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Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies, Volume 82, Number 2, Spring 2015, pp. 162-185 (Article)

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pennsylvania history: a journal of mid-atlantic studies, vol. 82, no. 2, 2015.

Copyright © 2015 The Pennsylvania Historical Association

IntImate enemIes: CaptIvIty and

ColonIal Fear oF IndIans In the

mId-eIghteenth Century Wars

Elizabeth Hornor MidAmerica Nazarene University

Abstract: During the mid-eighteenth century, relations between British Americans and Indians in North America were defined by the events of the Seven Years’ War and Pontiac’s War. A critical component of the relationship was the Native American capture of European American civilians, particularly those living on land simultaneously claimed by competing groups. Native American captivity had a long history in the colonies and continues to be studied by historians. This article con- cludes that the strict separation introduced by the Proclamation Line of 1763 was ineffective because it did not take into account the complexity of white-Indian relations at mid-century, but the ideology behind the Line’s implementation resolved the tension that had been the defining character of life on simultaneously claimed land. That resolution had far-ranging effects, pointing to the lasting importance of Pontiac’s War as well as the impact of those events on the continuing relationship between Native Americans and Americans. Keywords: Pontiac’s War; Seven Years’ War; captivity; Proclamation of 1763; borderlands

n February 1765 six children were enjoying the disinterested

hospitality of the government of Pennsylvania while they waited

to be claimed by unknown relatives. They had been taken captive

I

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by Native Americans during the Seven Years’ War and, as part of Colonel Henry Bouquet’s successful negotiations during Pontiac’s War, had been sur- rendered back to the British. The children did not know who their biologi- cal parents were, and from Bouquet’s negotiations in November 1764 until February 1765 no one had come forward to claim them. The Pennsylvania Gazette advertised the children’s existence and location and attempted to assist searching parents by providing descriptions of the children. One can easily imagine a colonial official or perhaps a printer for the Gazette peering into the faces of the unclaimed children, looking them up and down, asking their names and ages, and summing up their existence in a few words: “William, about 12 Years of Age, brown Complexion, black hair and black eyes. . . . The other Boy, Name unknown, about the same Age, fair Complexion, brown Hair, and brown Eyes.”1

What did the recorder see when he looked at those children? Raised by Ohio Indians, ignorant of their Euro-American past, separated from the life they knew, the children were caught between two cultures. Or were they? Perhaps they should rather be seen as representatives of how life was lived on land claimed by a variety of European and Native American groups: children of a distinct culture founded on conflict and cooperation.2 The dif- ficulty experienced by the Pennsylvania government in trying to identify the unclaimed children mirrors our own difficulty in defining the relation- ship between Euro-Americans and indigenous groups in the mid-eighteenth century in general and the early years of the Seven Years’ War and Pontiac’s War in particular.

For them and us, two themes emerge: division and connection. These themes can be described in many ways: conflict and cooperation, enmity and amity, war and peace. The two opposing yet intertwined themes can be most clearly seen, perhaps, during the decade of conflict formalized as the Seven Years’ War and Pontiac’s War. The tension between division and con- nection peaked with the end of Pontiac’s War and the establishment of the Proclamation Line of 1763 served as a resolution—albeit ineffective and ulti- mately short-lived—to the tension. The formal division introduced by the Line begs the question of why it was necessary in the first place. Assuredly, there are military answers to that question, but examining the social and cul- tural side reveals a complex moment in the larger history of European–Native American interactions.

The necessity of thoroughly re-examining this relationship in the eighteenth century develops out of the events of the nineteenth century and

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beyond. Since Indian removals of the nineteenth century and subsequent continuing racism against Native Americans proceeded from the events of the eighteenth century, the story of Native American and Euro-American relations in that century must be carefully and thoroughly told. Between King Philip’s War and Bacon’s Rebellion in the 1670s and the Paxton Boys’ Massacre in 1763, there was a certain degree of ambiguity in these relation- ships.3 This ambiguity was gradually replaced with a more rigid hostility as the westward expansion of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries turned into an all-out land grab in the nineteenth.

In looking for origins of this hostility and the nascent racism that fueled it, we can benefit from re-examining the era when the tension between divi- sion and connection was unresolved. One way of exploring that tension is through an examination of captivity narratives and newspaper reports about captivity. Because of the relational nature of Indian captivity, white captives lived as “intimate enemies,” or people who walked the line between being members of a family and prisoners of war. Studying their lives and ways they wrote about their experiences provides a window onto the complex and para- doxical Indian-white relationship in the era before it became defined by the emotional, ideological, and physical separation symbolized and enforced by the Proclamation Line of 1763.

Seeking a renewed emphasis on the importance of the mid-century wars is consistent with the larger trends in the historiography that emphasize nuance and complexity in white-Indian relations, particularly in the eighteenth cen- tury. A critical step in this re-evaluation is removing the traditional perio- dization of the era between 1750 and the 1830s. Because the antecedents of the American Revolution can easily be found in the 1760s, Pontiac’s War (and, to some extent, the Seven Years’ War) is traditionally glossed over and only mentioned in order to complicate the story of British-colonist interac- tions. Harried British officials, the story goes, set up the Proclamation Line of 1763 in order to appease the Native American alliances that they inherited from the French, but ungrateful, greedy colonists disregarded the measure and poured over the Line. Any undergraduate will tell you that American expansion to the west was inevitable, and the proto-revolutionary colonists simply could not be stopped. Reading these wars in light of the development of the United States, however, misrepresents their place in the story of life on land under contention and the story of how Euro-Americans and Native Americans interacted. Instead, the significance of these conflicts derives from the long buildup in the first half of the eighteenth century and their

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continuing effect on both Indian-white relations and the development of a distinct American identity in the nineteenth century.

Historiographical trends support this re-examination. Peter Silver has shown how fear of Indians bound colonists together and shaped a new, white, American identity. Silver’s work focuses on provincial leaders and how they emphasized fear, or what he calls the “anti-Indian sublime,” in order to foster a united front among disparate colonists. Similarly, Alan Taylor shows how American fear of Indians, helped along by vivid American imaginations, dra- matically shaped the events of the War of 1812, as the Indian fear that devel- oped in the eighteenth century came to full fruition in the early nineteenth century. This fruit can be seen in particular during the Cherokee removals of the 1830s, as racist intolerance of all Native Americans cast a dark shadow over the proceedings, tainting all of the discussions about whether or not the Cherokee were, or could be, “civilized.”4

