Woman on the American Frontier / A Valuable and Authentic History of the Heroism, Adventures, Privations, Captivities, Trials, and Noble Lives and Deaths of the "Pioneer Mothers of the Republic"

by William Worthington Fowler

Bereavement is hard to bear in even the houses where comfort, ease, and luxury surround the occupants, where friends and kinsfolk crowd to pour out sympathy and consolation. But what must it be in the rude cabin on the lonely border? The grave hollowed out in the hard soil of the little inclosure, the rough shell-coffin hewn with tears from the forest tree, the sorrowing household ranged in silence beside the form which will gladden the loneliness of that stricken family no longer, and then the mourners turn away and go back to their homely toils.

If from the time of the landing we could recall the long procession of the actors and the events of border-life, and pass them before the eye in one great moving panorama, how somber would be the colors of that picture! All along the grand march what scenes of captivity, suffering, bereavement, sorrow, and in these scenes, woman the most prominent figure, for she was the constant actress in this great drama of woe!

The carrying away and the return of captives in war has furnished themes by which poets and artists in all ages have moved the heart of man. The breaking up of homes, the violent separations of those who are kindred by blood, and the sundering for ever of family ties were ordinary and every day incidents in the border-wars of our country: but the frequency of such occurrences does not detract from the mournful interest with which they are always fraught.

At the close of the old French and Indian War, Colonel Henry Bouquet stipulated with the Indian tribes on the Ohio frontier as one of the conditions of peace that they should restore all the captives which they had taken. This was agreed to, and on his return march he was met by a great company of settlers in search of their lost relatives. "Husbands found their wives and parents their children, from whom they had been separated for years. Women frantic between hope and fear, were running hither and thither, looking piercingly into the face of every child, to find their own, which, perhaps, had died—and then such shrieks of agony! Some of the little captives shrank from their own forgotten mothers, and hid in terror in the blankets of the squaws that had adopted them. Some that had been taken away young, had grown up and married Indian husbands or Indian wives, and now stood utterly bewildered with conflicting emotions. A young Virginian had found his wife; but his little boy, not two years old when captured, had been torn from her, and had been carried off, no one knew whither. One day a warrior came in, leading a child. No one seemed to own it. But soon the mother knew her offspring and screaming with joy, folded her son to her bosom. An old woman had lost her granddaughter in the French war, nine years before. All her other relatives had died under the knife. Searching, with trembling eagerness, in each face, she at last recognized the altered features of her child. But the girl who had forgotten her native tongue, returned no answer, and made no sign. The old woman groaned, wept, and complained bitterly, that the daughter she had so often sung to sleep on her knees, had forgotten her in her old age. Soldiers and officers were alike overcome. 'Sing,' whispered Bouquet, 'sing the song you used to sing.' As the low, trembling tones began to ascend, the wild girl gave one sudden start, then listening for a moment longer, her frame shaking like an ague, she burst into a passionate flood of tears. That was sufficient. She was the lost child. All else had been effaced from her memory, but the music of the nursery-song. During her captivity she had heard it in her dreams."

Another story of the same character is that of Frances Slocum, the "Lost child of Wyoming," which though perhaps familiar to some of our readers, will bear repeating.

In the time of the Revolution the house of Mr. Slocum in the Wyoming valley, was attacked by a party of Delawares. The inmates of the house, at the moment of the surprise, were Mrs. Slocum and four young children, the eldest of whom was a son aged thirteen, the second, a daughter aged nine, the third, Frances Slocum, aged five, and a little son aged two and a half.

The girl, aged nine years old, appears to have had the most presence of mind, for while the mother ran into a copse of wood near by, and Frances attempted to secrete herself behind a staircase, the former seized her little brother, the youngest above mentioned, and ran off in the direction of the fort. True she could not make rapid progress, for she clung to the child, and not even the pursuit of the savages could induce her to drop her charge. The Indians did not pursue her far, and laughed heartily at the panic of the little girl, while they could not but admire her resolution. Allowing her to make her escape, they returned to the house, and after helping themselves to such articles as they chose, prepared to depart.

The mother seems to have been unobserved by them, although, with a yearning bosom, she had so disposed of herself that while she was screened from observation she could notice all that occurred. But judge of her feelings at the moment when they were about to depart, as she saw her little Frances taken from her hiding place, and preparations made to carry her away into captivity. The sight was too much for maternal tenderness to endure. Rushing from her place of concealment, she threw herself upon her knees at the feet of the captors, and with the most earnest entreaties pleaded for the restoration of the child. But their bosoms were made of sterner stuff than to yield even to the most eloquent and affectionate entreaties of a mother, and with characteristic stoicism they prepared to depart. Deaf alike to the cries of the mother, and the shrieks of the child, Frances was slung over the shoulder of a stalwart Indian with as much indifference as though she were a slaughtered fawn.

The long, lingering look which the mother gave to her child, as her captors disappeared in the forest, was the last glimpse of her sweet features that she ever had. But the vision was for many a long year ever present to her fancy. As the Indian threw the child over his shoulder, her hair fell over her face, and the mother could never forget how the tears streamed down her cheeks, when she brushed it away as if to catch a last sad look of the mother from whom, her little arms outstretched, she implored assistance in vain.

These events cast a shadow over the remaining years of Mrs. Slocum. She lived to see many bright and sunny days in that beautiful valley—bright and sunny, alas! to her no longer. She mourned for the lost one, of whom no tidings, at least during her pilgrimage, could be obtained. After her sons grew up, the youngest of whom, by the way, was born but a few months subsequent to the events already narrated, obedient to the charge of their mother, the most unwearied efforts were made to ascertain what had been the fate of the lost sister. The forest between the Susquehanna and the Great Lakes, and even the most distant wilds of Canada, were traversed by the brothers in vain, nor could any information respecting her be derived from the Indians. Once, indeed, during an excursion of one of the brothers into the vast wilds of the West, a white woman, long ago captive, came to him in the hopes of finding a brother; but after many anxious efforts to discover evidences of relationship, the failure was as decisive as it was mutually sad.