The Wild Frontier (18 page)
Authors: William M. Osborn
Some captives were undoubtedly prone to exaggerate, but historian R. W. G. Vail emphasized that many narratives of captivity were “simple, vivid, direct and, generally, accurate pictures of the exciting and often harrowing adventures of their authors.”
39
J. Norman Heard, author of
White into Red
, acknowledged that, “while individual narratives may contain inaccuracies and exaggerations, taken in the aggregate they provide a generally reliable source of information on assimilation.”
40
James Gordon Meade asserted that captive narratives were “honest accounts of experiences charged with meaning to authors and readers alike.”
41
Indeed, Richard VanDerBeets complimented them:
Many captive narrators were excellent observers, and their accounts of Indian warfare, hunting, customs and manners, religion, and council procedures are in some cases our only glimpse of … past realities. For the historian, many of the narratives of Indian captivity are repositories of eyewitness information relating to the major Indian-white conflicts throughout the course of American history.
42
Drimmer pointed out that the narratives he included “have been accepted as authentic since their earliest publication, and have frequently been used as sources by historians and anthropologists. “
43
Larry Lee Carey characterized Johnston’s narrative as genuine and believable and found that Kelly was a “dispassionate, objective commentator.”
44
Jules Zanger, who reprinted Fanny Kelly’s account of her captivity, which was originally published in 1871, called attention to the fact that it
came buttressed with affidavits from Army officers and Indian chiefs [Indian affidavits are Xd by Sioux chiefs Spotted Tail, Swift Bear, Red Cloud, and assorted majors, captains, lieutenants, and an assistant surgeon] attesting to its authenticity.
45
Kelly’s captivity was well known before her escape, perhaps because her brother-in-law was a Union general. President Lincoln ordered the army to try to buy her freedom. After her escape, she went to Washington, where President Grant asked to meet with her and expressed his sympathy (the Sioux had killed her daughter). Congress passed a bill appropriating $5,000 for her services during her captivity in saving a wagon train from Indian attack, and in warning Fort Sully about another Indian attack.
46
The motivation given by the narrators for writing the captive narratives was quite varied. Mary Rowlandson put it this way:
One principall ground of my setting forth these lines is to declare the Works of the Lord, and his wonderfull power in carrying us along, preserving us in the wilderness, while under the Enemies hand, and returning us to safety again.
47
Anne Jamison wrote so that her children and others might be excited to acknowledge God, submit to him, and put their trust in him.
48
John Johonnot also wrote from religious motives.
49
The Reverend J. J. Meethvin offered the captivity of Andele for the “pleasure and profit” of young readers.
50
Nathaniel Segar said he wanted to get full compensation for his military service in the Revolution and his captivity in Maine.
51
Moses Van Campen was struck by the rare specimens of enterprise, bravery, and conduct that were exhibited.
52
The Reverend Reuben Weiser told about the captivity of Regina Hatman because “our children should know something about their [Indian] cruelties, and thus see why God has permitted them to be banished from their native land.”
53
The Reverend John Williams wanted to report God’s providential dealings
with himself.
54
Peter Williamson hoped to move his readers to sympathize with his plight as a wounded veteran and former captive “and thus to open their purse strings.”
55
He earned a living with his captivity narrative and other writings and by exhibiting himself in Indian costume at his coffeehouse.
Ebersole saw an appeal in these narratives of captivity quite beyond their sensationalism:
The theme of captivity was widely employed in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries in diverse literary genres because it represented a striking instance of sudden reversal of fortune, whether this was understood to be divine affliction or not. The theme of sudden reversal of fortune of the good and apparently blameless was, of course, as old as the story of Job.
56
He added that captivity tales also
were offered as an invitation to readers to engage in an inquiry into the human condition and, with the comparative knowledge gained, to meditate on the blessings and the costs of civilization. Still other tales were presented as affording the reader “an opportunity of observing the mind of man in its progress from the original savage to civilized life; as well as in its retrograde movements from civilization to the savage state.”
57
He also found that a desire to entertain drove some of these authors:
Few works were written exclusively to provide entertainment to the reader. At a minimum, there was a nod toward providing some form of rational entertainment or moral instruction, however trite.
58
There was a heyday of atrocity accounts. Zanger commented on this and other aspects of captive narratives:
The Indian captive narrative, though it has antecedents and parallels in other cultures, developed as a particularly American literary form. It appeared, flourished, and declined during … [the] American experience on the Indian frontier … during which the Indian presented an obstacle to the expanding civilization of the white man. With the disappearance of that frontier—and with it of the threat of the Indian—the captivity narrative … disappeared, merging finally with the stream of Western sensational literature.
59
The narrative was usually published at the urging of friends and relatives or at the suggestion of journalists or printers. Although narratives were generally brought out as soon as the captive had returned from the wilderness,
60
a puzzling aspect is that so many captives waited so long before telling their interesting stories. Cordova-Rios told his story when he was 75 years old; Alexander Henry was 70. Anne Jamison waited for 46 years after her captivity was over, Mrs. Johnson waited 40 years, Charles Johnston waited 37 years, and Leith at least 58 years. Mary Jemison was 80 when her account was published; James Smith waited almost 40 years to tell his story and Steele almost 40 years. No one has attempted to explain this strange fact except Frank Buckelew, who was captured in 1866 at age 13 by the Lipan Indians in Texas. His narrative was not published until 1932, 66 years later. The preface of his book states that he “long hesitated to present his story as an Indian captive lest it be condemned as fiction.”
61
In short, he thought many settlers would refuse to believe the horrors recited in most captive narratives.
