew Dan M'Allum for many years, reported
that the redeemed captive retained many Indian culture
traits. Especially during his frequent drinking sprees his
war whoop resounded through the settlement. Dan frequently
9 Elizabeth R. Clarks, Ya-A-H-H-OO, Warwhoop of

the Comanches (typescript), University of Texas Archives,
Austin, 59-60.
247
complained that he regretted leaving the Iroquois,
lamenting that he "was a good Indian," but he would "never
make a white man." He was antagonistic toward his real
mother, contrasting her critical attitude toward his be
havior with the loving kindness of his Indian mother.
Many years after his redemption Dan married and
became more settled in his habits. When his neighbors
stopped taunting him with such names as "drunken Indian"
and "shiftless savage," he gradually evolved into a suc
cessful farmer and reputable citizen.
Restoration of Herman Lehmann
Herman Lehmann, restored against his will after
years of life as a Comanche warrior, has described the
difficulties of abandoning the attractions of Indian
civilization. His narrative reveals how crucial the
patience and understanding of relatives could be in re-
assimilating a redeemed captive. When soldiers brought him
home under guard, virtually the entire Loyal Valley
community joined in a welcoming celebration. Their good
intentions adversely affected the youth, however, fox* the
emotional demonstration repulsed him and made him determined
to escape as soon as possible to rejoin the Comanches. His
family and their friends prepared a feast to celebrate his
10 Peck, The History of Wyoming, 235-37.
248
return, but he kicked over the table and tried to scramble
out the door. "Everyone did all that could be done for
me," he admitted, "but I did not like any of them. That
night I would not sleep in the house, although they pre
pared a nice feather bed for me and arranged everything for
my comfort. I made a pallet of my own blankets out on the
ground. ..."
Herman's brother, Willie, stayed near him constantly
to prevent his running away and to try to keep him from
getting into trouble. The redeemed captive killed many
hogs with his bow and arrows and would have killed the
neighbors' calves had Willie not prevented him. Neither
was he permitted to steal horses, so his only real pleasure
consisted of drawing his bow on neighborhood children to
make them run.
Herman's family was determined to reclaim him.
Patiently they put up with his tantrums and misdeeds and
brought him back when he tried to run away. They tried to
please him in every possible way and slowly he began to
respond: "At last the kindness, tenderness, and gentleness
of my good Christian mother, the affectionate love of my
sisters, and the vigilence of my brothers gradually wove a
net of love around me that is as lasting as time itself."-*--'-
11 Lehmann, Nine Years With the Indians, 205-207;

Greene, The Last Captive, 160. Greene believes that
Lehmann remained a voluntary captive of the Indian way of
life for the rest of his days.
249
Restoration of John Tanner
Difficulties in readjusting to white ways were not
solely the result of the captive's experiences. White
distrust and hatred of Indians also played a part in making
readjustment almost impossible for captives who had lived
for many years with the Indians. The experiences of John
Tanner provide a classic example, for he spent more than
20 years trying to gain acceptance in white society.
Tanner had been captured at the age of nine and
lived 30 years among the Ojibways. He had married an
Indian woman and fathered several children. Although he
had lost the use of his native language and forgotten his
name, he, like several other captives, developed a desire
in later life to return to white civilization. Noel M.
Loomis, in a valuable introduction to Tanner's narrative,
noted that he, like many other redeemed captives, could not
bridge the gap, even though he turned his back on his
adopted people, built a cabin in a white settlement, and
sent his half-Indian children to white schools. His white
neighbors distrusted him because he could not conceal his
Indian characteristics. He was poorly prepared to support
a family in a competitive society. "Confused and be
wildered, his white heritage constantly fighting" against
his Indian experiences, "in his later years he was lonely
and 'bitter'."
250
Finally he decided that his only chance of gaining
acceptance was to marry a white woman. But this attempt,
too, proved to be a failure. After a short time his wife
abandoned him and, giving up the struggle, he disappeared

into the wilderness.12
Captivity and Restoration of Isaac Bradley
By no means all restored captives who had been
taken in youth retained an affection for their former
captors. Some became inveterate Indian haters. Probably
not one of them exceeded Isaac Bradley in revenging himself
upon the race which had held him in bondage.
Bradley was captured in 1695 by the Abenaki Indians
of Pigwacket. He was 16 years old at the time. For two
years he lived the life of an Indian. Then one night he
escaped, taking another youth with him. They fled down the
Seco River and when his companion became exhausted Bradley
carried him on his back to safety.
Thirteen members of Bradley's family had been
killed by Indians. For this he exacted a terrible toll.
He led a band of scalp hunters on repeated raids against
the Abenakis, killing or capturing 15 Indians, one for
12 John Tanner, A Narrative of the Captivity and

Adventures of John Tanner (Minneapolis: Ross & Haines,
1956), ix-xiii.
251
each lost relative and for the two years he spent in
captivity.x
Captivity and Restoration of William Wells
William Wells was captured at the age of 12 in
February 1775. A member of a prominent frontier family,
he was the brother of Colonel Samuel Wells of Louisville,
Kentucky. He became a fearsome warrior against the whites
and, after restoration, a famous scout against the Indians.
His experiences show that strong character and natural
ability could lead to success in both societies.
Wells grew up with the Miami tribe, became sub
stantially Indianized, and married a sister of the great
13 George Hill Evans, Pigwacket, Part I_: Old

Indian Days in the Valley of the Seco (Conway, N. H . :
Historical Society, 1939), 47-51.
14 The missionary, John Heckewelder, describes the

following incident, typical of Indian psychology, which
illustrates the extent of Wells' assimilation: "William
Wells . . . had so wounded a large bear that he could not
move from the spot, and the animal cried piteously. . . .
The young man went up to him, and with seeming great
earnestness, addressed him in the Wabash language, now and
then giving him a slight stroke on the nose with his ramrod.
I asked him, when he had done, what he had been saying to
the bear? 'I have', said he, "upbraided him for acting the
part of a coward; I told him that he knew the fortune of
war, that one or the other of us must have fallen; that it
was his fate to be conquered, and he ought to die like a
man, like a hero, and not like an old woman; that if the
case had been reversed, and I had fallen into the power of
my enemy, I would not have disgraced my nation as he had,
but would have died with firmness and courage, as becomes a
true warrior." John Heckewelder, History, Manner, and
Customs of the Indian Nations Who Once Inhabited
Pennsylvania and the Neighboring States. (New York: Arno
Press, 1971), 256.
252
war chief, Little Turtle. He fought bravely beside Little
Turtle in the Indian victories over Generals Harmar and
St. Clair, killing several American soldiers. But by the
time General Anthony Wayne invaded the Indian country in
1794 he became burdened by the thought that he had killed
some of his own kinsmen and decided to abandon his Indian
family and return to white civilization.-1-5
According to the reliable antiquarian, Charles
McKnight, Wells parted from the Indians in the following
manner:
Taking with him the great war chief, Little

Turtle, to a secluded spot on the Maumee,
Wells said to him: "I now leave your nation
for my own people; we have long been friends.
We are friends yet until the sun reaches that
height, (which he indicated). From that time
we are enemies. Then if you wish to kill me,
you may. If I want to kill you, I may." At
the appointed hour, crossing the river, Wells
plunged into the forest and struck the trail
of Wayne's Army.
Wells proved to be an invaluable asset to General
Wayne. He knew the country and understood Indian warfare
as did few men of his time. Commissioned captain, he
served as the leader of a corps of rangers, many of whom
were former captives. Wells and his men killed or captured
more than 40 warriors, frequently bringing in prisoners and
compelling them to divulge the plans of the Indians.-1-6
15 Theodore Roosevelt, The Winning of the West,

III, pt. 2 (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1894), 205.
16 McKnight, Our Western Border, 554-61.
On the eve of the Battle of Fallen Timbers, General
Wayne sent Wells and three other former captives to capture
an Indian. They succeeded in seizing two prisoners, bound
them, and then made a night attack on a Miami village
within two miles of a British fort. They walked right
among a group of Indians, each fired at a warrior, and fled
into the darkness. One ranger was captured; Wells and the
others were wounded but made good their escape. They
picked up their prisoners and delivered them to General
Wayne.
After Wayne's victory at Fallen Timbers, Wells re
tained the esteem of Indians as well as whites. At the
Treaty of Greenville, Little Turtle requested that Wells be
appointed agent and interpreter at Fort Wayne. Wells
served in that capacity during the remainder of his life.1^
His first wife having died, he married another sister of
Little Turtle. They lived in the fashion of whites and he
had his children educated in white schools.19
In 1796 Constantin-Francois Chasseboeuf, Comte de
Volney, a prominent French traveler and scientist, met
17 Roosevelt, Winning of the West, III, pt. 2,

208-209.
18 Milo M. Quaife, Chicago and the Old Northwest

(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1913), 224-25.
19 McKnight, Our Western Border, 561.
Wells and Little Turtle in Philadelphia and obtained their
assistance in compiling a vocabulary of the Miami language.
He asked Wells why he had decided to abandon Indian life.
Wells responded that, although he had been adopted and well
treated, he had never forgotten the pleasures and satis
factions of the first 12 years of his life.20
Wells' service as Indian agent proved to be of
great value in learning of impending hostilities. In 1806
he gave timely warning of a plot by Chippewas, Ottawas, and
Potawatomies to attack Detroit, Mackinac, Fort Wayne and
Chicago.2^ Six years later he provided details of a plan
by the Potawatomi chief, Main Poc, to strike the frontier
settlements as soon as war broke out between Britain and
the United States.22 Learning that the Potawatomis planned
to attack Fort Dearborn, he led a band of Miami scouts into
Chicago on August 14, 1812. On the following morning the
troops and white residents evacuated the fort. Wells led
the march, attempting to guard against an ambush. When the
Potawatamis attacked, Wells tried to save the women and
children. Shot through the breast and pinned under his
dead horse, he killed two warriors with a pistol and it
20 C. F. C. Volney, cornpte d e , A View of tlie Soil

and Climate of the United States of America (Mew York:
Hafner Pub. Co., 1968), 371.
21 Quaife, Chicago and the Old Northwest, 224-25.
22 William Wells, extract of report, February 10,

18l2 , American State Papers, Indian Affairs, I,
(Washington: Gales & Seaton, 1832), 805.
third with a dirk before being tomahawked. In recognition
of his bravery, the Indians cut out his heart and ate it.
In the ensuing Fort Dearborn massacre more than 50 men,
women and children died. Among the survivors was Wells'
niece, the wife of the commanding o f f i c e r . 23
Conclusions
In considering the foregoing cases and others, no
clear cut pattern emerges. It is plain that reacceptance
of white civilization was difficult for many and im
possible for some redeemed captives. But others resumed
the white way of life with comparatively little difficulty.
These apparent variations may result in part from the
paucity of information about the captive's experiences
after redemption. Important decisions sometimes turn on
seemingly trivial events which are unrecorded and, there
fore, remain unknown to the researcher. Generalizations
about factors affecting reacculturation must be tentative,
at best, when narratives report little about the indi
vidual's lives after restoration.
While it was possible, to this researcher's
satisfaction, to establish age as the determining factor
in Indianization, no conclusive evidence was found that
age at time of capture determined ease or difficulty of
23 Quaife, Chicago and the Old Northwest, 211,

