A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary JemisonSeaver, James E. (James Everett)
History
A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison
Seaver, James E. (James Everett)
Jemison, Mary, 1743-1833; Seneca Indians
I had then been with the Indians four summers and four winters, and
had become so far accustomed to their mode of living, habits and
dispositions, that my anxiety to get away, to be set at liberty, and
leave them, had almost subsided. With them was my home; my family was
there, and there I had many friends to whom I was warmly attached in
consideration of the favors, affection and friendship with which they
had uniformly treated me, from the time of my adoption. Our labor was
not severe; and that of one year was exactly similar, in almost every
respect, to that of the others, without that endless variety that is to
be observed in the common labor of the white people. Notwithstanding the
Indian women have all the fuel and bread to procure, and the cooking to
perform, their task is probably not harder than that of white women, who
have those articles provided for them; and their cares certainly are not
half as numerous, nor as great. In the summer season, we planted, tended
and harvested our corn, and generally had all our children with us; but
had no master to oversee or drive us, so that we could work as leisurely
as we pleased. We had no ploughs on the Ohio; but performed the whole
process of planting and hoeing with a small tool that resembled, in some
respects, a hoe with a very short handle.
Our cooking consisted in pounding our corn into samp or hommany, boiling
the hommany, making now and then a cake and baking it in the ashes, and
in boiling or roasting our venison. As our cooking and eating utensils
consisted of a hommany block and pestle, a small kettle, a knife or two,
and a few vessels of bark or wood, it required but little time to keep
them in order for use.
Spinning, weaving, sewing, stocking knitting, and the like, are arts
which have never been practised in the Indian tribes generally. After
the revolutionary war, I learned to sew, so that I could make my own
clothing after a poor fashion; but the other domestic arts I have been
wholly ignorant of the application of, since my captivity. In the season
of hunting, it was our business, in addition to our cooking, to bring
home the game that was taken by the Indians, dress it, and carefully
preserve the eatable meat, and prepare or dress the skins. Our clothing
was fastened together with strings of deer skin, and tied on with the
same.
In that manner we lived, without any of those jealousies, quarrels, and
revengeful battles between families and individuals, which have been
common in the Indian tribes since the introduction of ardent spirits
amongst them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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