The captive narratives were understandably reflective of the times, and VanDerBeets thought they “draw and shape their materials from the very wellsprings of human experience.”
62
It has been said that this body of literature “emphasizes the fact that it was the line of fluid frontiers receding into the West that changed the colonists into a new people.”
63
I
NDIAN CANNIBALISM
occurred over a long period of time, indeed, longer than the war itself. It terrified the settlers and is discussed independently here (the other atrocities will be treated in chronological order for the most part).
The first report of cannibalism in the New World occurs in a 1493 letter from Christopher Columbus. He indicated that he had found no monsters, nor had he had a report of any “except in an island ‘Carib,’ … which is inhabited by a people who are regarded in all the islands as very fierce and who eat human flesh.”
64
The word
cannibal
comes from the Carib Indians.
Some Indians in the Caribbean prized human flesh. The Caribs and Tupians “relished human flesh and ate it in preference to other food.”
65
They were tribes who made war to get victims and ate the heart and other parts of the body in the belief they would get the courage or other qualities of the victim.
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Others found it repellent.
67
Cannibalism was not confined, however, to the Carib island. It was described in detail by Amerigo Vespucci, who made important voyages
to the New World and whose writing was published around 1504. He related that the Indians of Brazil
cruelly kill one another, and those whom they bring home captive from war they preserve, not to spare their lives, but that they may be slain for food; for they eat one another, the victors the vanquished, and among other kinds of meat human flesh is a common article of diet with them. Nay be the more assured of this fact because the father has already been seen to eat children and wife, and I knew a man whom I also spoke to who was reputed to have eaten more than three hundred human bodies. And I likewise remained twenty-seven days in a certain city where I saw salted human flesh suspended from beams between the houses, just as with us it is the custom to hang bacon and pork. I say further: they themselves wonder why we do not eat our enemies and do not use as food their flesh which they say is most savory.
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Indian cannibalism in English literature first appeared in a translation of a Dutch pamphlet published about 1511. In describing Indian life it reported Indians “ete also on[e] another[.] The man eteth his wyfe[,] his chylderene as we also have seen and they hange also the bodyes or persons fleeshe in the smoke as men do with swynes fleshe.”
69
Richard Slotkin, among others, stated that almost all the Indian tribes practiced ritual cannibalism.
70
Harold E. Driver said cannibalism (as well as torture and human sacrifice) occurred in all tribes from the Iroquois in the northeast to the Gulf tribes in the southeast:
71
The pattern of warfare in a particular region is partly determined by the contacts with peoples on the outside and by the ideas and values derived from these contacts. For example, the torture of prisoners, or their sacrifice to the supernatural, and cannibalism, occur in a continuous area from the Iroquoians in the Northeast to the Gulf tribes in the Southeast, thence south through Northeast Mexico to Meso-America and the Caribbean.
72
Christy Turner II believes that the skeletal remains of at least 286 Hopi (radiocarbon-dated to about 1580) indicate that they had been cannibalized by other Hopi. He also believes that 12 percent of 870 Anasazi skeletons he examined indicate cannibalization, an additional 69 people. (Turner has admitted that he has no direct evidence to support these conclusions, and many anthropologists disagree with him, suggesting the physical evidence he found might result from bizarre mortuary practices or the execution of witches.)
73
The Iroquois would force their male captives to run the gauntlet, accept some of those who made it into the tribe, perhaps give those who did not to the widows of warriors, and “still other captives might be cooked and eaten so that their strength could be absorbed by the Iroquois warriors.”
74
Pierre Esprit Radisson was captured by Mohawk while duck hunting in Quebec. He was adopted into the tribe. He went on a hunting trip with 3 Mohawk warriors and a Huron captive. The Huron captive proposed that they kill their captors and escape, which they did. But other Mohawks caught up with them 14 days later. “The Huron was killed and his heart eaten by the Mohawks.”
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Alan Axelrod wrote that “cannibalism was widespread and was reported among Indians well into the nineteenth century.”
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Cannibalism was not confined to Indians. In 1607, after widespread starvation, some settlers ate corpses and at least one ate his wife.
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Other settlers considered it. In 1703, William Clap wrote a letter recounting how he had been taken prisoner by the French and forcibly marched to Canada. The party was in such dire straits that the 2 French guards considered killing and eating him. Clap prayed in their presence, and one of the Frenchmen, who seemed to have tears in his eyes, told him to get up and they would try one day longer.
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After Barbara Leininger was captured in 1755, she was put with a captive Englishwoman, who later tried to escape. The Indians scalped her, laid burning splinters on her body, and cut off her ears and fingers. A French officer “took compassion on her, and put her out of her misery.” An English soldier named John had escaped from prison at Lancaster and joined the French. He cut a piece of flesh from the Englishwoman’s body and ate it. She was then chopped in two and her body devoured by the dogs.
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Anne Jamison wrote that she and her children were in a large party fleeing Indian attacks by floating down the Mississippi on a raft. They ran out of food. The only surviving adult male in her party proposed consuming a child chosen by lot. Jamison dissuaded him.
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There were reports of Indian cannibalism in New England. Puritans said that Indians gnawed flesh from settler bones after tying their captives to trees.
81
Around 1625, the Mohegan sachem Wonkus ate part of the body of the Narraganset sachem Miantonomo, then commented, “It is the sweetest meat I ever ate.”
82
In 1676 Nathaniel Saltonstall told about an incident in New England where the Indian executioner flung one end of a rope over a post and hoisted the victim up like a dog “and with his Knife made a Hole in his Breast to his Heart, and sucked out his
Heart-Blood.”
83
The Algonquins as well as the Iroquois were cannibals.
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