402-405, 409-11.
readjustment to white civilization. Whites taken as adults
experienced little difficulty in readjusting, for few of
them had become greatly Indianized. But among captives
taken in preadolescence who had become substantially
assimilated, it seems to have mattered little whether they
had been captured as infants or as older children. Lizzie
Ross, taken too young to remember any aspect of white
civilization, seems to have experienced little difficulty
in adjusting to it. Cynthia Ann Parker, captured at the
age of nine, found reassimilation impossible. John Tanner,
nine years old at the time of capture, tried desperately
to live as a white man but failed in the end, while John
Hunter, captured in infancy, accomplished the transition.
Nor has it been possible to establish either
length of time held by the Indians or age at the time of
restoration to white society as the overriding factor in
facilitating reacceptance of white culture patterns. In
most instances a lengthy captivity resulted in a more
difficult readjustment, but this was not always the case.
For Elizabeth Studebaker a nine-year captivity created too
great a gulf to bridge, while William Wells left the tribe
of his own volition after 20 years of Indian life.
Finally, one wonders about the attitude of whites
toward the restored captive as a factor in easing or
retarding readjustment. Obviously in the cases of John
Tanner and Dan M'Allum the whites' prejudice toward and
distrust of the redeemed men made their lives difficult.
But in many cases, probably a majority, the redeemed
captive was received joyfully and apparently treated with

the greatest kindness and consideration. The experiences
of Herman Lehmann and Lizzie Ross illustrate the deter
mination of relatives and redeemers to restore the former
captives to the white way of life. In these instances
they were successful, but no amount of kindness and
patience sufficed to induce Elizabeth Hawkins or the sister
of William Benjamin to abandon their Indian characteristics.
Indians they were in every aspect except birth, and
Indians they insisted upon remaining for the rest of their
lives. Given a clear choice in the safety of their white
families, they measured one civilization against the other
and found the white way of life wanting in the happiness
and fulfillment which they had enjoyed in the lodges of
their captors.
CHAPTER VIII
INDIAN CHILDREN AND WHITE CIVILIZATION
The preceding chapter pointed out that many white
captive children found it exceedingly difficult to re
adjust when restored to their original families. It would
seem logical that Indian children would find a transition
to white civilization even more difficult. It is the
purpose of this chapter to present case studies of Indian
children living among whites and to compare their problems
of assimilation with those of white children living among
Indians. A comparison will be made, also, of the assimi
lation of Indian children attending boarding schools with
those living in the homes of white families.
While numerous narratives of captivity relate the
experiences of white children reared by Indians, American
frontier annals provide comparatively few accounts of
Indian children captured and reared in white families.
Many Indian children were kidnapped and sold into slavery
by both whites and other Indian tribes but few of them
were in a position to leave a record of their experiences.
In New England children of hostile tribes sometimes were
sold into slavery in the West Indies during colonial times.
258
259
In New France Indians sold children captured from enemy
tribes as slaves to French settlers. Some of them became
voyageurs and were assimilated sufficiently to come and
go in the wilderness with their masters' goods.1 Many
children of primitive Great Basin tribes were kidnapped by
both Indians and whites and sold into slavery among the
Spanish in New Mexico and California.^
Unlike Indians who adopted white children and
treated them as their own flesh and blood, the typical
frontier family appears to have had little inclination to
bring an Indian child into its household. The few white
families which did rear Indian children usually were those
of missionaries or owners of substantial plantations or
ranches. As an example, Captain Shapley Ross, father of
Sul Ross (the future Governor of Texas) captured the son
of the famous Comanche Chief, Iron Jacket, and reared him
at his home at Waco. In 1861 the youth, known as Nahpo,
accompanied Sul Ross when he joined the Confederate
Army.3
1 William J. Eccles, "Freedom in Indian and

French Colonial Societies," paper delivered at a symposium
on "France and North America, the Burden of Freedom,"
held at the University of Southwestern Louisiana,
Lafayette, Louisiana, March 16, 1977.
2 Catherine McDonald, An Indian Girl's Story of

a Trading Expedition to the Southwest About 1841.
Vol. XI, Winona Adams (ed.), Sources of Northwest History.
(Missoula: State University of Montana, 1930), 9.
3 Clarke, "Ya-A-H-H-00, Warwhoop of the

Comanches," 48.
260
Families motivated by religious or philanthropic consider"
ations seem to have become genuinely attached to their
Indian wards, educated them, and tried to help them adjust
to white civilization. The case studies which follow were
selected in an attempt to obtain evidence of the success
or failure of such efforts to assimilate Indian children.
Case of Lincoyer
During the Creek War of 1813 Andrew Jackson sent
General John Coffee to attack the town of Talluschatches.
The soldiers killed every warrior and some women and
children. More than 80 Creek women and children were
captured. One dead mother was found still embracing a
living baby boy. When the soldiers delivered the prisoners
to Jackson's headquarters, the man who as soldier and
President would acquire the reputation of being one of the
nation's foremost Indian haters immediately sought to save
the infant's life. He requested the Indian women to
nourish it, but they replied that "all his relatives are
dead, kill him too." Then Jackson brought the baby to his
own tent, mixed brown sugar with water, and saw to it that
it was fed until it could be delivered to the nearest
settlement. There it received care at Jackson's expense
until the end of the campaign.
At the close of hostilities Jackson sent the child
home to the Hermitage. He and Mrs. Jackson treated the
boy kindly, named him Lincoyer, and gave him an education.
261
He became a favorite playmate of the general's other wards.
When he became old enough, Jackson found employment for him
in Nashville as a harness maker.

Lincoyer adjusted well to white civilization but
he retained some Indian traits. He liked to decorate his
hair with feathers and to roam the woods at every oppor
tunity. He frightened visitors to the Hermitage by his
loud yells and fierce facial expressions.
At the age of 16 Lincoyer contracted consumption.
Mrs. Jackson nursed him devotedly but he died within a
short time. Jackson made no attempt to conceal his grief
and frequently spoke of Lincoyer as his lost child.4
The circumstances of this case parallel the
experiences of many white children captured by Indians.
A war leader responsible for the death of the parents
saves a child's life and rears him as a son. In Jackson's
correspondence he shows a sincere concern for the boy's
welfare. This relationship was conducive to assimilation
in much the same manner as that of an Indian family and an
adopted white captive.
4 Andrew Jackson to Mrs. Jackson, December 19,

1313, quoted in John Spencer Bassett (ed.), Correspondence
of Andrew Jackson, I (Washington: Carnegie Institution of
Washington, 1926), 400. Andrew Jackson to Mrs. Jackson,
December 7, 1823, Correspondence of Andrew Jackson, III,
215-16; Marquis James, The Life of Andrew Jackson
(Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1938), 159, 469 ;
Robert W. Remini, Andrew Jackson (New York: Twayne
Publishers, Inc., 1966), 57-58; Pauline Wilcox Burke,
Emily Doneison of Tennessee (Richmond: Garrett and Massie,
1941), I, 48.
262
Case of Apache May (Patchy Slaughter)
In the spring of 1896 the wealthy Arizona cattle
man, John Slaughter, led a troop of cavalry on the trail
of a band of Apaches that had jumped the San Carlos Reser
vation, massacred several families, and retreated toward
Mexico. Slaughter located their camp undetected and the
soldiers opened fire. The surprised Indians scattered into
the mountains. In their haste they left behind an Apache
baby girl, approximately a year old. The baby's father
charged the entire troop in a desperate attempt to regain
his child, but the soldiers instantly shot him to death.
John Slaughter decided to raise the child as a
member of his own family. Mrs. W. E. Hankin, of Bisbee,
Arizona, has written a brief account of the family's
experiences:
Patchy was just a little wild animal when she

came to San Bernardine Ranch. She ate any
thing, picking up scraps of food from the
ground. . . .
When she became accustomed to her new

home, she proved an unusually bright child.
She understood much that was said to her.
Sign language was natural to her; if she
wanted bread and sugar, her signs were quite
eloquent. She was soon lisping English. She
forgot her Indian habits and in a little while
was eating from a plate, drinking from a cup,
and sleeping in her own little bed. . . .
Above everything else in the world, Patchy

loved Mr. Slaughter. She toddled about the
place, holding to the strap of one of his
boots. . . .
263
If he took her on his lap, she would sit

serenely happy for any length of time. If he
rode away, she would wait at the gate for
hours, watching patiently for his return.
But Patchy was not always a docile child. When
reprimanded by Mrs. Slaughter, she became enraged and
threatened to kill her adopted mother when she grew up.
Neighbors warned the family that the child was incapable
of overcoming her savage heritage, and that sooner or later
she would present a threat to their safety.
Patchy did not live long enough to prove or dis
prove the theory that heredity would triumph over environ
ment. Four years after her adoption the child's clothing
caught fire and she burned to death.5 There is at least
some indication, however, of the development of mutual
affection between Patchy and her guardian — a most
essential prerequisite for assimilation.
Case of Carlos Montezuma
Carlos Montezuma, an Apache Indian, was born in
Arizona in 1867. In 1871 a band of Pima Indians, employed
by the United States Army to track down hostile Apaches,
attacked his village while the warriors had gone to sign
a peace treaty. Many women and children were killed and
Carlos became a captive. The Pimas sold the boy to a
5 Walter Noble Burns, Tombstone (New York:

Doubleday, Doran & Company, 1929), 342-50.
traveling photographer named Carlos Gentile. This kindly
man took him to Chicago, taught him English, and found him
several part-time jobs while he attended school. When
Gentile returned to his travels, he sent Carlos to live
with a Protestant minister in Urbana, Illinois. There,
while continuing his education, he gained the affection of
the minister's family. At the age of 14 Carlos entered
the University of Illinois. An excellent student, he set
his sights on becoming a doctor. While working on farms
to finance his education he managed to graduate in three
years. Then he entered the Northwestern University Medical
School as a part-time student while working at a drug store
to pay his expenses. Five years later he received his
license to practice medicine.