In addition, a continuing rich historiography examines the complex rela- tionships existing among inhabitants of North America, particularly before the formation of the United States, and how those relationships contributed to identity formation. John Demos set the stage, in many ways, for a discus- sion of the interwoven nature of white-Indian family life during the colonial era. James Axtell’s classic article, “The White Indians of Colonial America,” showed how captivity narratives could help delineate the intricate intertwin- ing of European and native communities. Pauline Turner Strong builds on this idea by examining the hegemonic power of captivity narratives in the creation of a developing “American Self.” Mark Rifkin challenges the ways that Native identity was, and continues to be, shoehorned into European categories. David Preston demonstrates how a careful examination of the records of daily life can yield a richly textured portrait of how white and Indian neighbors, friends, enemies, and family members navigated life together on land under conten- tion. Ned Blackhawk and Wayne Lee refocus attention on the violence—and restraint—that in many ways defined the post-contact era.5

Two other fruitful branches of study explore the role of gender and slavery in connecting the inhabitant groups. Juliana Barr discusses the importance of “gendered terms of kinship” in the creation of Spanish-Indian relationships in Texas. James Brooks argues that a “nexus of honor, gender, and kinship” created a culture in which exchanges redefined fundamental identities in the Southwest. Alan Gallay demonstrates how slavery and the Indian slave trade in the South provided identity-challenging linkages among groups. Christina Snyder examines the relationship between slavery and kinship and the

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complexity of moving between categories, whether one was white or Indian. As this discussion develops, historians can continue to challenge periodiza- tion and interpretations that confine the events and participants to ahistorical and even damaging categorizations.6

While historians begin to tease out the complexity of relationships among competing and conterminous groups, mid-eighteenth-century inhabitants of North America certainly did not fully recognize the broader patterns of their interactions. The benefit of examining the singular perspectives that contrib- ute to the tapestry of interaction is that it becomes clear that each interaction was nuanced and messy. While similarities and patterns are obvious to those who have the benefit of hindsight, searching for the pattern should not erase the legitimacy of how one person participated in and interpreted the events.

The intricacy of Native American and Euro-American relations during the Seven Years’ War and Pontiac’s War can be observed in three areas. First, captivity accounts show that both Europeans and Native Americans who had direct experience of captivity perceived the lines between captive and captor and even native and European as very blurry. This blurring is particularly clear in longer captivity narratives but can also be seen in newspaper reports about captivity. Second, the relational dimensions of the captivity experience were perhaps the most misunderstood feature of the wars and of eighteenth- century native-European relations more generally. The relationships involved in captivity ensured that the wars themselves became less clearly defined as they were fought and negotiated on an individual level. Finally, while complex connection was the norm in the mid-eighteenth century, the Proclamation Line of 1763 established a new separation, that, while ineffective, marked a departure in how coexistence (violent and otherwise) had been maintained on land under contention. The Line also carried with it an unanticipated legacy, which initiated a new chapter in British colonists’ fear of Native Americans. Examining these three aspects of the mid-century wars will contribute to our understanding of some critical stages in the development of Native American and Euro-American relationships, and will in turn define the increasingly formal interaction into the nineteenth century and beyond.

Captivity in both the Seven Years’ War and Pontiac’s War was inextrica- bly linked. Some people who were taken captive in the earlier war were not retrieved until the later conflict, and the slow transmission of news about the Peace of Paris ensured that the first war bled over into the second. In addition, the wide publication of captivity narratives and reports assured that as time went on many people had heard about the experiences and even had some

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idea of what to expect if they were taken. In both wars, captivity and escape increased points of contact between European and native groups involved in conflict (in addition to other factors such as war, trade, competing claims for land, intermarriage, and others). Many captives were not carried very far from their homes, and many that escaped managed to do so after a relatively short captivity. Escaping was a real option for these “local” captives for they knew that they were in or close to familiar territory. In comparison to famous cap- tivity experiences like those of Eunice Williams and Mary Rowlandson, there was the possibility of a much quicker back and forth between the groups in the mid-eighteenth century. This continual, rapid exchange increased the points of contact between European and native settlers. Continual contact shaped the ongoing narrative of Indian-white relations developing in pub- lished narratives and newspaper reports.

These narratives and reports became part of the oeuvre upon which colo- nists and colonial leaders were building their opinions regarding the place of Native Americans in provincial and, later, American society. Even if colonial opinion disregarded these nuances in the narratives, exploring the nuances is a useful way to understand the possibilities of the way not taken, in that they reflect the complexity of the captivity experience for each individual. What becomes clear in a careful reading is that captives often became confused about how they were different from their captors and that captors them- selves worked hard to blur the line between family and enemy or master and prisoner.7 This confusion can be seen at each stage of captivity.

A staple of captivity narratives is the moment when a captive realized that quick compliance was the key to survival, no matter how uncomfort- able they felt about the situation. Captives wanting to survive had to quickly overcome any shock or distaste they felt about unfamiliar tactics and rituals. This compliance, usually insincere, nevertheless forced captives to attempt to empathize with their captors and share their goal of quickly and efficiently returning to Indian settlements. Compliance, therefore, while a clear survival technique, introduced the paradoxical feelings of amicability and hostility that would often come to define the captivity experience.

A Pennsylvania captive, William Fleming, implemented a survival strategy that exemplifies this complexity. When two Delawares, Captain Jacobs and Jim, first apprehended Fleming, they told him that they would spare his life if he led them “to those houses that were most defenseless.” Fleming decided that his best option was to lead them to his own house to capture his wife, since it would be better for the couple to suffer the same fate than for her to

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be left alone and defenseless in the house. In addition, Fleming was reticent to choose one of his neighbors to attack. However, on the way to his house, they passed the Hicks’s house, neighbors to the Flemings. Captain Jacobs and Jim managed to snatch one of the Hicks boys. The young man was so dis- tressed that he persisted in making a lot of noise. Fleming wanted to explain to the young man that he had a better chance of surviving if he kept quiet, but since the Indians knew English and Fleming did not want to betray that own his compliance was disingenuous, he was forced to keep quiet. When the young man continued to make a disturbance, Jim tomahawked him to death. This sight pressed William Fleming to keep up his charade of compliance and to get his wife to quickly calm down and pretend to cheerfully go along when she was captured a few minutes later.8

Similarly, leading up to Pontiac’s War in 1763, John Rutherfurd was seventeen years old and working for a trader at and near Detroit. Ojibwe attacked a surveying and hunting expedition that included Rutherfurd. The trader for whom Rutherfurd worked was killed, scalped, and beheaded; the leader of the survey expedition, a Captain Robertson, was also shot dead and scalped, along with two other soldiers. Rutherfurd and several other men were each “seized by his future master” and taken to an Ojibwe village. Rutherfurd, therefore, survived the initial bloodshed but also witnessed the murder of his associates. The first step in the captivity process was surviv- ing the initial attack and the psychological shock of seeing friends, family, or acquaintances killed and often scalped. Although eighteenth-century North America was a place of violence, intimate violence against one’s loved ones was physically and psychologically alienating, and a sense of separation between captive and captor was perhaps strongest at this point.

