The “redemption” of innocents from captivity by the “savages” of the woodlands forms a key thread in the mythology of the settlement of North America. Captivity narratives formed some of the earliest American literature. The rescue of white women from the clutches of the Indians became a trope. There’s certainly a basis for it, though the reality of captivity was considerably more complicated than the narrative wanted it to be. Many captives, male or female, chose not to be “redeemed,” or, if they were, became utterly miserable in white society and either returned to the Indians or sickened and died.
Benjamin Franklin once observed:
“When white persons of either sex have been taken prisoners young by the Indians, and have lived a while among them, tho’ ransomed by their Friends, and treated with all imaginable tenderness to prevail with them to stay . . . yet in a Short time they become disgusted with our manner of life, and the care and pains that are necessary to support it, and take the first good Opportunity of escaping again into the Woods, from whence there is no reclaiming them.”
This phenomenon appeared early and persisted for a couple of centuries. It was profoundly unsettling to representatives of a purportedly superior civilization, like Franklin. The Rescue of the Captives trope seems to have grown in part as a counter to the unsettling reality.
There was at least one famous incident that hit all the desirable narrative beats — indeed, it created many of them. Talkin’ about the capture and rescue of Daniel Boone’s daughter, Jemima. The 1776 incident on the Kentucky River is the subject of a new tome dropping later this month, which David Wrolson scouted up for us.
On a quiet midsummer day in 1776, weeks after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, thirteen-year-old Jemima Boone and her friends Betsy and Fanny Callaway disappear near the Kentucky settlement of Boonesboro, the echoes of their faraway screams lingering on the air.
A Cherokee-Shawnee raiding party has taken the girls as the latest salvo in the blood feud between American Indians and the colonial settlers who have decimated native lands and resources. Hanging Maw, the raiders’ leader, recognizes one of the captives as Jemima Boone, daughter of Kentucky’s most influential pioneers, and realizes she could be a valuable pawn in the battle to drive the colonists out of the contested Kentucky territory for good.
With Daniel Boone and his posse in pursuit, Hanging Maw devises a plan that could ultimately bring greater peace both to the tribes and the colonists. But after the girls find clever ways to create a trail of clues, the raiding party is ambushed by Boone and the rescuers in a battle with reverberations that nobody could predict. As Matthew Pearl reveals, the exciting story of Jemima Boone’s kidnapping vividly illuminates the early days of America’s westward expansion, and the violent and tragic clashes across cultural lines that ensue.
In this enthralling narrative in the tradition of Candice Millard and David Grann, Matthew Pearl unearths a forgotten and dramatic series of events from early in the Revolutionary War that opens a window into America’s transition from colony to nation, with the heavy moral costs incurred amid shocking new alliances and betrayals.
“The Abduction of Daniel Boone’s Daughter” by C. Wimar.
Matthew says
Ironically, I saw an episode of the old Daniel Boone show with Fess Parker last night. Frankly, it wasn’t that good, but it involved Boone rescuing his family from a corrupt British commander. Interestingly, the British are less sympathetic than the Indians in that episode.
The captivity narrative appears a lot even in stories not set on the American frontier. One of the early Khlit the Cossack stories deals with the wiley old cossack rescuing a woman from the Tartars. There was a Star Trek The Next Generation episode where they ‘rescue” a boy raised in an alien culture only to find he preferred the alien culture to the supposedly superior Federation. I can’t help but wonder if it was based on Cynthia Anne Parker or somebody.
JimC says
I’d say it certainly was.
Quixotic Mainer says
I think Campbell wrote something about the universal mythos surrounding the “rescue of the maiden” in hero with 1000 faces. While it may or may not be a whole truth, it is a sacred quest in many societies, including the native Americans themselves.
Despite it’s not having been written yet, I think all those on the quest could hear the “promontory ” tune from last of the mohicans while engaged in the endeavor.
JimC says
Oh, man, I need to check that reference. I’m betting you’re right. And also right on the Promentory theme, which I, of course, listened to just this morning…
Bob Deis says
Thanks for the heads up on that book!
David Harmon says
I am descended from Jenny Wiley — also a Kentucky woman who was captured by a band including Shawnee, Cherokee, Wyandots and Delawares. She escaped after some number of months (9? 11?) and made her way back to her husband.
There is a state park in Kentucky named after her.
Chas S Clifton says
Lots out there on this topic in academia. For starters, Susan Lepsetter, “The Resonance of Captivity: Aliens and Conquest,” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, vol. 2, no. 2 (2012), comparing — are you ready for this? — captivity narratives to UFO abduction stories.
In other words, it is a storytelling theme that keeps circling around and coming back.
Downloadable in various formats: https://www.haujournal.org/index.php/hau/article/view/hau2.2.006
JimC says
Thanks Chas. This looks like fun, despite the academic-speak.
lane.batot says
Wow: most definitely yes! I will get a copy of this!(hopefully, one day…..) Captive narratives are one of my favorite reads, since you get a picture of what Indian culture was REALLY like, directly from the horse’s mouth, so to speak! And speak of the devil–I’m just finishing up a good account of the Lipan Apaches–one of the lesser-known Apache tribes, centered largely in Texas, and it has me wanting to reread one of my two Herman Lehman accounts–he was kidnapped by such Apaches in Texas as a child–and some of my own Texas paternal relatives were on the unsuccessful search party to recover him! Lehman lived with the Apaches till young adulthood, got in a social embroilment(a medicine man killed his adopted Apache father, and Lehman, in revenge, killed the medicine man) which forced him to flee the Apaches(the medicine man’s relatives would surely have killed Lehman if he had stayed), and he eventually joined the Comanches, and became an adopted son of none other than Chief Quanah Parker! EPIC story–I’m planning on rereading his “Nine Years Among The Indians”, but I also love “The Last Captive”, edited with commentary by Greene…..