Shortly after graduation, upon the recommendation
of Captain Richard Pratt, Carlos received an appointment
as physician and surgeon in the Indian Service. In this
capacity he served seven years at Indian schools and
reservations in North Dakota, Nevada, Washington and
Pennsylvania. In 1896 he resigned his post in protest
because he disagreed with the government's paternalistic
policies which, he believed, inhibited Indians from
developing initative and fostered idleness and drunken
ness. It was his intention, by going into private
practice, to demonstrate the capability of Indians to fend
for themselves. 1-Ie succeeded so well that in a short time
265
he received an appointment as a professor at a medical
school where he taught white boys to become doctors.
While Carlos became an outstanding success in the
white man's world, he retained his devotion to Indian
civilization. Every year he returned to Arizona to spend
a month with the Apaches. He published a magazine,
Wassaja, which attacked the Bureau of Indian Affairs and
pleaded for Indian freedom. He wrote bitterly that Indians
"were injured both in body and morals whenever they were
given help rather than compelled to help themselves." His
philosophy made him the enemy of whites who considered
themselves friends of the Indians, and his efforts to re
form the Bureau had little effect. Considering himself
to have failed his people, and suffering from advanced
tuberculosis, he finally abandoned white civilization and
returned to the Arizona mountains. In 192 3, clad in a
breechclout, he died in a wickiup like the one in which he
had been born 56 years earlier.
The case of Carlos Montezuma provides a striking
example of the lasting effect of the Indian way of life,
even on a child who had been removed from it at the age of
four. In the white world he demonstrated against for
midable odds how much an individual could accomplish
regardless of race or color. But, bitter and discouraged
266
over the failure of white civilization to understand the
needs of his people, he chose to return at last to the
ways of his ancestors.6
Case of Friday, the Arapaho
In 1831 an eight-year-old Arapaho boy became
separated from his band. He was near starvation when a
caravan on its way to Santa Fe passed his hiding place.
Thomas Fitzpatrick, famous scout and mountain man, dis
covered him and named him Friday because he was found on
that day of the week. Friday accompanied the frontiers
man on his travels throughout the Rocky Mountains and a
warm affection developed between them. By 1833 they were
in St. Louis and Friday attended school at least long
enough to learn excellent English. He liked his lessons
and quickly learned to love the white way of life, but he
retained the memory of his Indian family and language.
After three years, Friday's Arapaho family learned
of his whereabouts and made every effort to reclaim him.
At first the boy insisted on remaining with the whites.
After much persuasion, he visited the Arapaho camp and
finally readjusted to the Indian way of life. He visited
6 Neil M. Clark, "Dr. Montezuma, Apache: Warrior

in Two Worlds," Montana, the Magazine of Western History,
XXIII (1973), 56-65; Eastman, Pratt, the Red M an1s Moses,
190.
St. Louis frequently, however, and did not finally abandon
his wish to live as a white man until a young white girl
rejected his proposal of marriage.

Friday became a sub-chief and, but for his love of
the whites, he probably would have advanced to head chief.
He became a strong force for peace with the whites but a
leading raider against the Utes and other enemy tribes.
He married an Arapaho and they had one son who died in
battle against the Pawnees. In 1878 his band settled on
the Wind River Reservation and Friday served as an inter
preter until his death in 1881.?
This case is of interest because of the closeness
of the contest of civilizations for Friday's allegiance.
Friday remembered with gratitude to the whites his
salvation from starvation, and he had become sufficiently
assimilated to resist returning to his Indian family. He
stood on the margin between cultures and probably he could
have been propelled in either direction by forces beyond
his control. The rejection of his proposal of marriage by
a white girl was a sufficient force to send him back to his
native civilization. But for this incident he probably
would have lived his adult life in the manner of a white
man.
7 LeRoy R. Hafen, Broken Hand (Denver: Old West

Publishing Company, 1973), 325-37.
Experiences of Mary, Daughter of Panisciowa
Mary, an Iroquois Indian girl, was the daughter of
Panisciowa, a warrior who fought under the command of the
Marquis de Lafayette during the American Revolution.
Lafayette wrote a letter of appreciation to Panisciowa
which Mary obtained at the time of her father's death.
When Lafayette visited Kaskaskia in 1825, Mary
visited him and told her life story. It is of interest
for the light it sheds upon the difficulty experienced by
Indians in abandoning the ways of their ancestors.
After the Revolution some of the Iroquois moved
to the Illinois country. Mary's mother died soon after
the move and Panisciowa took her to visit the United States
Indian Agent at Kaskaskia. The agent persuaded him to
allow the family to rear Mary as a sister to their own
daughter. Panisciowa visited his daughter from time to
time and she, though dissatisfied with a sedentary life,
grew up in accordance with the instructions of her white
benefactors. She became attached to the family and
readily accepted the Christian religion. But the experi
ences of her infancy were not easily forgotten. She
enjoyed wandering in the forest and returned home reluc
tantly. "When in the cool of the evening, seated at the
door of her adopted father's home, she heard in the
distance the piercing voice of the Indians she responded
with a thrill of joy, imitating the voices, with a
269
vehemency which frightened the young white girl." And
when occasionally warriors consulted the agent or brought
him game for the table, she ran to welcome them. She
admired their simple ornaments far more than the elaborate
jewelry of the whites.
Shortly after Mary reached young womanhood a
warrior, Sciakapa, informed her that her father lay gravely
ill and wished to see her before he died. Sciakapa guided
her through the wilderness and brought her back to
Kaskaskia after the death of Panisciowa.
After her father's passing, Sciakapa frequently
returned to see her. They soon became attached to each
other and in time he persuaded her to follow him into the
forest, where she became his wife according to Indian
custom. The marriage disappointed her white family, but
they forgave her when they recognized that she preferred
Indian civilization to their own. And each year during
the time the Indians camped near Kaskaskia she rarely
allowed a day to pass without going to see them.^
Mary's experiences, like Friday's, illustrate the
importance of love of a member of the opposite sex in
determining the outcome of the contest of civilizations.
While Friday's rejection by a white girl sent him back to
8 Auguste Levasseur, Lafayette en Amerique, en

1824 et 1825, II (Paris: Baudouin, 1829) , 302-23.
270
the Indians, Mary's acceptance of an Indian suitor had the
same result. Both of them retained ties with whites, but
both of them spent their adult lives in the manner of
Indians.
Case of Lydia Carter
Like Lincoyer and Patchy, Lydia Carter became a
captive during an Indian war, but her case differed
greatly from theirs. She was seized by another Indian
tribe and redeemed by white missionaries. Her case is of
interest because of her determined effort to resist re
turning to her own people.
In October 1817 a large war party of Cherokees,
Shawnees, and Delawares invaded Osage territory, taking
60 prisoners, including an Osage Indian girl about four
years of age whose parents died in the attack. On their
way back to their own country the Cherokees met a mis
sionary who appealed to them to give him the child to
educate at the Brainerd Indian School. Receiving a rebuff,
the missionary went to Natchez in an attempt to raise funds
to offer as ransom. The chief contributor, Mrs. Lydia
Carter, gave her name to the child. The missionary then
went to Washington and secured the assistance of the
Secretary of War, who directed the United States Agent to
the Cherokees to send the child to the Indian school.
The Reverend and Mrs. William Chamberlain, teachers
at Brainerd, adopted Lydia. They taught her to call them
271
father and mother and treated her as a sister to their own
small daughter, Catherine. Lydia was happy in her new sur
roundings. She did well in school and learned the English
language in less than a year.
In 1820 the Osage Indians learned of Lydia's
location and requested her return. The United States
Government acceded to their demands and sent an agent to
the school to take her back to the tribe. But Lydia was
determined to stay with her white family. She fled into
the woods and ran five miles before being overtaken. She
cried and begged to remain, but to no avail. On the 900
mile journey back to the Osage Nation she became ill and
died in the home of a white family.^
Case of Bill Hockley and Maria
In 1840 a company of Republic of Texas troops
captured two children of a Comanche chief during a fight
at San Antonio.^ One, a 14-year-old boy, was given the
9 (Elias Cornelius), The Little Osage Captive

(New York: J. P. Haven, 1822), 14-94.
10 This encounter is known as the Council House

Fight. It occurred on March 19, 1840, when several
Comanche bands sent representatives to San Antonio to sign
a treaty with the young republic. Some sixty-five Indians
attended the council, bringing with them the captive,
Matilda Lockhart. The Texans demanded the return of
additional captives and the Comanches claimed that they
held no others. Matilda informed them, however, that the
Indians held many captives and planned to surrender them
one at a time for large rewards. Troops then surrounded
the Indians and a bloody battle began. Seven whites and
thirty-five Indians were killed and twenty-seven Indian
272
name Bill Hockley by G. W. Hockley, a wealthy Texan who
provided him with a home.-^ The other, an 11-year-old-
girl, was called Maria. They lived as adopted children of
white families until 1843, when a peace-seeking expedition
delivered them back to the powerful and warlike tribe.
This unique case provides an opportunity to
appraise the importance of age at the time of captivity of
siblings as a factor in assimilation of Indians and to
compare results with the Indianization of white siblings
seized at the same ages.
The commission, led by Joseph C. Eldridge and
Hamilton P. B e e , 13 located the Indians far out on the
plains and approached them under a flag of truce. Chief
Paha-yuca had gone on a buffalo hunt and the commissioners
remained in the camp several weeks awaiting his return.
women and children were captured. As a result of this

massacre the Comanches killed thirteen white captives.
Many years of warfare ensued. See the Handbook of Texas,
I, 424.
11 Gaines Kincaid to author, January 24,

February 5, 1975 (in author's possession).
12 J. W. Wilbarger, Indian Depredations in Texas

(Austin: Hutchings Printing House, 1889), 186-90.
13 Gaines Kincaid is editing the diary of Hamilton

P. Bee for publication. He states that Thomas Torrey was
a member of the Commission and that Bee, a 20-year-old
youth, merely went along as Eldridge's friend and guest.
Most of the published accounts of this expedition are
based upon information provided by Bee. Kincaid reports
that the facts recorded in the diary vary considerably
from previously published versions.
Fortunately, the chief proved to be peaceably inclined,
for he managed after hours of debate to persuade a bare
majority of the Comanche council members to respect the
flag of truce. Before his arrival most of the Indians
favored putting the white men to death.14
Maria regarded her return to the Comanches as an
ordeal. She gave no reply to the greetings of her former
people as she no longer could speak a word of Comanche.
Bill Hockley, too, refused to converse with the Indians
during the absence of their chief, but he remembered the
language perfectly well.
At the conclusion of all other deliberations
Paha-yuca addressed himself to Bill and Maria. Bill
immediately left the side of the white commissioners and
rejoined his people. Maria stood mute, holding the hand
of Commissioner Eldridge. When Eldridge attempted to
place her hand in the chief's, she screamed in anguish.
Running behind Eldridge, she begged him "for God's sake
not to give her to those people - to have mercy, and not
leave her."
After a tense silence Paha-yucca addressed the
commissioners:
This is the child of our long mourned chief;

she is of our blood; her aged grandmother
stands ready to receive her, but she has
14 Earnest Wallace and E. Adamson Hoebel, The

Comanches, Lords of the South Plains (Norman: University
of Oklahoma Press, 1952), 295.
274
forgotten her people. She does not want to

come to us, and if the Great White Chief
only sent her for us to see that she is fat
and well taken care of, tell him I thank him
and she can go back.
But Eldridge had orders to return both children
to the Comanches. He explained his position to the chief:
"I have been ordered to give you this child. I have done
so, and my duty is fulfilled. But you see she is no
longer a Comanche. Give her to me, and let me take her to
my home. . . ."
"No," said the chief, "if she is my child I will
keep her." He picked up the girl and handed her to her
grandmother, who carried her, wailing, from the council
lodge.
The different responses of these children to
restoration to their own people resemble those of white
captives of similar age. The case provides an indication
that age was as important for Indians as it was for whites
in determining their assimilation.
While comparatively few Indian children were
adopted and raised by white people, a considerable number
of them attended boarding schools after removal from their
Indian families by government officials. These officials
believed that education would play the decisive role in
resolving the conflicts between white and Indian cultures.
15 Wilbarger, Indian Depredations in Texas,

186-90.
They favored the boarding school over the day school for
it could provide a contrasting environment which would
transform the personality of the Indian child and remodel
him along civilized lines.I6
Among steps believed to be necessary for assimi
lating Indians through boarding school education were
removal from the tribe at an early age and an extended
stay in school. Pointing out that learning the English
language is the key to assimilation, a report of the Office
of Indian Affairs complained that parents resisted placing
their children in school at the proper age. It was
necessary to begin instructing Indian children at an early
age if they were to master the English language and use it
"as mental equipment in the thinking process." But few
Indian children entered boarding schools before their
native languages and customs had become firmly estab
lished.
W. T. Harris, Commissioner of Education, wrote in
1889 that the boarding school had proved to be an effective
means of transforming Indians if the period of schooling
lasted from five to ten years. Briefer periods of
16 Evelyn C. Adams, American Indian Education

(Morningside Heights, N. Y.: King's Crown Press, 1946),
vii - xii, 51.
17 United States Department of the Interior.