The transition between surviving and thriving occurred as captives were taken to their new masters’ homes and captors made a decision about their future. Sometimes, captives who had survived the initial bloodshed were ritu- ally tortured and killed, or given to another master, or traded away from the village. John Rutherfurd was almost killed at this stage. The Ojibwe became intoxicated, and one made several attempts on his life. However, his master, named Peewash, and his wife, defended and protected Rutherfurd.

Similarly, John Cox, a young man captured in Pennsylvania in 1755 and taken to Kittanning, witnessed the torture and murder of a fellow captive, Paul Bradley. Cox, “who with the other white People, . . . [was] obliged to be Witnesses of their horrid Barbarity,” watched as Paul Bradley was “beat[en] for Half an Hour with Clubs and Tomahawks.” Next, Indians “cropt his Ears

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close to his Head; after which an Indian chopt off his Fingers, and another, with a red hot Iron, burnt him all over the Belly, in such a barbarous Manner, that occasioned a Smoke, by which the Prisoner . . . could hardly see him.” Finally, “they shot him full of Arrows, and at last killed and scalped him, and made the Prisoners burn his Body.”9 While Cox and his fellow captives had survived the first stage, they were now presented with a choice between compliance and the fate of Paul Bradley.

With this decision before them, captives had to find a way to thrive, or, put another way, their captors had to decide whether or not the captives could hold a viable place in their community. On the second day of Rutherfurd’s captivity, the Ojibwe roasted and ate Captain Robertson’s body, and Rutherfurd faced his first test. Peewash, according to Rutherfurd, “requested me to taste it, telling me I was never to think of going back to the English, so ought to conform to the custom of the Indians.” Rutherfurd refused but recognized the importance of the request, and he tried to convince Peewash that he was willing to accept his new circumstances. He earnestly asserted that he would follow every other command and “Thus, by a seeming readiness to obey him, I avoided eating the body of my friend.”10 A critical step toward thriving in captivity was displaying a willingness to conform to one’s new life. Native people looked for captives to become functioning members of their communities, not prisoners needing to be watched. Captives who recognized that the choice was either to conform or die had a better chance of actively deciding their own fate. This partial alignment of a captive’s goals with those of his or her captor blurred the line separating the two.

This blurring continued with the process of physically transforming the appearance of the captive.11 For John Rutherfurd, this occurred at the hand of Peewash’s father, who “stripped me of my clothes and told me I should wear them no more, but dress like an Indian.” He also shaved Rutherfurd’s head, except for “a small tuft of hair upon the crown and two small locks,” and gave him a pipe to smoke, which Rutherford “became fond of.”12

James Smith, an eighteen-year-old when captured, who lived in captivity for five years during the Seven Years’ War, also experienced the identity blur- ring that occurred as his appearance was changed to match his captors’. As his Kahnawake captors took him through the rituals of adoption—plucking, piercing, and painting his body—Smith was convinced that they were pre- paring to kill him. When three women took him into the river, he thought they were going to drown him. One woman, who spoke some English, said,

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“No hurt you.” Smith ceased his resistance and “gave myself up to their ladyships” to be ritually cleansed. Once Smith was dried and dressed, a sachem made a speech declaring, “You have now nothing to fear, we are now under the same obligation to love, support, and defend you, that we are to love and defend one another,” Smith recalled that he did not believe “this fine speech.” Looking back, however, he admitted, “I never knew them to make any distinction between me and themselves in any respect whatever until I left them.”13

Components of the captivity experience were not unknown to mid-century captives. By 1763 the details of captivity had been widely publicized in the British American colonies. The columns of the Pennsylvania Gazette were routinely filled with stories of escaped captives, and in-depth first-person accounts of captivity in the form of a narrative had a long history in the colonies.14 These captivity narratives, of course, were part of a well-developed and distinctly American literary genre that sought to analyze and interpret captivity experiences. Captives, especially in Pontiac’s War, therefore, were unlikely to be experiencing captivity without any prior knowledge of what was involved.

Euro-Americans’ familiarity with captivity experiences ensured that they understood the benefits of acceptance and compliance. Early on in his captiv- ity, Rutherfurd planned to escape but his captor discovered his scheme and even demanded to hear the plan’s details. Rutherfurd then decided “it was absolutely necessary for my safety to affect a relish for their savage manners, and to put on an air of perfect contentment.” He turned to this plan as an alternative to escape because “I had often heard [this strategy] was the way to gain the affection of the Indians.”15

The goals of captives and captors were thus again aligned, even if their motives were different. Through both conformity and compliance, relation- ships on land under contention continued to become more complex. While all the early stages of the captivity experience were based on opposition and conflict, compliance introduced a new phase based on cooperation, even if the end goals were different. The process of negotiating compliance and safety involved seeing the situation through the eyes of one’s enemies, which was extremely detrimental to continued opposition. In Rutherfurd’s case, his captor thought through Rutherfurd’s escape plan, pointing out the flaws that would lead it to fail, including, for example, “how impossible it was for us to have escaped in our boat.” Rutherfurd, in turn, could understand Peewash’s perspective, noting that “a gloomy, discontented air irritates them

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and always excites worse treatment.”16 This shared perspective built on the connection initially forged through the physical transformation and shaped the rest of the captivity experience, introducing a tension between connection and division.

This tension was developed further by captives’ unfamiliarity with the concept of being adopted into a family as “punishment” for being captured in war. While slavery would, perhaps, be a more familiar idea, there was a certain level of unease that attended the process of finding one’s place in a new family and community. For James Smith, this process manifested itself in the form of a fear that occasionally arose in his mind that his captors expected him to try to escape and were secretly planning to kill him. Early on in his captivity, Smith watched the Kahnawake build a wooden structure that he suspected was a gallows. Smith began to fear “that they were about putting me to death.” However, the next day he was relieved to see that the structure was being used for drying animal skins. In another instance, Smith was out with a hunting party but was sidetracked while chasing buffalo. He could not find his way back to the camp, and spent the night alone, except for a dozen hunting dogs. The rest of the party tracked him down the next morning, and when they found him, “they appeared to be in a very good humor.” Smith asked one of them, Solomon, if they thought he was running away, but Solomon explained that between the dogs and the huge track he had left, they knew that he was just lost. However, for his irresponsibility, they exchanged his gun for a bow and arrows. It appears that Smith perceived himself as an outsider while the Kahnawake accepted him as a member of their community.17

The process of adapting, however reluctantly, to one’s new life, can also be seen in the case of Marie Le Roy and Barbara Leininger, captured in October 1755 and prisoners for three and a half years before they escaped. Both girls and their families were immigrants from Switzerland who had settled near Fort Augusta. On October 16, after Braddock’s defeat the previ- ous July, Delawares attacked the Le Roys’ house, immediately killing Marie’s father. They burned the house and took Marie, her brother, and “a little girl, who was staying with the family” captive. They also killed and scalped a neighbor that happened to ride by.18

