A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison
An Account of the Murder of her Father and his Family; her sufferings; her marriage to two Indians; her troubles with her Children; barbarities of the Indians in the French and Revolutionary Wars; the life of her last Husband, &c.; and many Historical Facts never before published. Carefully taken from her own words, Nov. 29th, 1823.
An APPENDIX, containing an account of the tragedy at the Devil's Hole, in 1783, and of Sullivan's Expedition; the Traditions, Manners, Customs, &c. of the Indians, as believed and practised at the present day, and since Mrs. Jemison's captivity; together with some Anecdotes, and other entertaining matter.
CONTENTS
That to biographical writings we are indebted for the greatest and best field in which to study mankind, or human nature, is a fact duly appreciated by a well-informed community. In them we can trace the effects of mental operations to their proper sources; and by comparing our own composition with that of those who have excelled in virtue, or with that of those who have been sunk in the lowest depths of folly and vice, we are enabled to select a plan of life that will at least afford self-satisfaction, and guide us through the world in paths of morality.
Without a knowledge of the lives of the vile and abandoned, we should be wholly incompetent to set an appropriate value upon the charms, the excellence and the worth of those principles which have produced the finest traits in the character of the most virtuous.
Biography is a telescope of life, through which we can see the extremes and excesses of the varied properties of the human heart. Wisdom and folly, refinement and vulgarity, love and hatred, tenderness and cruelty, happiness and misery, piety and infidelity, commingled with every other cardinal virtue or vice, are to be seen on the variegated pages of the history of human events, and are eminently deserving the attention of those who would learn to walk in the paths of peace.
James E. Seaver
A NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE OF MRS. MARY JEMISON,
CONTAINING
TO WHICH IS ADDED,
PREFACE.
INTRODUCTION.
LIFE OF MARY JEMISON.
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER IX.
CHAPTER X.
CHAPTER XI.
CHAPTER XII.
CHAPTER XIII.
CHAPTER XIV.
CHAPTER XV.
CHAPTER XVI.
APPENDIX.
OF THEIR RELIGION—FEASTS—AND GREAT SACRIFICE.
OF THEIR DANCES.
OF THEIR GOVERNMENT.
THE EXTENT AND NUMBER OF THE SIX NATIONS.
OF FAMILY GOVERNMENT.
OF THEIR FUNERALS.
OF THEIR CREDULITY.
OF THE MANNER OF FARMING, AS PRACTISED BY THE INDIAN WOMEN.
OF THEIR METHOD OF COMPUTING TIME, AND KEEPING THEIR RECORDS.
ANECDOTES.
HUNTING ANECDOTE.
FINIS