Office of Indian Affairs. Bulletin Wo. 9 (1926), 5.
2 76
schooling could not "withstand the aggregate influence of
old and young men and women who have retained the old
forms and who look upon the innovation as idle and use
less, not to say s a c r i l e g i o u s . "18 <p. J. Morgan, Commis
sioner of Indian Affairs, recommended universal compulsory
education for Indian children. "To resist successfully
and overcome the tremendous downward pressure of inherited
prejudice and stubborn conservation of centuries, nothing
less than universal education should be attempted," he
asserted.1^
Attempts at assimilation through education began
in Virginia during the early days of European colonization.
The Virginia Company charters of 1606 and 1609 noted the
obligation to instruct the Indians. Funds were designated
to induce colonists to bring Indian boys into their homes
for instruction. This attempt failed because few Indian
parents would permit it. A few Indian boys went to
England to be educated as missionaries, but upon their
return they experienced little success in converting the
red men and the practice was dropped. During the seven
teenth century few Indian children received instruction
except those held as hostages or slaves. About 1700, how
ever, the College of William and Mary began to admit them.
18 United States Department of the Interior.

Bureau of Education, Bulletin No. 1 (1890), 4.
19 Ibid., 9.
277
Charitable agencies paid their tuition and they studied
in segregated classrooms.
In New England an Indian branch of Harvard College
provided boarding facilities at an early date. One of the
outstanding advocates of Indian education, the Reverend
Eleazer Wheelock, established boarding schools at locations
designed to remove children great distances from their
home environments. Trained as missionaries, most
graduates of Wheelock's schools served among the Iroquois.
Sir William Johnson charged, however, that "many of
Wheelock's missionaries were lapsing into' native habits

and customs."20
The success of boarding schools as an avenue to
assimilation is a matter of dispute. Evelyn C. Adams
asserts that, despite 250 years of effort to educate the
Indians, the majority remained ignorant of European values.
The movement to eradicate Indian culture "failed because
it attempted to superimpose outright and quickly a semi-
technological work pattern without taking time to relate
it to latent values within the older pattern. The pro
cedure ignored one of the cardinal principles of social
change, that is, that social progress is a process of
growth from old to new practices of worth."21
20 Adams, American Indian Education, 15-19.
21 Ibid., 47.
278
Arthur C. Parker, anthropologist of Indian
ancestry, believed that his people could not acquire
European civilization rapidly because of the complexity of
the new folkways. "Until the peculiar elements of the
culture of the Indian began to disintegrate there could be
little hope of the success of an Indian educated in the
white man's way among his own people, and so he went back
to the blanket. There was no place else to go."22
James Axtell asserts that by the close of the
colonial period Indians who had acquired white civilization
were almost non-existent. A large number of them had
received an education, but almost without exception they
divested themselves of civilization as quickly as possible
and resumed the cherished practices of their former way of
life.22
Arrell M. Gibson believes that "most (certainly
not all) Indian children prefer to return to the aboriginal
family - the extended family and all the personal security
and comfort it affords."2^
Francis P. Prucha states that forced education
failed to assimilate Indians. Instead, it shattered their
heritage and culture while failing to provide anything to
22 Parker, "Philosophy of Indian Education," 64.
23 Axtell, "The White Indians of Colonial

America," 56.
24 Arrell M. Gibson to author, March 20, 1977

279
replace it, "until the Indians became a demoralized people,
lost between their historic identify and the white
American culture they could not accept." The reformers
tried granting citizenship, private ownership of property,
and education without successfully assimilating the

I n d i a n . 25
On the other hand, some sincere friends of the
Indian believed that a boarding school education worked
wonders in transforming Indian children into productive
citizens. The principal proponent of this view was Captain
Richard Pratt. At Hampton and Carlisle his goal was
destruction of tribalism and absorption of Indian children
into the culture of white people. Because day schools on
reservations did not remove children from the tribal
environment, he advocated the early and total change of
surroundings which boarding schools provided. "Civili
zation is a habit," he insisted. "Language is nothing but
a habit. We aren't born with language, nor are we born
with ideas either of civilization or savagery. All of
these things are forced upon us by our environment after
birth." In substantiation of his belief that environ
ment, rather than heredity, controlled child development,
he called attention to the case of a white boy captured
25 Francis Paul Prucha (ed.), Americanizing the

American Indian (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1973) , 10.
280
in infancy by the Sioux who attended Carlisle. This boy's
academic progress was slower than that of most Indian
children.
Pratt and members of his staff believed that their
program almost invariably succeeded. Cora M. Folsom kept
detailed records of the progress of former students at
Hampton. Of the 158 Indians who were graduated and about
1,060 others who attended, she reported that all except 50
retained their white civilization. "The blind man sees,
and finds no satisfaction in shutting his eyes again," she
explained.
In refutation of charges that every Indian trained
at Hampton or Carlisle "had returned to the blanket” except
a few employed by the government, Pratt claimed that with
three years of training he had prepared 600 Indian boys
and girls to live in white homes (the outing system) where
they earned wages. Less than one in 20 of them failed to
do well. When students finished Carlisle, they received
the opportunity to return to the reservation, but
hundreds of them remained in eastern cities, entering pro
fessions or securing industrial employment. Those who
returned to their former homes, he asserted, were generally
successful in leading their people toward greater accep
tance of white civilization.
26 Eastman, Pratt, the Red Man's Moses, 71, 97,

136-42, 150, 191, 224-26, 237, 243.
281
Other government officials, while acclaiming the
success of boarding schools, pointed out the need for
additional services to assist Indians upon their return
to reservations. In 1826 Thomas L. McKenney reported that
he had made a personal inspection of Indian schools, and
his observations reinforced his conviction that they are
more effective than military force in preventing attacks
against frontier settlements. He cautioned, however, that
the benefits of education could be of a temporary nature
if no other government services were provided for Indians
who had completed their schooling. He recommended giving
graduates sections of land and appropriate farm implements.
"They will then have to become an 'intermediate link'
between our own citizens, and our wandering neighbors,
softening the shades of each, and enjoying the confidence
of both," he asserted.27
Similar sentiments were expressed by Elbert
Herring, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, in 1833: "They
go forth into the world without pecuniary means, and with
out counsel, to gain a subsistence for themselves. In
many instances the enterprise proves difficult, and the
difficulty is disheartening. The effort to succeed is
27 Thomas L. McKenney, Report From the Indian

Office, Department of War, Office of Indian Affairs,
November 20, 1826. United States Congress. 19 Cong.,
2 Sess., Sen. Doc. 1, 507-10.
282
abandoned, and a return to the dwellings and habits of
their kindred is the natural consequence."28
The incongruity of educating Indians to be farmers

while at the same time depriving them of their lands drew
the ire of a Niles Register editorial’writer in 1826:
"Where shall we stop? ' If the Indians are driven back,
back, back, it is worse than useless to expend money for
their instruction, for they will only feel the severity of

their lot more k e e n l y . "29
Another point at issue was the use of force in
obtaining Indian children to attend boarding schools.
Some authorities contended that the children, to all
intents and purposes, were the victims of k i d n a p p i n g s . 30
Others asserted that many Indian children were eager to go.
Elaine Eastman states that, although treaties specified
Indian education to be compulsory, no child was removed to
Hampton or Carlisle without parental consent. Sincere
friends of the Indian visited the reservations to recruit
students by enlightening them about the advantages of an
education. When Captain Pratt made a recruiting trip to
the Rosebud agency, the response exceeded expectations and
many Sioux applicants had to be rejected. Two boys were
28 Elbert Herring, Report of the Commissioner of

Indian Affairs, November 28, 1833. United States Congress.
23 Cong., 1 Sess., Sen. Doc. 1, 189.
2^ Niles Register, February 4, 1826.

30 Collier, The Indians of the Americas, 226.
283
so eager to attend that they became stowaways on the
steamer transporting the children away from their home
land. 31
The records of conferences between Indian chiefs
and government or religious officials sometimes contain
references to requests for the education of native
children. The Seneca chief, Cornplanter, made such a plea
of the Quakers for the Six Nations, Cherokees, Creeks,
Choctaws, and Chickasaws in 1791:
Brothers, - We have too little wisdom among

us, we cannot teach our children what we
perceive their situation requires them to
know, and we therefore ask you to instruct
some of them; we wish them to be instructed
to read and write, and such other things as
you teach your own children.
Brothers, - We desire of you to take under

your care two Seneca boys, and teach them as
your own.
Brothers, - You will consider the request,

and let us know what you determine to do. If
your hearts are inclined toward us, and you
will afford our nation this great advantage, I
will send you my son as one of the boys to
receive their instuction.32
But there were also many Indians who resisted
sending their children to school. An illustration of the
reaction to the forced education of Hopi children is
provided by Polingaysi Qoyawayma:
31 Eastman, Pratt, the Red Ma n 1s Moses, 79-80.
32 Society of Friends, Some Account of the Conduct

of the Religious Society of Friends Towards the Indian
Tribes in the Settlement of the Colonies of East and West
Jersey and Pennsylvania (London: E. Marsh, 1844), 98-99.
284
"Lie down behind that roll of bedding,