Two of the Delawares proceeded to the Leininger plantation, demanded rum and tobacco, and then, according to Barbara, said, “We are Alleghany Indians, and your enemies. You must all die.” They killed her father and brother, and took Barbara and her younger sister Regina prisoner. Over the

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course of the next few days the Delawares met up with other parties who had scalps and prisoners. In the division of goods, Marie, Barbara, and two horses went to “an Indian named Galasko.”19

Although they survived the initial bloodshed, the girls struggled to adjust to captivity and often looked for a chance to escape. Nevertheless, they still preferred captivity to becoming a prisoner of the French. In 1757 their cap- tors moved them to Fort Duquesne where they were subcontracted to the French, and their Delaware master received their wages. Although they ate better with the French, the girls “believed that it would be better for us to remain among the Indians, in as much as they would be more likely to make peace with the English than the French.” In addition, “there would be more ways open for flight in the forest than in a fort.” With this in mind, the girls refused the offer to stay at Fort Duquesne for the winter and went with their captors to Sakunk, on the Ohio River.

Tension between division and connection continued to build the longer one’s captivity lasted. During the beginning of his first year of captiv- ity, James Smith left his most precious possession, a collection of books, wrapped in a blanket in camp while he went out to gather chestnuts. When he returned, the books were gone. Smith suspected that his new Indian family members had taken the books, even though they denied it. Several months later, the Kahnawake, including Smith, returned to that camp site and a young Wyandot found the deerskin pouch containing Smith’s books. They rejoiced with him at the discovery and were anxious to know if the books were damaged. This unexpected sympathy caused Smith to rethink his attitude toward his captors. He recalled, “This was the first time that I felt my heart warm towards the Indians.” He recognized that “though they had been exceeding kind to me, I still before detested them, on account of the barbarity I beheld after Braddock’s defeat.” Yet, a long acquaintance led him to excuse even that action, “on account of their want of Information.”20

Additional complexity came from the Euro-American Christian religious beliefs that justified and bolstered their actions and attitudes. The imperial wars of the eighteenth century were, in part, a fight between Protestantism and Catholicism, and that battle influenced the wartime interactions between the Ohio Indians and their captives. Whereas in the early years of contact, Europeans had been able to point to indigenous pagan beliefs as evidence of their savagery, by the mid-eighteenth century Native Americans in contact with Europeans had a long familiarity with Christian beliefs and practices.

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This familiarity only added to the difficulty that captives had in categorizing their captors as savage enemies.

All sides claimed that their position represented Christian orthodoxy, but they used this conviction in a variety of ways. After William Fleming led Captain Jacobs and Jim to his own house to capture his wife, the Flemings and their captors spent the night of November 1, 1755, in the woods, just a few miles from their house. William Fleming recalled in his captiv- ity narrative that they spent the evening sitting around the fire “without Distinction.” Despite the turbulence of the day, Elizabeth Fleming took the opportunity that the warm fire’s relaxed atmosphere provided to confront her captors about their motives and plans, finishing with the question, “if they did not think it a Sin to shed so much innocent Blood?”21 Far from being affronted by the question, Captain Jacobs answered evenly that French priests “had assured the Indians it was no Sin to destroy Hereticks, and all the English were such.” They also assured William Fleming that they would not “abuse my Wife . . . for Fear of affronting their God (and pointed their Hands towards Heaven).” They further informed the Flemings that “the English have such bad luck” because “the Man that affronts his God, will surely be kill’d.”22 This theological defense silenced the Flemings.

Similarly, Barbara Leininger’s captors had no problem incorporating her religious beliefs into their rituals. Early in her captivity, Leininger attempted to escape. However, “she was almost immediately recaptured, and condemned to be burned alive.” The Delawares gave her a French Bible, but when she told them she could not understand it, they gave her a German Bible and told her to prepare for death. The funeral pyre was lit, but Barbara was reprieved at the last minute by a “young Indian [who] begged so earnestly for her life . . . and to stop her crying.”23 Even if the death threat was part of a ritual to gain Leininger’s compliance, the Delawares’ easy ability to accommodate her religious needs certainly made the experience believable for Leininger, who would not try to escape again for over three years.

In addition, captives viewed captivity as part of a divine work in their lives, and believed that resenting it meant resisting the sanctification pro- cess. James Smith was certainly receptive to how his response to captivity should be shaped by his religious beliefs. In 1756 another Pennsylvanian, Arthur Campbell, who was figuring out how to thrive in his own captivity, borrowed Smith’s Bible and pointed out Lamentations 3:27, “It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth.” Campbell told Smith, “We ought to be resigned to the will of Providence, as we were now bearing the yoke, in

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our youth.”24 Smith was content to bear the yoke for another two years before he thought seriously about escaping.

Thriving, therefore, was a complex process of attempting to adjust to a new reality. The hostility that captives initially felt toward their captors became more nuanced as they shared daily life, became part of the commu- nity, and found a unique place for themselves. In addition, captives began to see captors as multidimensional humans. Both groups were wrestling with their place in the same war, and both groups were attempting to measure their actions and attitudes against Christian teachings. These points of com- monality allowed captives to thrive in captivity, but also provided surpris- ing points of connection that captives could not shake off, even after they attempted, however successfully, to escape.

The process of deciding to escape illuminates the degree to which extended captivity was successful in blurring the lines that separated former enemies. A key component of Native American war strategy was eliminating enemies by making them family, and although captives did not, perhaps, perceive this larger trend, the narratives display the results of this process. While captives thought about escaping to varying degrees, an examination of the timing of the attempts, as well as the opportunities not taken, betrays that the decision was psychologically complex. Even though escaping involved some degree of danger, the nature of Native American captivity—where captives became family members—meant that escaping often involved little more than walk- ing or running away. The decision to escape or not was often dependent on the degree to which a captive accepted his or her new life.

Whether after a few hours or several years in captivity, the captives who would later write narratives of their experience did decide to escape. Escaping involved a confirmation that the captive was not, in fact, part of his or her adoptive community. While such a decisive move would seem to resolve the paradox of the intimate enemy, the reality was more multifaceted and still preserved the tension between insider and outsider status. This tension remained because escaping was a multistep process never fully completed.

