Mary Jemison

Mary Jemison (1743–1833) was an American frontiers woman and an adopted Seneca who was kidnapped by the Shawnee in 1755 or 1758 and sold to the Seneca's who adopted her. She married twice, had eight children and numerous grandchildren and told her story to James Seaver in 1824 from which her notoriety came. Her story gave insight into the grave suffering of captives and also to the lives of the Indians and their women, in particular, at that time.

Her life

Mary Booty Jemison was born to Thomas and Jane Jemison aboard the ship William and Mary in the fall of 1743 while en route from Northern Ireland to America. Upon their arrival in America, the couple and their new child joined other Scots-Irish immigrants and headed west from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to what was then the western frontier (now central Pennsylvania) and squatted on territory that was under the authority of the Iroquois Confederacy.

During the time the Jemisons were establishing their home, the French and Indian War was raging. One morning in 1758, a capturing party consisting of six Shawnee Indians and four Frenchmen captured Mary, her family (except two older brothers) and Davy Wheelock a boy from another family. On route to Fort Duquesne (where the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers meet to create the Ohio River in modern-day Pittsburgh, Mary’s mother, father, and siblings were killed and scalped. Mary and the other young boy were spared. Once the party reached the Fort, Mary was sold to two Seneca Indians, who took Mary downriver. The Senecas adopted Mary, giving her the name Corn Tassel then later "little woman of great courage."

She married a Delaware named Sheninjee and had a son who she named Thomas after her father. Concerned that the end of the war would mean the return of captives and thus the loss of his young wife, Sheninjee took Mary on a 700-mile (1,100 km) journey to the Sehgahunda Valley along the Genesee River. Although Mary reached this destination, her husband did not. He had left his wife in order to hunt, had taken ill and died.

Now a widow, Mary was taken in by Sheninjee's clan relatives and made her home at the Little Beard's Town (present-day Cuylerville, New York. She married a Seneca named Hiakatoo and had eight more children.

Much of the land at Little Beard's Town was sold by the Senecas to white settlers in 1797. In 1823, most of the remainder of the land was sold, except for a 2 acre tract of land reserved for Mary's use. Known locally as the "White Woman of the Genesee," Mary lived on the tract until she sold it in 1831 and moved to the Buffalo Creek Reservation.

Mary lived the rest of her life with the people of the Seneca Nation until she died on September 19, 1833. She was initially buried on the Buffalo Creek Reservation, but in 1874 it was being sold with little concern for the graves their. Her grandchildren approached Mr. William Pryor Letchworth to see if her bones could be moved. He asked them to bring the bones of their grandmother to his Glen Iris Estate. Forty one years after she returned to the valley, she was re-interred at the Glen Iris Estate (now Letchworth State Park in present day Castile, New York. She was placed in a new walnut coffin and brought by train.

Ceremonies that were held in the ancient Council House blended both the Seneca and Christian ways, Dehgewanus was buried on the bluff above the Middle Falls. A bronze statue of Mary, created in 1910, now marks her grave. Many historical documents concerning her life story are kept in the library at Letchworth State Park.

Her story is told in a classic "captivity narrative," J. E. Seaver's Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison (1824; latest ed. 1967), considered by many history scholars to be a reasonably accurate narrative.

Legacy

Mary Jemison's tale gave incredible insights into the suffering of white captives taken by Indians. Her story, as told to James Seavers, showed the life of the Indians in the Northeast of the United States and added much information about the culture, beliefs and practices of the Seneca and Iroquois tribes.

Her story has also been used in women's studies to highlight the lives of women, especially Indian women, of the time. She was known as "Dehgewanus, The White Woman of the Genesee." She was re-interred at Letchworth State Park in Pennsylvania, by its founder, William Pryor Letchworth. A granite marker was erected in the 1880's, and the statue was dedicated in 1910. Artifacts, documents, and primary sources are kept in the Letchworth State Park Historical library.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Beauchamp, William. History of the New York Iroquois (1905), Ira J. Friedman, Inc., 1963. ASIN B000WSG4A0.
• Namias, June. White Captives: Gender and Ethnicity on the American Frontier. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 1993. ISBN 978-0807844083
• Seaver, James. A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison. New York: American Scenic & Historical Preservation Society. 1942 edition. At Guttenberg Project www.gutengerg.org Retrieved July 5, 2008.
• Strong, Pauline Turner. Captive Selves, Captivating Others: The Politics and Poetics of Colonial American Captivity Narratives, Westview Press, 2000). ISBN 978-0813316666
• Volo, James M. and Dorothy Denneen Volo. Daily Life on the Old Colonial Frontier, Greenwood Press, 2002. ISBN 978-0313311031

External links

All retrieved July 5, 2008.

Sources

• Swarthmore College, Mary Jemison, Partial text of a Captivity Narrative from the 1750s transcribed in 1824 www.swarthmore.edu
• A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison, by James E. Seaver, via Project Gutenberg www.gutenberg.org
• A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison, via Google Books (scanned books) books.google.com

Other

• Letchworth State Park, Glimpses of the Past www.letchworthparkhistory.com
  • photograph of Mary as an old woman
• Women in American History (Britannica) Mary Jemison search.eb.com

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