Polingaysi. I shall hide you with a
sheep pelt. Hurry]
"Why?" Polingaysi asked in childish

bewilderment.
"Do as you're toldi her mother snapped.
"Bahana is catching children this morning
for the school."
"Catching children!" What a fearful-

sounding phrase. It made Polingaysi
think of the older boys catching rabbits in
snares. Without argument she darted across
the room and flattened herself behind the
rolled-up sheep pelts and blankets. Her
mother covered her and returned to the door
way.
Polingaysi could hear her sick brother

whimpering on his pallet beside the fire
place, then she heard a strange voice,
speaking a language she did not understand.
When the mother made no answer, another man
began talking, this time in not very good
Hopi.
"He says, tell you we are going to take

your children to school. Where are they?"
"That sick boy is all I have, except for

babies," Polingaysi's mother lied. "He is
too sick to go away from home.
There was more talk in the foreign

language, then the interpreter said, in
Hopi; "Bahana says the boy doesn't look sick.
We'll take him. Come!"
Polingaysi's sick brother wept aloud, but

he struggled to his feet and went with the men.
While Polingaysi was relieved to escape from the
child-catchers at that time, she eventually developed a
desire for an education. She stowed away in a wagon in
order to go to a boarding school at Riverside, California.
2 85
After four years of schooling she felt that she had out
grown the Hopi culture and decided not to return home to
Oraibi.33
The contempt which white friends of the Indian
held for native civilization is illustrated by an incident
recounted by Francis LaFlesche in his account of experi
ences at a boarding school operated by the Presbyterian
Board of Foreign Missions on the Omaha Reservation.
LaFlesche was the son of an Omaha woman and a French
trader. He grew up among the Indians but accompanied his
father on trading expeditions. In time he learned much of
both cultures and preferred that of the Indians. He
became principal chief of the Omaha nation as well as an

ethnologist. His unique background enabled him to publish
valuable studies of tribal life.
One day the superintendent brought three white
church officials to inspect the school. Francis was
appalled by their ignorance of Indian culture.
"Are the children taught music?" asked one

of the strangers.
"No," replied the superintendent, "but

they can sing nearly all of the Sunday-
school hymns."
33 Polingaysi Qoyawaymi (Elizabeth Q. White), No

Turning Back (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico
Press, 1964), 17-13, 53-64.
2 86
"They should be taught music as well as

reading and spelling," remarked one of the
gentlemen, then, addressing the children, he
asked:
"Have your people music, and do they

sing?"
"They do," answered one of the large

boys.
"I wish you would sing an Indian song for

me," continued the man. "I have never heard
one."
There was some hesitancy, but suddenly a

loud clear voice close to me broke into a
Victory song; before a bar was sung another
took up the song from the beginning, as it is
the custom among the Indians, then the whole
school fell in, and we made the room ring.
We understood the song, and knew the emotion
of which it was the expression. We felt, as
we sang, the patriotic thrill of a victorious
people who had vanquished their enemies; but
the men shook their heads, and one of them
said, "That's savage, that's savage! They must
be taught music."34
Another Indian child who attended the white men's
schools was Thomas Wildcat Alford. During his childhood
he had occasionally come in contact with white people and
he became interested in learning about their way of life.
He left the tribe at the age of 12 and attended boarding
schools for several years, hoping that his experiences
would be of value to the Shawnees in learning to cope with
changes in their life. But it was not to be:
34 Francis LaFlesche, The Middle Five, Indian

Schoolboys, of the Omaha Tribe (Madison: University of
Wisconsin Press, 1963), vii - xi, 100.
287
My homecoming was a bitter disappointment

to me. Noticing at once the change in my
dress and manner, in my speech and conduct,
my people received me coldly with suspicion.
Almost at once they suspected that I had
taken up the white man's religion, along
with his habits and manner of conduct. There
was no happy gathering of family and friends,
as I had so fondly dreamed there might be.
Instead of being eager to learn the new ideas
I had to teach them, they gave me to under
stand very plainly that they did not approve
of me. I had no real home to go to, and my
relatives did not welcome my presence.35
An Indian who became strongly motivated during his
boarding school days to accept white civilization was an
Apache named Jason Betzinez. His life provides amazing
contrasts. A young warrior in Geronimo's band, he shared
that ruthless raider's imprisonment in Florida. Then
officials selected him to attend school at Carlisle. After
accepting white men's ways, he became a Pittsburgh steel
worker and fullback of the company's football team.
Finally, he returned to the Apaches and attempted to lead
them along the white man's road. He married a white woman
and applied for land in Oklahoma when he could have moved
back to his Arizona homeland. When Jason later risked his
life trying to break up a medicine dance, it saddened him
to see several of his former Carlisle classmates partici
pating in the festivities. "Instead of showing the
blanket Indians a better way of life, the old Apaches
showed them hov; things had always been done," he
35 Alford, Civilization, 111.
288
lamented. "So the educated Indians joined the ignorant
in order not to lose the good will of the tribe."36
Is there anything to be learned from this limited
number of case studies as to whether the assimilation of
Indian children living with whites paralleled that of
white children captured by Indians? The assertion by
Benjamin Franklin that Indians invariably chose to return
to their own people carries great weight, and much evidence
would be needed to disprove it. But it is evident from the
material presented in this chapter that among some Indian
children living with white families the progress of assimi
lation closely paralleled that of white children captured
by Indians. Patchy Slaughter died at the age of four, but
already she had attained many of the cultural traits of
her adopted family. Lydia Carter had been with the
Chamberlain family only two years when she fled into the
woods to evade returning to the Osage nation. Mary,
daughter of Panisciowa, eventually married a warrior and
returned to his way of life, but she retained the Christian
religion as well as close ties to the white family which
reared her. Two Waco Indian girls, called Nancy and
Fanny, were returned to their tribe in 1843 after living
36 Jason Betzinez, 1^ Fought With Geronimo

(Harrisburg, Pa.: Stackpole Co., 1959), 177.
289
with white families. Both of them screamed and cried when
compelled to rejoin their own people.37
A striking parallel to the correlation between
age at capture and degree of assimilation of white
children is found in the case of Maria and Bill Hockley.
The boy was 14 when captured, his sister 11. He retained
his knowledge of the Comanche language, while she lost
hers. The extent of his assimilation closely approximated
that of white boys captured at the same age. When the
opportunity presented itself, he rejoined the Indians.
But his younger sister reacted differently. Like 11-year-
old white captives, she quickly accepted the way of life
of her captors. How her story reminds one of the attempts
of redeemed white girls to escape from the "captivity" of
their original families! Much more evidence is needed
before reaching definite conclusions, but there is some
indication, at least, that the critical age for assimi
lation of Indian children did not differ greatly from that
which determined the degree of Indianization of white
children.
In regard to the Indians who attended boarding
schools, it is evident that a considerable number of them
became sufficiently attracted to civilization to attempt
to lead their own people along the white man's road.
37 Gaines Kincaid to author, January 24, 1975

290
Charles Eastman (a Sioux), Thomas Wildcat Alford (a
Shawnee), and Jason Betzinez (an Apache) belonged to three
of the most warlike tribes in North American history. Each
of them criticized many aspects of white civilization, but
they all married white women and successfully adjusted to
the new way of life.
How, then, does one account for the large number
of Indian children who attended schools and after years of
exposure to white civilization rejected it to return to
the ways of their forefathers? The answer, perhaps, can
be found in the failure of the educated Indians to find a
place of esteem in either civilization. The demoralizing
effect of rejection by both races is illustrated in the
report of a committee to investigate conditions among
Indians under white subjection:
An Indian youth has been taken from his friends

and conducted to a new people, whose modes of
thinking and living, whose pleasures and pur
suits are totally dissimilar to those of his own
nation. His new friends profess to love him,
and a desire for his improvement in human and
divine knowledge, and for his eternal salvation;
but at the same time endeavour to make him
sensible of his inferiority to themselves. To
treat him as an equal would mortify their own
pride, and degrade themselves in the view of
their neighbors. He is put to school; but his
fellow students look upon him as a being of an
inferior species. He acquires some knowledge,
and is taught some ornamental and perhaps useful
accomplishments, but the degrading memorials of
his inferiority, which are continually before
his eyes, remind him of the manners and habits of
his own country, where he was once free and equal
to his associates. He sighs to return to his
friends; but there he meets with the most bitter
mortification. He is neither a white man nor an
291
Indian; as he had no character with us, he has

none with them. If he has strength of mind
sufficient to renounce all his acquirements,
and resume the savage life and manners, he may
possibly be again received by his countrymen;
but the greater probability is, that he will
take refuge from their contempt in the inebri
ating draught; and when this becomes habitual,
he will be guarded from no vice, and secure
from no c r i m e . 38
John R. Swanton has said that as a social being,
an individual treated as inferior by one group usually will
ally himself with another. While it was possible for
Indians living among whites (or for white captives held by
Indians) to conform culturally, it was impossible, because
of color differences, to attain complete physical con
formity. This physical barrier to complete assimilation,
Swanton believes, explains why educated Indians could not
gain acceptance as equals in white society and, therefore,
almost invariably attempted to return to the ways of their
ancestors.39
Arthur C. Parker points out that before the
twentieth century the educated Indian seldom succeeded in
leading his people:
With any ethnic group there is always a ten

dency to a leveling. Progress cannot be made
any faster than the majority of their ruling
38 Scots Society for Propagating Christian Knowl

edge. Committee of the Board of Correspondents Who
Visited the Oneida and Mohekunuk Indians in 1796. Report.
Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society,
1st Series, V, 29-30.
39 Swanton, "Notes on the Mental Assimilation of

Races," 501.
292
element are willing to make it. He who is in

advance is alone, unprotected and despised.
For very existence he falls back into the
group, knowing of things beyond, but not daring
to speak. The exceptions are the great men who
cling to their convictions and pull the masses
with them, but usually the gravity of the greater
body attracts irresistibly the vagrant corpuscle,
energized though it is. The solitary educated
Indian sent back to his own tribe could do little
for it. Moreover, he could do little for him
self for he had lost his skill as an Indian, and
his knowledge of most things was of little use to
his kinsmen.40
Is it possible, then, to detect differences in
degree of assimilation between Indian children reared in
white families and others who attended boarding schools?
Although generalizations in regard to the former are based
upon a limited number of cases, one can conclude that in
most instances these children became more completely
assimilated than those who attended boarding schools. A
majority of them preferred to remain with white people
while most graduates of boarding schools chose to return
to reservations.
The reason for this difference is suggested when
A. Irving Hallowell's theory of transculturalization is
considered. In acculturation, changes occur as the result
of interaction between one organized culture group and
another. While individuals are involved in this sharing
and exchange of cultural attributes, acculturation is
concerned with changes resulting in the life styles of one
40 Parker, "Philosophy of Indian Education," 64.
293
or both groups. Transculturalization, on the other hand,
involves individuals who are removed from one society to
"enter the web of social relations" of another, absorbing
"its customs, ideas, and values." Individuals may become
completely transculturalized, accepting permanent identifi
cation with the new culture. With these individuals, there
is a psychological transformation in addition to cultural
readaptation. In other individuals, cultural change may
be more superficial, lacking psychological depth.
Hallowell asserts that transculturalization
"involves the fate of persons rather than changes in socio
cultural systems. The fact that the identification of
these persons with the group to which they formerly
belonged has been broken, or modified, distinguishes them
as a class from persons undergoing readjustment who remain
functioning members of an organized group undergoing
acculturation."41
Indian children reared by whites, like white
children captured by Indians, participated fully in the
process of transculturalization. If they were young at the
time they left their natural families, they absorbed the
new culture to the extent of psychological transformation,
becoming "dark white people" or "white Indians." This
process could not occur to a similar extent at boarding