This was certainly the case for James Smith. During the winter of 1757, Smith was living with an elder named Tecaughretanego and a ten-year-old boy. It was up to Smith to find food for the group. He was successful until sometime in February 1758 when he could not find any game for three days. On the third day, despairing of hunger (exacerbated by spending each day hunting in the snow), Smith decided to take his chances on an escape. He knew that he would be passing through Native American territory in order to

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get back to Pennsylvania but decided that “if I staid here I thought I would perish with hunger, and if I met with Indians, they could but kill me.” Smith proceeded to a distance of about ten miles from the hut when he came upon fresh buffalo tracks. He killed and ate, then suffered a crisis of conscience. Smith recalled that he “began to be tenderly concerned for my old Indian brother, and the little boy I had left in a perishing condition.” He returned to the hut, and it would not be until over a year later, the summer of 1759, that Smith would again attempt to escape (eventually finding his freedom).25

For captives, escaping was a complicated endeavor because the action potentially involved revealing their hostility toward their Native American captors and the captivity experience, which would be detrimental if the escape failed. John Rutherfurd had betrayed his intentions to Peewash early in his captivity, when his first escape attempt was discovered. All along, Rutherfurd had struggled to adapt to captivity, and his final decision to escape was fueled by his revulsion at seeing Ojibwe roast the heart of Captain Dalzell and then take fat from the heart and rub it on the mouth of a captured soldier. Rutherford noted, “This [action] and other barbarities committed upon prisoners taken in the action, shocked me so much” that he immedi- ately put his escape plan into action that night, despite a driving rainstorm.26

The decision to attempt escape grew in importance and complexity the longer captives stayed with their adoptive communities. Captives who escaped within the first few days or weeks of captivity were still living through the initial ordeal of captivity, of which making a blind run for freedom was the final step. The Flemings were still in their own neighborhood when they escaped, and the most difficult part of the ordeal was when they were sepa- rated and Elizabeth Fleming wandered alone for several days, attempting to avoid a second captivity.27 Benjamin Springer, another Pennsylvania captive, joined up with two other men, and the three made their escape attempt less than two months after their initial capture. The attempt almost killed them. They spent over a month in the woods, not finding any settlements until they reached Cole’s Fort on the Delaware River in New Jersey. During that time, they were often hungry and “were obliged to eat Rattle-snakes, Black-snakes, Frogs, and such Vermin.”28

Since attempting to escape was no guarantee of survival, it is not surprising that some people chose to remain in captivity until a prime opportunity arose or until they could make a reliable plan. Barbara Leininger and Marie Le Roy knew the risks involved in an escape attempt, and tried to plan for every contin- gency. The girls were held near conflict zones; their experience was shaped by

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the ongoing war. Most specifically, in 1756 Colonel John Armstrong attacked Kittanning, a central Indian town holding many captives. Armstrong’s attack was designed as retaliation for the attacks that had plagued land under con- tention in western Pennsylvania. The attack succeeded in killing Captain Jacobs and destroying the town, but not in freeing the prisoners.29

Because of the raid, the Kittanning Indians were worried that the prisoners would try to escape. Since incarceration did not fit into the native approach to war, they had to use fear instead in order to force compliance. Therefore, the first person who used Armstrong’s raid as inspiration for escape—a British woman who tried to join Armstrong’s men as they were leaving—was ritu- ally tortured to serve as an example to the rest of the community. Leininger and Le Roy recalled that she was scalped, burned, dismembered, and left to slowly die, until a French soldier shot and killed her. This example was bol- stered by the ritualized killing of another prisoner who attempted to escape a few days later. The rest of the prisoners were made to watch as the British man was partially burned alive and then had melted lead poured down his throat, which killed him. With these two images in their minds, the captives resumed their lives of living and working as intimate enemies.30

For Leininger and Le Roy, the display had the intended effect of making them pause before they escaped. The girls recalled that they were forced to “compare two evils, namely, either to remain among them a prisoner forever, or to die a cruel death.” It was only by being “fully resolved to endure the lat- ter” that an escape could be attempted. It would be about three years before the women acquired this resolution, and they spent several years working toward an effective escape plan. Leininger and Le Roy did not seem to have a moment, as James Smith did, when their hearts warmed toward their captors. However, they did recognize the relational element of captivity; when they made it back to a British settlement, a Native American who was in British custody asked them why they had escaped. Le Roy replied “that her Indian mother had been so cross and had scolded her so constantly, that she could not stay with her any longer.” The women noticed that “this answer did not please him.”31

Escaping, a complicated endeavor, revealed the escapees’ hostility toward their Native American captors and the captivity experience. Even so, any interactions they had with people they met along the way kept up the tension between a specific, individual relationship and the more global animosity that the Seven Years’ War and borderland fighting was cultivating. An exam- ple of this tension can be seen in the story of Abraham Miller who relates how

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his escape attempt was aided by an Indian woman named French Margaret. French Margaret was a relative of Madame Montour, the famous intercultural broker of French and western Abenaki parentage. As a métis herself, French Margaret seemed to live comfortably in the ideological and geographic bor- derland between European and Native American societies.32

In the newspaper report of his escape, Abraham Miller recalled how he, his wife, and his mother-in-law had been captured by a party of Mingos, Shawnees, and French. They were taken to Tioga, where Miller’s wife and mother-in-law were killed by their captors because they were injured and slowing the party down. Less than two weeks after his initial captivity, Miller and another captive, George Everts, escaped and made it to French Margaret’s house. Whether they knew she was friendly or just took a chance, surrender- ing to French Margaret’s protection became beneficial. When a French-allied Delaware saw them at French Margaret’s house and alerted a search party, French Margaret “behaved to them like a parent”: she hid them, misdirected and deceived the search party, and gave them a canoe in order to escape. It is obvious from Miller’s report that life at French Margaret’s house involved complex navigations through shifting loyalties and relationships based on individual experiences rather than allegiance to a specific group identity. In the conclusion of his account, Miller reflected this complexity, noting that the Delawares he had encountered in captivity “gave him many evident Marks of their Inclination of being at Peace with the English, and often expressed the greatest Concern at the Murders that were committed on our Frontiers.”33

After escaping from captivity, captives faced one final complex transi- tion. When Thomas Sherby, Benjamin Springer, and John Denite made and survived their vermin-fueled escape and arrived at Cole’s Fort in New Jersey, they were sent to Elizabethtown with an armed guard because they looked “more like Indians than Christians, being very swarthy, and their Hair cut by the Savages after the Indian fashion, and dressed only in Indian blankets.” Indeed, being mistaken for an Indian was a common feature of the transition back to one’s own settlement. Sherby, Springer, and Denite had only been in captivity for two months, but apparently they were almost unrecognizable as white “Christians.”

