CHAPTER III.
She is given to two Squaws.—Her Journey down the Ohio.—Passes a Shawanee town where white men had just been burnt.—Arrives at the Seneca town.—Her Reception.—She is adopted.—Ceremony of Adoption.—Indian Custom.—Address.—She receives a new name.—Her Employment.—Retains her own and learns the Seneca Language.—Situation of the Town, &c.—Indians go on a Hunting Tour to Sciota and take her with them.—Returns.—She is taken to Fort Pitt, and then hurried back by her Indian Sisters.—Her hopes of Liberty destroyed.—Second Tour to Sciota.—Return to Wiishto, &c.—Arrival of Prisoners.—Priscilla Ramsay.—Her Chain.—Mary marries a Delaware.—Her Affection for him.—Birth and Death of her first Child.—Her Sickness and Recovery.—Birth of Thomas Jemison.
The night was spent in gloomy forebodings. What the result of our captivity would be, it was out of our power to determine or even imagine.—At times we could almost realize the approach of our masters to butcher and scalp us;—again we could nearly see the pile of wood kindled on which we were to be roasted; and then we would imagine ourselves at liberty; alone and defenceless in the forest, surrounded by wild beasts that were ready to devour us. The anxiety of our minds drove sleep from our eyelids; and it was with a dreadful hope and painful impatience that we waited for the morning to determine our fate.
The morning at length arrived, and our masters came early and let us out of the house, and gave the young man and boy to the French, who immediately took them away. Their fate I never learned; as I have not seen nor heard of them since.
I was now left alone in the fort, deprived of my former companions, and of every thing that was near or dear to me but life. But it was not long before I was in some measure relieved by the appearance of two pleasant looking squaws of the Seneca tribe, who came and examined me attentively for a short time, and then went out. After a few minutes absence they returned with my former masters, who gave me to them to dispose of as they pleased.
The Indians by whom I was taken were a party of Shawanees, if I remember right, that lived, when at home, a long distance down the Ohio.
My former Indian masters, and the two squaws, were soon ready to leave the fort, and accordingly embarked; the Indians in a large canoe, and the two squaws and myself in a small one, and went down the Ohio.
When we set off, an Indian in the forward canoe took the scalps of my former friends, strung them on a pole that he placed upon his shoulder, and in that manner carried them, standing in the stern of the canoe, directly before us as we sailed down the river, to the town where the two squaws resided.
On our way we passed a Shawanee town, where I saw a number of heads, arms, legs, and other fragments of the bodies of some white people who had just been burnt. The parts that remained were hanging on a pole which was supported at each end by a crotch stuck in the ground, and were roasted or burnt black as a coal. The fire was yet burning; and the whole appearances afforded a spectacle so shocking, that, even to this day, my blood almost curdles in my veins when I think of them!