523.
2 94
schools. Although the schools were intended to remove the
student as completely as possible from his native civili
zation, the fact that he spent his days in the company of
other Indians reinforced the strong cultural ties and
tribal life ways which he had absorbed before reaching
school age. These ties were loosened considerably with
Indians participating in the outing system, but, by and
large, boarding school children belong in the category
of "persons undergoing readjustment who remain functioning
members of an organized group." These children were
acculturated. Unlike those undergoing transculturali
zation, they clung to elements of their own culture and a
return to its dominating influence was relatively easy.
CHAPTER IX
CONCLUSION
The outcome of the conflict between Indians and
whites for control of the North American continent was
determined in large part by cultural differences. Such
factors as weapons technology, the ability of the whites
to coordinate and sustain military operations, the develop
ment of Indian dependence upon European trade goods, and
the introduction of European and African diseases, were
crucial in bringing about the eventual defeat of the
native Americans. But the conflict lasted almost four
centuries, and it is evident that Indian civilization, too,
possessed qualities which sustained the tribes in resisting
their enemies.
One method of interpreting events in a contest of
civilizations is to analyze factors which facilitated or
retarded assimilation. Cultural contact, usually between
one group which considers itself superior and another which
acknowledges itself to be inferior, has sometimes led to
the fusion of races, or to acculturation (large-scale
borrowing of traits by one group from another), or to
transculturation (assimilation of individuals of one race
295
296
by another). Inter-breeding on a scale resulting in
fusion of the white and red races was blocked by color
line distinctions.^ Acculturation was considered by
white friends of the Indian to be a quick and logical
solution to the problem of civilizing the native Americans,
but it failed during frontier times because the tribes
refused to consider themselves inferior and insisted upon
preserving their own cultural integrity, borrowing only
selected material traits which would make their way of life
easier.2 Transculturation took place, however, of
individuals of one race who were reared by the other. The
experiences of these transculturites are of interest not
only for their contributions to our knowledge of frontier
history but, also, because they provide a comparison of the
importance of heredity and environment as cultural deter
minants. The narratives of hundreds of whites who were
captured by Indians provide an opportunity to study
transculturation.
To determine why some captives became "white
Indians" while others completely rejected Indian culture,
1 In some areas near the Atlantic Coast, fusion

occurred between reds and blacks, the Indians being
absorbed.
2 Ethnocentrism of all whites, humanitarians as

well as coveters of Indian land, determined that communal
living must give way to individual land ownership and that
hunting must be replaced by farming in order to force
acculturation upon the native Americans whether they
desired it or not.
297
I have analyzed a number of factors that facilitated or
retarded assimilation. To ascertain whether assimilation
occurred along similar lines among both races, the experi
ences of these captives were compared to those of Indian
children who were reared by whites or educated in boarding
schools. In addition, the experiences of captives returned
to white civilization were analyzed to learn whether the
factors which facilitated assimilation retarded reaccultur
ation.
The literature on Indian-white relationships reveals
a lack of unanimity among authorities regarding assimi
lation and many other matters relating to this contest of
civilizations. To compensate for the questionable reli
ability of narratives of captivity, the lack of Indian
sources, and the conflicting evidence regarding causes and
consequences of Indianization, I conferred with several
ethnohistorians. While the interpretations of these
scholars are included earlier in this thesis, the con
clusions presented here are my own.
In seeking to understand what factors motivated
captives to accept or reject Indian civilization, there is
a tendency to think in terms of the superiority of one
culture to another. During frontier times, most Americans
of European descent considered their own civilization to
be vastly superior to that of the Indians. They regarded
assimilation of whites by Indian tribes to be a lowering
298
of standards, a leveling of culture, a descent to savagery.
Confronted by the fact that many captives became sub
stantially Indianized, they reasoned that it was much

easier for lower class whites to descend to idleness and
idolatry than to improve their lives by hard work,
frugality, and strict adherence to the tenets of
Christianity.
Although the Indians succeeded in assimilating a
great many white captives, well meaning white men insisted
upon the necessity of assimilating the Indians, either for
their survival in this world or their salvation in the
next. The earliest colonists believed that it was their
duty to Christianize the Indians. Later, when it became
evident that contacts with frontiersmen demoralized the
Indians, white humanitarians advocated tribal removal in
order to gain time to permit acculturation in an orderly
manner.
Before the twentieth century only a few contem
plative men acknowledged that in a contest between Indian
and white civilizations, the native American culture
offered significant advantages. Indian family life was
closer knit than that of most whites. Indian parents
treated a captive white child as if he had been born of
their union. They loved him openly, treated him kindly,
trained him as expertly as possible in the skills needed in
their society, and permitted him to enjoy himself according
299
to his fancy. His adopted status carried over into the
extended family and moiety or gens, requiring that his
kinspeople protect him and contribute to his welfare

exactly as they would have done if he had been a biological
relative. And the tribe as a whole usually placed no
limits on his eligibility to advance to a position of
leadership.
Young male captives spent their days hunting and
fishing, canoeing, horseback riding, and enjoying the
pleasures of life in the open. They were spared the
drudgery that characterized the lives that most white
youths had known at home. Captive girls were expected to
work, just as their adoptive mothers did, but they enjoyed
many pleasures in a society which generally indulged
children. When they matured, they could expect marriage
to a chief or a warrior who would provide them with the
necessities of life. Indian life was remarkably attuned
to nature and it appealed to young people who had not yet
conformed to the mores of white civilization. Assimilated
captives were supported by a communal life style in which
everyone shared in nature's bounty or scarcity, and in a
religion which brought most of them assurance rather than
apprehension.
300
In many instances, adventurous white men were as
attracted to the Indian life-style as were captive
children.3 Some frontiersmen, such as William Johnson and
George Croghan, could adapt to the white or Indian life
style with equal enthusiasm. Others, attracted by profits
from trapping or trading or by the lure of Indian women,
spent many years in the wilderness, but most of them
retained the core of white civilization and eventually
returned to it.
One of the factors most frequently mentioned by
historians and anthropologists as affecting assimilation
was the pre-captivity cultural milieu of the captive. It
has been claimed that captives from refined, well-educated
families rejected the degrading cultural descent to a
more primitive civilization while individuals from poor
backwoods environments found the smaller cultural gap much
easier to bridge. A similar claim has beer, made for
captives who had received religious training. As many
Indian culture traits involved actions considered by
Christians to be sinful, it has been suggested that reli
gious training constituted a barrier to assimilation. But
these claims are not supported by the evidence found in
narratives of captivity. Hundreds of Puritan children who
3 Indian culture was abhorrent to most mature

white female captives, however, and rarely did a white
woman join a tribe voluntarily.
301
came from well educated families and had been trained in
their religion from an early age were captured in New
England. Yet this preparation did not prevent them from
choosing to remain with their Indian captors or French
redeemers, or from converting to the Indian or Catholic
religions. Many children of poorly educated backwoods
families became assimilated in much the same manner,
accepting the Indian culture and religion and preferring
to remain with their captors when given the opportunity to
return to white relatives. On the other hand, there were
captives reared in refined families who rejected the Indian
life style, and the same could be said of some who had
received little education or religious training. It seems,
therefore, that a refined or religious pre-captivity
cultural milieu was of little importance as a determinant
in the assimilation of white captives.
A related theory attributes the rejection or
acceptance of assimilation to race or ethnic origin.
According to this claim, Anglo-Saxon captives refused to
lower themselves to the level of Indian civilization while
Mexicans found it comparatively easy because they, too,
were products of an inferior culture. The experiences of
more than fifty Anglo-American, German-American, Mexican,
French-Canadian, and Negro captives were analyzed during
this study and no correlation between race or ethnic back
ground and degree of assimilation could be established.
302
Many Mexicans became thoroughly assimilated, but others
did not— and the same was true of captives of other stocks.
Race, therefore, was apparently no more important than
family background or religious training in determining the
course and degree of assimilation of captives.
If the pre-captivity milieu was unimportant as a
determinant in assimilation, perhaps the cultural charac
teristics of the captors would provide answers as to why
one captive embraced the Indian life style and another
detested it. The North American continent contained a
rich mixture of native American cultures, ranging from
primitive hunting-gathering societies in the Great Basin
to the skilled agriculturists of the Southeast called the
Five Civilized Tribes. Among culture traits of crucial
importance to captives undergoing transculturation were
subsistence patterns, habitations, and, above all, treat
ment of prisoners. These traits varied widely among the
tribes.
Authors of narratives of captivity almost always
reported enduring great hardships, at least during the
first few days in Indian hands. In many cases, topographic
or climatic conditions and lack of food and shelter made
life almost unendurable. Thus captives of desert tribes
starved during times of scarcity, and white persons held
on the northern plains froze during severe winters.
Captives fared somewhat better in the villages of sedentary
Indians where subsistence depended on agriculture and food
3 03
storage rather than gathering and hunting, but living
conditions eliminated the unfit in most Indian societies.
Ethnohistorians express widely differing views
concerning the treatment of captives and its effect on
assimilation. James Axtell contends that the cruelty of
eastern Indians to captives has been greatly exaggerated
and that they nourished the weak and defenseless while
introducing them to the satisfactions of native American
civilization.4 Walter S. Campbell, on the other hand,
charges that the eastern Indians tormented captives with
the fagot and the stake, while he could find few authentic
cases of such tortures by western Indians.5 William E.
Fenton believes that Indians were less cruel than they have
been pictured and he surmises that without kind treatment
no assimilation could have developed.5 How, then, is one
to account for the tortures described in most narratives
of captivity, even in reminiscences of former captives who
resisted redemption? It is my conclusion that Indians of
all culture areas received emotional satisfaction while
tormenting captives to celebrate the successful return of

America," 68-81.