James Smith, after five years in captivity, arrived home to find that his sweetheart had married and everyone had given him up for dead. They were happy to see him but “were surprised to see me so much like an Indian, both in my gait and gesture.” Smith parlayed this likeness and the apprenticeship he had undergone in becoming “like an Indian” into a successful career as

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a ranger. He trained his men to dress and fight like Indians, and led them in defensive and offensive missions in the Pennsylvania borderland during Pontiac’s War. Smith continued to wrestle with his liminal status. He fought against Native Americans, but recognized the superiority of native tactics and the power that the fear of Indians invoked. For example, in 1765 Philadelphia traders traveled west to sell supplies and guns to the natives around Fort Pitt. Smith devised a plan to stop them. He dressed his men as Indians and hid them behind trees in the native fashion. When the traders approached, Smith and his men kept up a repeating fire on them, causing them to become so fearful that they abandoned their goods and fled to Fort Loudoun.34

John Rutherfurd did not record much about his transition back into Euro-American society, except to note the difficulty he had in writing his narra- tive because he had “so long been confounded with hearing and speaking differ- ent languages, French, Dutch, Chippewa, Ottawa, &c.” Nevertheless, the final stage of escape was difficult to complete with finality, as captives struggled to put the past behind them and return to their former lives. If the early stage of captivity was a process of complying and empathizing with Indian goals in order to survive, then part of escaping was throwing off this emotional and psycho- logical connection. Escaped captives had to find ways to quickly signify to their former British American communities that they were not outsiders but insiders. As much as this step could be accomplished by displaying a European voice or European knowledge or by a bath and a haircut, the psychological connec- tion could not be wiped away as easily. The very fact these captives needed the intensely cathartic experience of writing and sharing their captivity experience shows that the paradox of being an intimate enemy was something that had to be worked through, and, in cases such as James Smith’s, fully reintegrating into British colonial society was hard to immediately accomplish.

Captivity was more than just a change in outward appearance or geographical location. Captivity changed one’s core identity, due in no small part to the powerful influence of the relational aspects of Native American captivity. This idea helps to explain the events of 1764 when Colonel Henry Bouquet’s expedition against the Ohio Indians resulted in the return of 367 white captives. William Smith’s account of the emotionally charged scene portrays families being broken up and families struggling to reconnect. Smith strives to characterize the situation, first explaining to his readers that the Indians “as if wholly forgetting their usual savageness” were very dis- traught to be losing “their beloved captives.” He notes that the Delaware and Shawnee sought to ensure that their captive-adopted family members would

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be safe, and some insisted on traveling with them and their biological fami- lies as far as Fort Pitt. One young Mingo man was very distressed about los- ing his white Virginian wife and traveled with the returning captives despite the danger of “being killed by the surviving relations of many unfortunate persons, who had been captivated or scalped by those of his nation.”

William Smith uses this affecting scene to ruminate on Indian character, noting that “when they once determine to give life, they give everything with it.” Smith explains to his readers that Indians’ “unenlightened” state had not allowed them to think up a system of “perpetual slavery [for] those captivated in war.” Their barbarity, Smith concludes, led them to incorporate captives into their families and communities. Despite this explanation, Smith puzzles over the cases of “some grown [white] persons who shewed an unwillingness to return.” Some refused to rejoin their original communities and instead ran back to their Indian homes. Others “clung to their savage acquaintance at parting, and continued many days in bitter lamentations, even refusing sustenance.” Smith decides that these people must have been “of the lowest rank, either bred up in ignorance and distressing penury, or who had lived so long with the Indians as to forget all their former connections.”35

This account, reprinted in the Pennsylvania Gazette in 1765, presents an interesting juxtaposition to other discussions of captivity and borderland rela- tions printed in that newspaper. While William Smith attempts to rationalize the events in his account, the complex emotions involved still come through. The “Mr. Hall” who submitted Smith’s extract for publication in the Gazette recognized the nuances in the narrative and noted, “I was particularly affected with the following . . ., relative to the delivery of the prisoners. The tender descriptions, and interesting reflections, it contains, will, I am persuaded, be acceptable to such of your humane readers, as may not have an opportunity of seeing the original publication.” The excerpt was a departure for the Gazette, more accustomed to printing reports of the devastation of the “back inhabit- ants.” On July 7, 1763, for example, an account of the war at Fort Bedford emphasized grisly horror: “Two Men are brought in, alive, tomahawked and scalped more than Half the Head over—Our Parade just now presents a Scene of bloody and savage Cruelty; three Men, lying scalped (two of them still alive) thereon: Anything feigned in the most fabulous Romance, cannot parallel the horrid Sight now before me; the Gashes the poor People bear, are most terrify- ing.”36 Certainly the prospect of slowly dying of a ghastly head wound increased the feelings of unhinged terror that accompanied warfare against Indians and seemed to justify any tactics against them.

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Juxtaposed to this general fear of Indians propagated by colonial newspapers were accounts in captivity narratives of individuals fighting an intensely per- sonalized version of the wars. Replacing a faceless fear of Indians, captives warred and negotiated with their adoptive communities on an interpersonal level. John Rutherfurd related how the Ojibwe looked for revenge after a sortie from Fort Detroit killed one of their leaders. They turned to an Ottawa captive, Captain Campbell, and killed him. The Ottawas became angry because they “were fond of” Campbell, and they sought revenge by attempting to kill an Ojibwe captive, Ensign Paul. But Paul was “informed of his danger by a hand- some squaw who was in love with him” and escaped. Rutherfurd himself was next in line, but Peewash saved him. Instead of a war being waged by nameless, homogenous tomahawk-wielders, captives’ experience of war was complicated by love, friendship, and belonging to the enemy.37

The struggle between intimacy and enmity can also be seen in an instance from the Seven Years’ War. In the fall of 1754, twenty-four-year old Susannah Johnson was living as a captive in St. Francis, a French mission town located on the St. Lawrence River and populated by western Abenakis. Her original Abenaki captors traded her to the sachem’s son-in-law, and his family for- mally adopted her. Susannah Johnson was distressed to be separated from her husband and three of her four children and unsure about her future and safety. One bright spot in Johnson’s misery came in the form of her adoptive Abenaki brother, Sabatis. Susannah Johnson was keenly aware of her status as an outsider and struggled with loneliness. Young Sabatis befriended her, probably reminding her of her own captured son, Sylvanus. In her captivity narrative, Johnson remembered how her new brother would bring in the cows for her and play with her infant daughter, Captive, who had been born on the journey to St. Francis. She also recalled that he “often amused me with feats performed with his bow and arrow.”38

Five years later, in 1759, Susannah Johnson had survived her captivity, negotiated her freedom, reunited with part of her family, and returned to her hometown of Charlestown, New Hampshire. During the Seven Years’ War the town had struggled to protect itself from French-allied Abenaki attacks, and the climax of that defensive struggle occurred in 1759, shortly after Susannah Johnson’s return. Robert Rogers and his rangers carried out an attack on St. Francis that succeeded in reducing the threat to British set- tlements in western New Hampshire. During their raid on St. Francis, the rangers took some Abenakis captive, including Sabatis. Rogers brought him along with the others to Charlestown. They stopped at Susannah Johnson’s

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house, and upon seeing her, Sabatis cried out, “My God, my God, here is my sister.” Johnson recalled that Sabatis was “transported to see me, and declared that he was still my brother, and I must be his sister.”

