Captives among the Indians : $b first-hand narratives of Indian wars, customs, tortures, and habits of life in colonial timesRowlandson, Mary White
History
Captives among the Indians : $b first-hand narratives of Indian wars, customs, tortures, and habits of life in colonial times
Rowlandson, Mary White
Indian captivities -- Northeastern States
The Indians, when they had flogged me away with them, took my oldest
boy, a lad about five years of age, along with them, for he was still
at the door by my side. My middle little boy, who was about three years
of age, had by this time obtained a situation by the fire in the house,
and was crying bitterly to me not to go, and making sore complaints of
the depredations of the savages. But these monsters were not willing to
let the child remain behind them; they took him by the hand to drag him
along with them, but he was so very unwilling to go, and made such a
noise by crying, that they took him up by his feet and dashed his
brains out against the threshold of the door. They then scalped and
stabbed him, and left him for dead. When I witnessed this inhuman
butchery of my own child I gave a most indescribable and terrific
scream, and felt a dimness come over my eyes, next to blindness, and my
senses were nearly gone. The savages then gave me a blow across my head
and face and brought me to my sight and recollection again. During the
whole of this agonizing scene I kept my infant in my arms.
As soon as the murder was effected they marched me along to the top of
the bank, about forty or sixty rods, and there they stopped and divided
the plunder which they had taken from our house, and here I counted
their number and found them to be thirty-two, two of whom were white
men painted as Indians. Several of the Indians could speak English
well. I knew several of them well, having seen them going up and down
the Alleghany River. I knew two of them to be from the Seneca tribe of
Indians, and two of them Munsees; for they had called at the shop to
get their guns repaired, and I saw them there.
We went from this place about forty rods, and they then caught my uncle
John Currie's horses, and two of them, into whose custody I was put,
started with me on the horses towards the mouth of the Kiskiminetas,
and the rest of them went off towards Puckety. When they came to the
bank that descended towards the Alleghany it was so very steep, and
there appeared so much danger in descending it on horseback that I
threw myself off the horse, in opposition to the will and command of
the savages.
My horse descended without falling, but the one on which the Indian
rode who had my little boy, in descending, fell and rolled over
repeatedly; and my little boy fell back over the horse, but was not
materially injured; he was taken up by one of the Indians, and we got
to the bank of the river, where they had secreted some bark canoes
under the rocks, opposite the island that lies between the Kiskiminetas
and Buffalo. They attempted, in vain, to make the horses take the
river, and had to leave the horses behind them, and took us in one of
the canoes to the point of the island, and there left the canoe.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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