French and Indian War
Indian attacks on civilian settlements in the frontier were all too common during the French and Indian War. An example of such an attack is the tragedy that struck the Jemison family living in Central Pennsylvania in April of 1758. Attacked by a Shawnee and French war party, Thomas and Jane Jemison and their children, Robert, Matthew, Betsey, and Mary were taken into captivity. Only 15 year old Mary Jemison would survive.
Fort Duquesne
During a terrifying, forced march to Fort Duquesne, Mary’s family was killed and scalped. Although Mary did not witness the killings, she did recognize the scalps of her family; “those scalps I knew at the time must have been taken from our family by the color of the hair.”
Upon her arrival at Fort Duquesne, Mary was given to two Seneca squaws who had lost their brother in battle, as it was an Indian custom to deliver a captive to the family of a slain warrior. The Indian family would either torture and kill or adopt the captive. The Seneca squaws took Mary to the Ohio Country where she was adopted and given the name of Deghewanus. The Seneca treated Mary with compassion and of the two squaws, Jemison said; “they were kind good natured women…and…very tender and gentle towards me.”
In 1761, Jemison was married to a Delaware named Sheninjee, whom she described as being good natured and generous. The following year, Mary gave birth to a daughter who survived for only two days. She gave birth to a son soon after. He was named Thomas after Mary’s father. When Thomas was still an infant, Sheninjee decided to move his family to his homelands along the Genesee River in New York. Mary, Thomas, and Sheninjee’s two brothers set out for the Genesee, while Shenijee separated from them to trade furs. Mary and Thomas reached the Genesee in the fall of 1762. Sheninjee, however, never returned. He had fallen ill and died. When Thomas was about three or four years old, Mary Jemison married a Seneca named Hiokatoo, with whom she had six more children, four girls and two boys, John and Jesse.
Throughout Mary Jemison’s memoirs, she laments the affects of alcohol on her children and adoptive people. And with good reason, because by the time she reached 74 years of age, Mary had lost all her sons to alcohol related violence. Thomas and Jesse Jemison were both killed by their brother John during two separate, drunken incidents. And John Jemison himself suffered the same fate as his brothers during an alcohol fueled dispute with two other Indians in 1817.
Mary Jemison never did return to life with the white settlers. Perhaps this is because she had no white family to whom she could return. Or it may be due to her affection for her half Indian children. Another factor could be that women among the Seneca held a higher social status than their counterparts in white colonial America. For reasons only known to her, the “White Woman of the Genesee” chose to remain among the Seneca. She died at the Buffalo Creek Reservation in 1833 at the age of 90. A statue marks her grave at Letchworth State Park in New York.
Further Reading: The Battle of Bushy Run and Dunmore's War
Source: A Narrative of The Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison, 2004, James E. Seaver, Kessinger, Whitefish, MT.
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