Captivity Narrative: Mary Jemison

Mary Jemison (1743-1833), gained fame as the most famous Native captive of her day and since then.  Her story, told to a neighboring pastor when she was elderly, became the most widely read of a genre of popular literature in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a captivity narrative.  Some people who had been captured alive by Natives, spent time with them, and returned to White society chose to tell about their experiences.  These narratives were as fascinating then as mystery novels are now.  Mary's story stands above the rest.

Mary's parents were from what is now Northern Ireland.  She was born during the crossing to America.  On arriving, the Jemisons joined other Scotch-Irish immigrants in the trek to the fringes of the frontier, what is now central Pennsylvania.  There, they squatted on land belonging to the Iroquois Confederacy.  The family lived in peace until 1755, when the French and Indian War broke out.  Then, one morning when Mary was about twelve, a party of Shawnee and French descended on the Jemison farm.  They took the entire Jemison family captive, along with a neighbor boy and began the long march back to their village.  On the trail, a Shawnee noticed that Mary's shoes had worn through.  He replaced them with a pair of moccasins.  Mary's mother understood the meaning of the gesture and told Mary to go with the Natives willingly.  The only thing she asked was that Mary never forget her faith or her English language.  Soon after, the Natives led Mary and the little boy away from the rest of the party.  Mary's parents and her sisters were then killed, probably because they were considered to be too old to be adopted into a tribe.  This was a common thing done to older captives.

The Shawnee turned Mary over to the Seneca.  Some women took Mary's filthy and ragged clothing away, helped her bath in a nearby stream and gave her new clothes and the Seneca name De-he-we-mis, which means either Pretty Girl, or a Good and Pleasant Thing.  Though she knew what had happened to her family and missed them, Mary did her best to assimilate to her new surroundings as a Seneca.  She married a Delaware man named Sheminjee, and bore him a son whom she named for her father, Thomas.  Later, while the family were on a hunting trip along the Genesee River in New York, Sheminjee died of a sudden illness.  His family took Mary in until she married another Seneca man, Hiakatoo, and bore him several children.  The family lived in a village called Little Beard's Town, near what is now Cuylerville, New York.  In time, Hiakatoo died and Mary raised their children by herself. 

During the Revolutionary War, she along with other Seneca women in the town supplied Joseph Brant's Mohawk forces with supplies as they fought on the British side.  After the Americans won, they punished the Seneca by forcing them to give up much of their land.  Mary's adopted tribe chose her as one of the negotiators to salvage what they could, first negotiating with the Genesee Land Company and later at the Treaty of Big Tree (1797).  While the harsh terms imposed on the Seneca included the return of all White captives, both sides respected Mary's wish to remain with her family.  She continued to reside among the Seneca, who gave her a tract of land of her own. 

Tragedy struck in Mary's later years.  In 1810, her son John, by her second husband, murdered Sheminjee's son Thomas.  Later, in 1811, John killed his own brother, Jesse.  John himself was later killed in 1817.  In 1823, the Seneca sold most of the land remaining to them in New York, but Mary chose to stay on her land.  In 1824, Mary hiked to the home of a nearby neighbor, minister James Seaver.   She was finally ready to tell her story.  Seaver wrote down what she told him and published it into a book "Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison".  Mary continued to live on her land until she sold it in 1831 and moved to the Buffalo Creek Reservation.  She died there in 1833 and was initially buried there.  Later, Mary's remains were moved to the estate of William Pryor Letchworth, an avid collector of Native American antiquities.  He'd had the Seneca Council House from the Canaedea Reservation dismantled and moved to his estate, along with a cabin that had belonged to Mary's daughter, Nancy.  Mary's grave stood between these two buildings.  After Letchworth's death, he bequeathed his property to the State of New York and it became the nucleus of Letchworth State Park.  In 1910, a statue to Mary Jemison was erected at the Park.