Despite her long years of captivity and the significant toll that Abenaki attacks had taken on her family, Johnson responded to Sabatis with joy and kindness. She remarked, “The fortune of war had left him without a single relation, but with his country’s enemies, he could find one who too sensibly felt his miseries.”39 The anomalous bond between Susannah Johnson and Sabatis reflects the difficulties that occurred when personal relationships turned enemies into family members.

Life on land under contention was, therefore, a multifaceted experience of balancing connection and division, building and destroying relation- ships, and negotiating contradictory associations and emotions—in short, of being intimate enemies. It was richly textured as the people involved attempted to comprehend each other and had their own identity crises in response. Carefully examining the print record of the time period gives us some indication of the complexity involved. It is jarring, therefore, to introduce the Proclamation Line of 1763, which attempted to draw clear- cut divisions on an intricately connected world. The wording of the Royal Proclamation indicated that there were only two groups involved: “the several Nations or Tribes of Indians with whom We are connected” and “all our loving Subjects.”40 The Proclamation does not account for peo- ple who fell in-between those two categorizations or how interconnected life was on land under contention. Although it is easy to point to the greed of British American speculators and squatters for the failure of the Proclamation Line, that explanation erases the Line’s importance as a tool to enforce separateness and the fear it engendered. White-Indian relation- ships were still not clearly defined at mid-century, but the Line imposed definition; after its imposition, it would be difficult to return to the emo- tional, psychological, and physical complexity that was the hallmark of the pre-Line era. The events of the nineteenth century built on the idea of strict separation that the Line introduced.

Captivity was a life-changing experience. Not only because of the death of relatives, destruction of property, and separation from community that it produced, but also because it exposed ordinary colonial Americans to the everyday life of ordinary Native Americans. This exposure elicited paradoxical feelings about Native Americans—both specifically and in general—as well as about the captivity experience. The evidence of

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this complexity is the existence of the captivity narratives themselves. James Smith wrote his narrative forty years after the experience, when anti-Indian sentiment and ideas of manifest destiny were at an all-time high. Yet, he based the narrative on the journal that he kept during his captivity. His turn-of-the-century account of his Seven Years’ War captivity creates a tension within the narrative between the experience and the interpretation.

This paradox points, perhaps, to the psychological effectiveness of cap- tivity as a war strategy. One way to get rid of enemies is to make them friends. That European Americans so thoroughly resisted and came to violently fear this system puts on display the increasingly intense desire of whites to differentiate themselves from Indians. The fear of the psycho- logical effects of captivity ensured that coexistence was not a viable option as the eighteenth century progressed. Beginning with the New England praying towns of the seventeenth century and continuing through the Indian boarding school movement of the nineteenth and twentieth centu- ries, Britons and, later, Americans would continue to try to force Native Americans to assimilate and become “white.” But, increasingly, the desire to remove the opportunity for more casual interactions overshadowed the attempt to remake Indians in the European image. The omission of any mention of Native Americans in the Treaty of Paris in 1783, its virulent aftereffects that culminated in the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794 and Tecumseh’s War in 1811, and the intense desire for separation that over- powered all other arguments in the 1830s are all evidence of the rejection of coexistence.

The advertisement in the Pennsylvania Gazette about the six unclaimed captive children concluded with the direction that anyone who had lost children “during the first Indian War” should come and examine the children, “and if they find any of their Relations among them, are requested to take them away.” If the children continued to be unclaimed by any white relatives, they did not have an option of returning to the only families they had known or to resume their lives under their Indian names. Presumably, the boy who did not know his English name would be assigned a new one. As for their future, it would be predicated on the assumption that it would be better to be a nameless orphan captured by the English rather than the captive-adopted child of the Indians. Therefore, “the Boys will be bound out to Trades, and the Girls so disposed of, that they may be no further Expence to the Publick.”41

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notes

The author would like to thank the participants of the “The War Called Pontiac’s, 1763–2013”

conference at the McNeil Center for Early American Studies and especially James Merrell for his

insightful comments. Thanks are also due to Linda Ries, Beverly Tomek, and the anonymous

reviewers for Pennsylvania History for their insightful critiques, and to Kathleen Wilson, Donna

Rilling, Andrew Newman, and especially Ned Landsman, who have all influenced my thinking

on this topic.

1. The Pennsylvania Gazette, February 21, 1765.

2. James Merrell has—rightly—cautioned historians against flippant use of words like “backcountry”

as reinforcing a narrative of inevitable colonial settlement. While there is no consensus on viable

alternatives, employing slightly clunky terms such as “land under contention” helps to deconstruct

assumptions of inevitability. Nevertheless, the ideal phrase would give some weight to Native

Americans’ prior claim to the land under contention. See James H. Merrell, “Second Thoughts

on Colonial Historians and American Indians,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 69, no. 3

( July 2012): 451–512.

3. Alden Vaughan, “Frontier Banditti and the Indians: The Paxton Boys’ Legacy, 1763–1775,”

Pennsylvania History 51, no. 1 (1984): 1–3.

4. Peter Silver, Our Savage Neighbors: How Indian War Transformed Early America (New York:

W.W. Norton, 2008); Alan Taylor, The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish

Rebels, and Indian Allies (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010); Michael Morris, “Georgia and the

Conversation over Indian Removal,” Georgia Historical Quarterly 91, no. 4 (Winter 2007): 403–23.

5. John Demos, The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early America (New York: Alfred Knopf,

1994); James Axtell, “The White Indians of Colonial America,” William and Mary Quarterly 32,

no. 1 (1975): 55–88; Pauline Turner Strong, Captive Selves, Captivating Others: The Politics and Poetics

of Colonial American Captivity Narratives (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1999), 1–3, 200; Mark

Rifkin, When Did Indians Become Straight? Kinship, the History of Sexuality, and Native Sovereignty

(New York: Oxford University Press, 2011); David L. Preston, The Texture of Contact: European and

Indian Settler Communities on the Frontiers of Iroquoia, 1667–1783 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska

Press, 2009); Ned Blackhawk, Violence Over the Land: Indians and Empires in the Early American West

(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006); Wayne Lee, “Peace Chiefs and Blood Revenge:

Patterns of Restraint in Native American Warfare, 1500–1800,” Journal of Military History

71, no. 3 (2007): 701–41.