Literature and Life," 191-92.
6 William N. Fenton to author, February 7, 1977

3 04
a war party. But after the initial victory dance, running
of the gauntlet, or other traditional forms of ceremonial
chastisement ended, treatment of captives varied widely
among tribes or even between individual captors. Cir
cumstance and caprice frequently determined whether a
captive died under torture, became a slave, or enjoyed the
kind treatment accorded to adopted members of the tribe.
Life or death frequently depended upon the mood of the
first warrior to touch a captive. If the captor had
recently lost a relative, he might take revenge on the
first white person he saw. On the other hand, he might
save the captive's life in order to adopt him as a replace
ment. Adoption usually brought an end to cruel treatment,

but abuse might be resumed if the captor obtained liquor
or if the captive tried to escape or proved to be an un
satisfactory substitute. Wilcomb E. Washburn asserts that
an adopted captive who proved to be a weakling might be
killed or sold into slavery.^
In all native American culture areas mature captive
women experienced treatment which precluded acceptance of
the Indian way of life. Foremost among their concerns was
sexual abuse. East of the Mississippi, rape by Indians
was almost unknown because of incest taboos. Warriors
would not violate a captive woman since she might eventually
7 Wilcomb E. Washburn to author, February 11, 1977

305
become an adopted relative in the moiety or clan. Captive
women in the eastern woodlands were urged to marry Indians
and sometimes complied in order to gain a provider, but if
they chose to remain single, no punishment was imposed
upon them. West of the Mississippi River, however, the
opposite situation prevailed. Rape of adult female
captives occurred so frequently that many redeemed white
women were pregnant at the time of their recovery. The
ordeal of rape or forced marriage made assimilation almost
impossible for mature female captives.
Western Indians were somewhat more brutal in their
treatment of captive children than eastern Indians, In
the West, children were more likely to be traded from tribe
to tribe and treated as servants or slaves. Adoption was
delayed somewhat longer in the West and, therefore, the
period of cruel treatment lasted longer. After adoption,
however, treatment was similar in all regions.
Except during colonial times (when captives were
ransomed by the French), most mature white males who fell
into Indian hands forfeited their lives in all regions of
the present United States. In the East, however, an
especially brave white enemy might be spared in the hope
that he could be converted to the Indian way of life. And
in the Pacific Northwest, the most property-conscious of
all native American culture areas, a mature white man might
be saved if he possessed skills which could be used to
enrich his master.
306
Having concluded that differences in the treatment
of captives prevailed among native culture areas, the
question arises as to how much these differences determined
the course and degree of assimilation. It is my conclusion
that treatment had a surprisingly minor influence on
assimilation. Regardless of the way they were treated,
few children successfully resisted assimilation. Men
captives, if permitted to live, rarely rejected a chance
to escape. In the case of mature women captives, many died
as a result of mistreatment and hardship, especially in the
West. Among survivors in all regions, few females who were
captured as adults embraced the Indian way of life,
although some women who had half-Indian children chose to
remain with their captors. While narratives of captivity
indicate that white girls reared by Indians regarded
marriage to warriors as natural and loved their Indian
husbands, white women captured as adults who had sexual
relations with Indians feared ostracism by their own
people. A double standard permitted white frontier men to
indulge themselves with Indian women,8 but white women who
had sexual relations with Indians felt disgraced even
though they often had no choice in the matter. 9
8 Puritan clergymen urged both men and women not

to have sexual relations with Indians, but some Puritan
men used female Indian slaves for that purpose.
9 I disagree with Savoie Lottinville in his belief

that "love, not shame," caused them to reject redemption:
Savoie Lottinville to author, February 17, 1977 (in
author's possession).
307
One of the factors determining degree of assimi
lation which is usually assumed to be important was the
length of captivity. Certainly one would expect that a
captive who lived with the Indians only a few months would
absorb little of their culture, while one who remained in
captivity for many years would learn the language, acquire
the skills needed for survival in their society, form
friendships with Indians who treated him kindly, and,
perhaps, develop a sufficient liking for their way of life
to reject redemption. And it is true, other factors being
equal, that a lengthy captivity resulted in greater assimi
lation than a brief one. But the difference is not nearly
so marked as one might expect. In fact, the most un
expected finding of this dissertation is that many captives
became substantially assimilated in a matter of months.
How is one to account for immediate acceptance of
a new and exotic civilization? As pointed out above, some
white persons were attracted to the Indian life style.10
Many men moved to the frontier seeking freedom from
restraint, profits from trapping or trading, and the allure
10 An example, according to Allan W. Eckert, was

the formidable Shawnee war chief, Blue Jacket. Eckert
identifies Blue Jacket as a white man, Marmaduke Van
Swearingen, captured at the age of 17, who had studied
Shawnee language and lore and welcomed his captors. See
Allan W. Eckert, Blue Jacket (Boston: Little, Brown and
Company, 1969), 1-16.
308
of native women. They looked forward with pleasure to
participating, at least temporarily, in life in the Indian
village.
But what about the large number of whites who were
seized by raiders, who wintessed the murder of relatives,
who were brutally beaten and threatened with death? Their
rapid assimilation is explained by the adaptability of
youth. The traumatic experiences of captivity which some
times caused insanity in adults frequently shocked children
so as to erase recollections of an earlier life except for
subliminal memories that surfaced fleetingly in distorted
form. In such cases the native American culture quickly
supplanted white civilization.H In some instances this
rapid and substantial assimilation of captives was not
permanent, however, for at least a few "white Indians"
voluntarily returned to a civilization that they could
barely remember after many years with the tribe. A desire
to visit relatives became rekindled when they came in con
tact with white people who took an interest in their re
demption. Sometimes these encounters occurred during
trading expeditions. Usually, however, decisions to leave
the Indians were made after the tribes moved to reser
vations and changes occurred in their traditional ways of
life. These captives met agents, teachers, and missionaries
11 For an account of the effect of shock on a

young captive see Walter Prescott Webb, The Texas Rangers
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1965), 35-38.
3 09
who assisted them to regain the use of their native
languages and induced them to reflect upon their lives
before captivity. When shadowy memories focused suffi
ciently to recall names or places, agency personnel and
newspaper editors helped them to locate their white
families.
The experiences of more than 50 persons who were
held by the Indians for periods ranging from a few months
to 30 years were analyzed during this study and it is
evident that although captives held for fewer than five
years were less assimilated, by and large, than those held
for longer periods, there were many who became highly
Indianized in a year or less. It is notable, also, that
several captives who lived with the Indians for more than
20 years became less assimilated than others held for com
paratively brief periods. Clearly, then, length of
captivity was not the most crucial factor in assimilation.
Regardless of which aspect of assimilation is under
consideration, a researcher finds himself returning to the
factor of age at the time of captivity as the major deter
minant. Having concluded that the captive's original
family and ethnic background was inconsequential, that the
cultural mores of the capturing tribe sometimes delayed but
did not prevent assimilation, and that the length of time
in captivity did not always correlate significantly with
Indianization, it becomes apparent that age was of crucial
importance.
310
An infant removed from his parents and totally
immersed in a dissimilar culture adapts without difficulty
to the new way of life because he retains no memory of any
other. A white captive infant learned the tribal language
as easily as that of his natural parents, and he conformed
completely to native American culture. Deprived of
parents, a small child must have someone to turn to for
security, and an Indian woman provided that security for
captive children. This surrogate mother gave the child
affection, attended the wounds inflicted during the capture
and its aftermath, and shielded the captive from the
terrors of threatening warriors. Under such circumstances
it is not surprising that many redeemed captives cherished
memories of Indian mothers who guided them along the path
of transculturation. Children captured when quite small
learned the Indian languages as a matter of course and
usually forgot their native speech in a short time. Given
Indian playmates to instruct them, they soon learned to
enjoy their new way of life and, were it not for the color
of their skins, they could scarcely have been singled out
from natural born Indians.
Assimilation was more difficult for children
captured between the ages of eight and 11. They usually
retained some memory of an earlier life and at least a few
words of their native languages as long as they lived. At
least for a time they grieved for their parents, suffered
torments at the hands of their captors, and feared that
311
they would be killed. The instinct for self-preservation
helped them to accept their new surroundings, however, for
on the march to the Indian village they realized that they

could not find the way back to the settlements. Keeping
up with their captors was necessary for survival, and fear
of starvation in the wilderness provided the first in
centive to stay with the Indians. Brutal treatment gave
way in time to a change for the better, a necessary stage
in the assimilation process. White children observed how
much better adopted captives were treated, and this in
itself was a powerful inducement to conform to Indian ways.
Among the eastern Indians, especially, adoption usually
followed soon after capture and provided a major impetus
toward Indianization. The ritual of adoption made the
captive at least symbolically an Indian and it was the most
important event in transculturation. Some children be
lieved that the ceremony transformed them into real
Indians. Moreover, adopted children discovered that there
were many pleasures associated with Indian life. Playmates
taught them Indian games and customs. Warriors introduced
boys to the skills of hunting and raiding, a life of
adventure that contrasted strongly with the humdrum
existence that had characterized their earlier days. Re
pulsed at first by Indian food, they soon began to relish
their meals— a major step in transculturation. Enjoying
many facets of their new lives, these children became
Indianized at a rapid rate.
312
Assimilation was much more difficult for captives
who had reached the age of puberty. While variations
occurred between one captive and another, the evidence
provided by many case studies shows that the age of 12
constituted a breaking point between girls who readily
accepted and those who resisted the Indian way of life.
Boys of 12 and 13, while retaining many characteristics of
life before captivity, were attracted more than girls to
Indian civilization. Most of them eventually became sub
stantially assimilated, and the critical age which
separated boys who became "white Indians" from those who
retained a desire to escape was 14.
Why were these ages of such critical importance in
determining the course and degree of assimilation? There
were at least two important reasons, one stemming from the
child's native culture and the other from the cultural
traits of the captors. A person nearing the age of puberty
naturally begins to acquire some knowledge and awareness
of sexuality. Particularly in the case of girls, parents
become concerned about the possibility of undesirable
sexual involvement and warn their daughters against it.
The idea of sexual relations with men of other races was
especially repugnant to frontier parents and they trans
mitted these feelings to daughters of childbearing age.
Thus when these girls fell into Indian hands they had
already acquired a fear and abhorrence of rape and forced
marriage which created an almost impassible barrier to a
313
willing acceptance of the new culture. And the treatment
of these girls by Indian men frequently proved the validity
of their apprehensions. Girls captured below the age of
12 usually were treated as children, but young women of
childbearing age falling into the hands of western Indians
frequently were raped. Their mental preconditioning, when
combined with the horror of the dreaded act, often made
assimilation and even survival impossible. While captive
girls of childbearing age were not raped by eastern
Indians, they remained apprehensive that they would be
forced into marriage.
Sexual concerns were of little importance in
blocking assimilation of white males, but boys who had
reached the age of puberty before capture had had time to
absorb the hatred of Indians which characterized the
attitudes of most frontier families. They enjoyed the
adventures of outdoor life and many of them in time married
Indian women, but they retained the ingrained contempt for
a race which they considered inferior to their own.
Assimilation was incomplete in these instances, for these
youths almost always chose to return to their white
families.
Many captives who returned to white civilization
experienced difficulty in casting off traits of tribal
culture and the question arises as to whether captives'
readjustment to white society retraced the course of their
314
Indianization. I analyzed the experiences of a con
siderable number of former captives to see if there was a
correlation between difficulty of readjustment and the
length of time in captivity. In most cases, a lengthy
captivity caused a difficult readjustment. But it is
evident, also, that many former captives experienced great
difficulty in readjusting after living with the Indians
less than two years. These redeemed captives conceded
that for a long time they found white men's food, clothing,
and houses to be almost intolerable. Some of them, par
ticularly Puritan children, were tormented by feelings of
guilt for having survived the massacre of their parents,
brothers, and sisters. Others missed their Indian foster
parents so much that they rejected their white relatives.
Older redeemed captives believed that their white neighbors
blamed them for acquiring Indian traits and suspected them
of improper conduct while in captivity. A considerable
number of these former captives attempted to run away to
rejoin the Indians, while others who had been held in
captivity for many years made more successful readjust
ments. A few former captives immediately turned upon their
Indian friends and led military or scalp hunting expeditions
against them. Based on the evidence provided by these
experiences, it is evident that in most cases a long
captivity resulted in a more difficult readjustment, but a
large number of exceptions prevent definitive generali
zation.
315
It was impossible, also, to correlate readjustment
difficulty with age at the time of capture by Indians. Of
course, captives who had been old enough when taken to
resist assimilation experienced fewer problems when re
stored to their white families than did those who had
become greatly Indianized. But among substantially assimi
lated redeemed captives, some who had been taken as infants
made more successful readjustments than did others who had
been old enough when captured to remember their white
relatives. Constant watchfulness and much patience were
required for extended periods to reassimilate many former
captives who had lived from eight to ten years with their
white families before falling into Indian hands. In some
cases the only way to prevent them from abandoning white
civilization was to provide them with employment, such as
interpreting, trading, or scouting, that permitted them to
spend much of their time in the Indian country.
It is concluded that factors associated with
attitudes existing in white society were more important
than age at the time of capture or length of time in
captivity in enabling the redeemed captive to become re
assimilated. Loving and patient relatives usually wore
down the resistance of even the most Indianized redeemed
captive. On the other hand, it was very difficult for a
former captive to make a place for himself in white society
when relatives or neighbors feared him as a dangerous savage
or patronized him as a simpleton. Some captives who
316
voluntarily returned to white civilization after many years
of Indian life eventually rejoined the tribe because of
rejection by whites and inability to make a living in a
competitive society.
Because so many redeemed captives found reassimi
lation difficult, one might assume that Indian children
found it impossible to accept white civilization, and
several well informed observers have declared that such was
the case, reporting that every captured Indian child reared
by a white family sought the opportunity to return to the
tribe. Philosophers and religious leaders expressed
amazement that an Indian child who had been shown the
advantages of civilization and the verities of Christianity
would abandon them without hesitation and return to the
disorders and superstitions of barbaric life.
But was this a correct assessment of the situation?
Not according to the evidence presented in the cases
analyzed in this study. On the contrary, a captured
Indian child who was reared in a white family became
assimilated in much the same manner as a white child reared
in an Indian family. If the whites treated a young Indian
child kindly and made a determined effort to teach him
their values and ways, he would choose to remain with them
when given the opportunity to return to his own people.
The determining factor was age at the time of removal from
natural parents for Indian children as well as for whites.
317
There was, however, a difference between the degree
of assimilation of Indian children reared in white families
and others educated in boarding schools away from the tribe.
Boarding school children were more likely to cling to
native traditions than were children reared in white
families. There were two reasons for this difference.
First, few frontier families were willing to take in an
Indian child. The exceptions were missionaries or families
of unusual culture and wealth. These families loved and
respected the Indian child and the child responded by ad
miring his foster parents, conditions which were necessary
for assimilation to take place. Children in boarding
schools, on the other hand, generally were regarded as un
fortunates whose inferior culture must be eradicated before
they could rise above a condition of savagery. An indi
vidual who fails to find acceptance in one civilization
will seek it in another, and products of Indian boarding
schools seldom were regarded as equals when they attempted
to make their way in the white man's world . ^
12 An excellent example is provided by the case of