6. Juliana Barr, Peace Came in the Form of a Woman: Indians and Spaniards in the Texas Borderlands (Chapel

Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 2; James Brooks. Captives and Cousins: Slavery,

Kinship, and Community in the Southwest Borderlands (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina

Press, 2002); Alan Gallay, The Indian Slave Trade: The Rise of the English Empire in the American South,

1670–1717 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002); Christina Snyder, Slavery in Indian

Country: The Changing Face of Captivity in Early America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University

Press, 2010). See also Andrew Frank, Creeks and Southerners: Biculturalism on the Early American

Frontier (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005); Colin Calloway, New Worlds for All: Indians,

Europeans, and the Remaking of Early America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997);

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Dawn G. Marsh, “Hannah Freeman: Gendered Sovereignty in Penn’s Peaceable Kingdom”

in Gender and Sexuality in Indigenous North America, 1400–1850, ed. Sandra Slater and Fay A.

Yarbrough (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2012), 102–22; Nancy Shoemaker,

“How Indians Got to Be Red,” American Historical Review 102, no. 3 (1997): 625–44; Helen

Hornbeck Tanner, “Coocoochee: Mohawk Medicine Woman,” in Native Women’s History in Eastern

North American before 1900, ed. Rebecca Kugel and Lucy Eldersveld Murphy (Lincoln: University

of Nebraska Press, 2007), 137–65; Daniel Ingram, Indians and British Outposts in Eighteenth-Century

America (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2012). The specific historiography of contact and

conflict developed out of earlier work that refocused early American history on the central posi-

tion of Native Americans. See Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics

in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Jane T.

Merritt, At the Crossroads: Indians and Empires on a Mid-Atlantic Frontier, 1700–1763 (Chapel Hill:

University of North Carolina Press, 2003); James Merrell, Into the American Woods: Negotiations on the

Pennsylvania Frontier (New York: W. W. Norton, 2000); Daniel K. Richter, Facing East from Indian

Country: A Native History of Early America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001); Jill

Lepore, The Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of American Identity (New York: Knopf,

1998); Gregory Evans Dowd, War under Heaven: Pontiac, the Indian Nations, and the British Empire

(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002); Colin G. Calloway, The Scratch of a Pen: 1763

and the Transformation of North America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006); David Dixon,

Never Come to Peace Again: Pontiac’s Uprising and the Fate of the British Empire in North America

(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2005).

7. It is, of course, problematic to take captivity narratives and newspaper reports of captivity at face

value since both followed a specific form. Nevertheless, the documents represent an attempt to

interpret confusing interactions and that attempt should not be completely disregarded simply

because the form was the conduit for the interpretation. James Axtell’s “The White Indians of

Colonial America” represents one strand of this interpretative web and Pauline Turner Strong’s

Captive Selves, Captivating Others represents another.

8. William Fleming and Elizabeth Fleming, A Narrative of the Sufferings and Surprizing Deliverances of

William and Elizabeth Fleming (Boston: Green and Russell, 1756), 5–8.

9. Pennsylvania Gazette, September 9, 1756.

10. John Rutherfurd, “A Journal Of An Indian Captivity During Pontiac’s Rebellion In The Year

1763, By Mr John Rutherfurd, Afterward Captain, 42nd Highland Regiment,” American Heritage

9, no. 3 (April 1958), accessed February 02, 2013, http://www.americanheritage.com/content/

journal-indian-captivity-during-pontiac’s-rebellion-year-1763-mr-john-rutherfurd-afterward-c, 3.

11. For other examples, see the Pennsylvania Gazette, September 9, 1756.

12. Rutherfurd, “A Journal,” 4.

13. James Smith, An Account of the Remarkable Occurrences in the Life and Travels of Col. James Smith (1799;

Cincinnati: The Robert Clarke Co., 1907 [1799]), 13–16.

14. Reports are consistent beginning in 1755. See especially September 9, 1756.

15. Rutherfurd, “A Journal,” 4.

16. Ibid.

17. Smith, Account, 28–29, 24.

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18. Marie Le Roy and Barbara Leininger, “The Narrative of Marie Le Roy and Barbara Leininger,” in

Pennsylvania Archives, 2nd ser. (Harrisburg, PA: Lane S. Hart, 1878), 7:403.

19. Ibid., 404.

20. Smith, Account, 29, 39–40 (quotes). For more on the significance of Smith’s books see Andrew

Newman, “Captive on the Literacy Frontier: Mary Rowlandson, James Smith, and Charles

Johnston,” Early American Literature 38, no. 1 (2003): 31–65.

21. A Christian interpretation of captivity was a staple of the captivity narrative genre. By the mid-

eighteenth century, narratives had drifted away from their Puritan roots and reflected the evolution

of religious belief in North America during the Enlightenment. Strong, Captive Selves, Captivating

Others, chap. 1.

22. Fleming and Fleming, Narrative of the Sufferings, 10, 11.

23. Le Roy and Leininger, “Narrative,” 404.

24. Smith, Account, 50.

25. Ibid., 89–95; quotes from 93, 94.

26. Rutherford, “A Journal,” 11.

27. Fleming and Fleming, Narrative, 12–20.

28. Pennsylvania Gazette, September 9, 1756.

29. Fred Anderson, Crucible of War: The Seven Years’ War and the Fate of the Empire in British North

America, 1754–1766 (New York: Knopf, 2000), 163–64.

30. Ritualized torture has long been pointed to as a clear sign of Indian “savagery,” but when it is

understood within the system of Indian war and captivity, its meaning becomes more complex.

Europeans were accustomed to incarceration and European nations had systems in place for reliev-

ing their subjects from imprisonment. Indians who were imprisoned could not rely on a similar

system. Both sides employed an equal degree of “savagery” in how they treated prisoners.

31. Leininger and Le Roy, “Narrative,” 405, 409.

32. Jon Parmenter, “Isabel Montour: Cultural Broker on the Eighteenth-Century Frontiers of

New York and Pennsylvania,” in The Human Tradition in Colonial America, ed. Ian K. Steele and

Nancy Rhoden (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources Press, 1999), 141–59.

33. Pennsylvania Gazette, June 30, 1757.

34. Smith, Account, 107, 110.

35. William Smith, Historical Account of Bouquet’s Expedition Against the Ohio Indians in 1764 (1907;

Carlisle, MA: Applewood Books, 2010), 63–67.

36. Pennsylvania Gazette, July 7, 1763.

37. Rutherfurd, “A Journal,” 8.

38. Susannah Johnson, A Narrative of the Captivity of Mrs. Johnson, 3rd edition (Windsor, VT: Thomas

M. Pomrot, 1814), 62.

39. Johnson, Captivity, 117.

40. “The Royal Proclamation—October 7, 1763,” Avalon Project—The Royal Proclamation—

October 7, 1763, accessed February 1, 2013, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/

proc1763.asp.

41. Pennsylvania Gazette, February 21, 1765.

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