James McDonald, a Choctaw youth who was employed in the
Office of Indian Affairs by Thomas McKenney. He demon
strated such ability that McKenney sent him at government
expense to Ohio to study law. After passing the bar exami
nations he attempted to establish a practice in Mississippi,
but white people refused to give him any legal work. He
proposed marriage to a white woman and when she rejected
him he became an alcoholic. Finally he committed suicide.
This tragedy so shocked McKenney that he began to favor
Indian removal as the only hope for their survival. See
Herman J. Viola, "Early American Indian Policy," in Jane F.
Smith and Robert Kvasnicka (eds.), Indian-White Relations:
a Persistent Paradox (Washington: Howard University Press,
1976), 53-54.
318
The second reason for a difference between the
assimilation of Indian children reared in white families
and those attending boarding schools is found in the pro
cess of transculturation. An Indian child reared in a
white family spent most of his time in the company of
white people. A boarding school child, on the other hand,
spent most of his time in the company of other Indians.
These associations reinforced native American traditions
and prevented the tribal ties from becoming completely or
permanently severed. Assimilation of these individuals,
therefore, usually was partial and temporary.
Based upon the experiences of both white and
Indian children, no evidence was found of psychological
distinctions between races. Cultural factors rather
than hereditary ones determined the course and degree of
assimilation. And these factors worked for Indian
children reared in white families in the same way they did
for white captive children adopted and cherished by Indian
parents. If removed from their natural parents early
enough, they quickly acquired the cultural traits of the
new civilization.
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Comapny, 1931.
,The Texas Rangers. Austin:
University of Texas Press, 1965.
Wellman, Paul I., Death on Horseback. Philadelphia:

J. B. Lippincott Company, 1947.
Wharton, Clarence, Satanta. Dallas, B. Upshaw & Co., 1935.
White, Hayden, "The Forms of Wildness: Archaeology of an

Idea" (Edward Dudley and Maximilian Novak, eds.,
The Wild Man Within). Pittsburgh: University of
Pittsburgh Press, 1972.
Wilbarger, J. W . , Indian Depredations in Texas. Austin:

Hutchings Printing House, 1889.
Wright, Louis B . , The Atlantic Frontier. New York: A. A.

Knopf, 1951.
333
Wright, Louis B . , Religion and Empire. Chapel Hill;

University of North Carolina Press, 1943.
D. Unpublished dissertation and paper

Behan, Dorothy Forbis, The Captivity Story in American
Literature. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of
Chicago, 1952.
Eccles, William J . , Freedom in Indian and FrenchColonial

Societies, paper delivered at a symposiumon
"France and North America, The Burden of Freedoms,"
held at the University of Southwestern Louisiana,
Lafayette, Louisiana, March 16, 1977.
E. Correspondence with the author
Fenton, William N . , February 7, 1977.
Gibson, Arrell M . , March 20, 1977.
Kincaid, Gaines, January 24 and February 5, 1975.
Lottinville, Savoie, February 17, 1977.
Washburn, Wilcomb E . , February 11, 1977.
VITA
Joseph Norman Heard was born at Austin, Texas, and
reared at Refugio, Texas, graduating from Refugio High
School in 1939. From 1939 to 1941 he attended Texas
College of Arts and Industries at Kingsville. From 1942
to 1945 he served in the United States Navy. After World
War II he enrolled at the University of Texas at Austin.
He received the Bachelor of Journalism Degree (1947), the
Master of Journalism Degree (1949), and the Master of
Library Science Degree (1951), from that institution.
He has held the following library positions: Orders
Assistant, the University of Texas (1949-51); Order
Librarian, Texas Technological College (1951-53); Assistant
Librarian, Texas College of Arts and Industries (1953-55);
Director of Libraries, Pan American University (1955-62);
Order Librarian, Northwestern State College (1962-63);
Acquisitions Librarian, Louisiana State University
(1963-65); Head Librarian, Southeastern Louisiana University
(1965-69); Associate Director, University of Southwestern
Louisiana (1969-77). His present position is Professor of
Library Science and Acting Director of the Library at the
University of Southwestern Louisiana.
334
335
He has published the following books: Bookman's
Guide to Americana (Washington: Scarecrow Press, 1953, now
in the seventh edition); Hope Through Doing (New York:
John Day Publishing Company, 1968); The Black Frontiersmen
(New York: John Day Publishing Company, 1969); and White
Into Red (Metuchen, N. J . , Scarecrow Press, 1973). He
contributed a chapter to Alfred de Grazia, ed., Grassroots
Private Welfare (New York: New York University Press,
1957); and twenty articles to Walter Prescott Webb and
H. Bailey Carroll, eds., The Handbook of Texas (Austin,
Texas State Historical Association, 1952).
For many years he has been an active worker in the
movement to provide education and employment for the handi
capped. He founded the South Texas Habilitation Center at
Edinburg, Texas; the Valley Botanical Garden at McAllen
Texas; and the Acadian Village and Gardens at Lafayette,
Louisiana. He has served on the Boards of Directors of
both the Texas and Louisiana Associations for Retarded
Citizens. In 1977 he was appointed by Governor Edwin
Edwards to represent Louisiana at the White House Conference
on the Handicapped at Washington, D. C.
He is married to the former Joyce Ann Boudreaux
and they have three children.
EXAMINATION AND THESIS REPORT
Candidate: Joseph Norman Heard
Major Field: History
Title of Thesis: THE A S S IM IL A T IO N OF C A P T IV E S ON THE AM ERICAN F R O N T IE R

I N THE E IG H TE E N TH AND N IN E T E E N T H C E N TU R IE S
Approved:
/M a jo r Professor and Chairm an
Dean of the Graduate School
E X A M IN IN G C O M M ITTE E :
r.V: C~7 ac'-
/r 7
Date of Examination:
December 2 , 1977

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University Microfilms International, Ann A rb o r, M ic h ig a n 48 106

IN THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES

Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the

The Department of History

Without the encouragement and assistance of a con­

siderable number of individuals this dissertation would

never have been completed. I would like to express my

appreciation to the members of my committee and, especially,

to the chairman, Dr. John L. Loos, for invaluable guidance

and assistance. I greatly appreciate, also, the valuable

advice of the following ethnohistorians: Dr. Wilcomb E.

Washburn, Dr. William N. Fenton, Dr. Arrell M. Gibson,

Savoie Lottinville, and Gaines Kincaid. Finally, I would

like to express heartfelt appreciation to my wife, Joyce

Boudreaux Heard, for her infinite patience and under­

standing. Her courage during thirty years of adversity

has sustained me and inspired many.

II. A CONTEST OF CIVILIZATION ...................... 23

III. THE CULTURAL MILIEUFROM WHICH

IV. THE CULTURE AREA IN WHICHTHEY

V. LENGTH OF TIME IN CAPTIVITY .................... 174

VI. THE CRITICAL AGE ................................ 199

VII. AFTER RESTORATION .............................. 236

VIII. INDIAN CHILDREN AND WHITE

IX. CONCLUSION ...................... 295

BIBLIOGRAPHY .......................................... 319

VITA ................................................... 334

THE ASSIMILATION OF CAPTIVES ON THE AMERICAN

FRONTIER IN THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES

The experiences of white persons held \ captivity

by Indians have fascinated readers for almost three

centuries. Hundreds of redeemed captives have written or

related accounts of their adventures, and many of them

acknowledged that they had enjoyed the life style of their

captors. Other former captives charged, however, that they

had been brutalized by the Indians to the point of pre­

ferring death to a life of captivity. Many captives

retained almost no recollection of white civilization,

gotten their own names. They had become proficient in the

skills required for survival in the wilderness and, except

for the color of their skins, they could scarcely be dis­

tinguished from their captors.

This study analyzes narratives of captivity in

order to identify and evaluate factors which facilitated

or retarded assimilation. A number of anthropologists and

historians have suggested the need for a study, based upon

a large number of cases, which would help to determine why

some captives became "white Indians” while others com­

pletely rejected native American culture. Scholars have

speculated that both white and Indian children, when ex­

posed to both civilizations, invariably preferred the

Without the encouragement and assistance of a con

Boudreaux Heard, for her infinite patience and under

had been brutalized by the Indians to the point of pre

for the color of their skins, they could scarcely be dis

some captives became "white Indians” while others com

speculated that both white and Indian children, when ex

milieu of the captive was of no importance as a deter

age usually retained the desire to return to white civili

as a white child adopted by an Indian family. The deter

children educated at boarding schools became less assimi

Indians.3- Many captives retained little or no recollec