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Valley of Wyoming - The Lost Settler
An Account of Frances Slocum

Published August 29, 1839; North American


After the battle and massacre (Wyoming), most of the settlers fled. But here and there a straggler returned from the mountains or wilderness, and in the course of three or four months, other cabins were going up over the ashes of their former homes, and quite a little neighborhood was collected. But the Indians kept prowling around on the mountains, now descending here and there, killing this family, scalping that, or making it captive. At a little distance from the present Court House at Wilkesbarre, lived a a family by the name of Slocum, upon whom the visitations of the Indian's cruelties were awfully severe. The men were one day away in the fields, and in an instant, the house was surrounded by Indians. There were in it, the mother, a daughter about nine years of age, a son aged thirteen, another daughter aged five, and a little boy aged two and a half. A young man and a boy by the name of Kingsley, were present grinding a knife. The first thing the Indians did was to shoot down the young man and scalp him with the knife which he had in his hand. The nine year old sister took the little boy two and a half years old, and ran out of the back door to get to the fort. The Indians chased her just enough to see her fright, and to have a hearty laugh as she ran and clung to and lifted her chubby little brother. They took the Kingsley boy and young Slocum, aged thirteen, and little Frances aged five, and prepared to depart. But finding young Slocum lame, at the earnest entreaties of the mother, they set him down and left him. Their captives were the young Kingsley and the little girl. The mother's heart swelled unutterably, and for years she could not describe the scene without tears. She saw an Indian throw her child over his shoulder, and as her hair fell over her face, with one hand she brushed it aside, while the tears fell from her distended eye, and stretching out her hand toward her mother, she called for her aid. The Indian turned into the bushes, and this was the last seen of little Frances. This imjage, probably, was carried by the mother to her grave. About a month after this they came again, and with the most awful cruelties, murdered the aged grandfather, and shot a ball in the leg of the lame boy. This he carried with him in his leg for nearly fifty years, to the grave. The last child was born a few months after these tragedies! What were the conversations, what were the conjectures, what were the hopes and fears respecting the fate of little Frances, I will not attempt to describe. Probably the children saw that in all after life, the heart of a stricken mother was yearning for the little one whose fate was so uncertain, and whose face she could never see again.

As the boys grew up and became men, they were very anxious to know the fate of their little fair haired sister. They wrote letters, they sent inquiries, they made journies through all the West and into the Canadas, if peradventure they might learn anything respecting her fate. Four of these long journies were made in vain. A silence deep as that of the deepest forest through which they wandered, hung over her fate, and that sixty years.

My reader will now pass over 59 years from the time of this captivity, and suppose himself in the far wilderness in the furthest part of Indiana. A very respectable agent of the United States is traveling there, and weary and belated, with a tired horse, he stops at an Indian wigwam for the night. He can speak the Indian language. The family are rich for Indiana, have horses and skins in abundance. In the course of the evening, he notices the hair of the woman is light, and her skin, under her dress is also white. This led to a conversation. She told him she was a white child, but had been carried away when a very small girl. She could only remember her name was Slocum, that she lived in a little house on the banks of the Susquehanna, and how many there were in her father's family, and the order of their ages! But the name of the town she could not remember. On reaching his home, the agent mentioned this story to his mother. She urged and pressed him to write and print the account. Accordingly he wrote it and sent it to Lancaster of this state, requesting that it might be published. By some, to me, unaccountable blunder, it lay in the office two years before it was published. In a few days it fell into the hands of Mr. Slocum, of Wilkes-Barre, who was the little two and a half year old boy, when Frances was taken. In a few days he was off to seek his sister, taking with him his oldest sister, (the one who aided him to escape) and writing to a brother who know lives in Ohio, and who I believe was born after the captivity, to meet him and go with him.

The two brothers and sisters are now (1838) on their way to seek little Frances, just sixty years after her capitivity. After traveling more than 300 miles through the wilderness, they reach the Indian country, the home of the Miami Indian. Nine miles from the nearest white, they find the little wigwam. "I shall know my sister, because she lost the nail of her first finger. You, brother, hammered it off in the blacksmith shop when she was four years old." They go into the cabin and find an Indian woman having the appearance of seventy-five. She is painted and jeweled off, and dressed like the Indians in all respects. Nothing but her hair and skin would indicate her origin. They get an interpreter and begin to converse. She tells them where she was born, her name, etc., with the order of her father's family. "How came your nail gone?" said the older sister. "My older brother pounded it off when I was a little child in the shop!" In a word, they were satisfied that this was Frances, their long lost sister! They asked her what her christian name was? Was it Frances? She smiled and said "yes". It was the first time she had heard it pronounced for 60 years! Here, then, they were met - two brothers and two sisters! But what a contrast! The brothers were walking the cabin unable to speak; the oldest sister was weeping, but the poor Indian sister sat motionless and passionless, as indifferent as a spectator. There was no throbbing, no fine cords in her bosom to be touched.

When Mr. Slocum gave me this history, I said to him - "but could she not speak English?" "Not a word." "Did she know her age?" "No - had no idea of it." "But was she entirely ignorant?" "Sir, she didn't even know when Sunday comes!" This was indeed the consummation of ignorance in a decendant of the Puritans!

But what a picture for a painter the inside of the cabin have afforded! How were the children of civilization, respectable, temperate, intelligent and wealthy, able to overcome mountains to recover their sister. There was the child of the forest, not able to tell the day of the week, whose views and feelings were all confined to that cabin. Her whole history might be told in a word. She lived with the Delawares who carried her off, till grown up, and then married a Delaware. He either died or ran away, and then she married a Miami Indian, a chief as I believe. She has two daughters, both of whom are married and who live in all the glory of an Indian cabin, deer-skin clothes, and cow-skin head-dresses. No one of the family can speak a word of English. They have horses in abundance, and when the Indian sister wanted to accompany her new relatives, she whipped out, bridled her horse, and then, a la Turk, mounted astride and was off. At night she could throw a blanket around her, down upon the floor, and at once be asleep.

The brothers and sister tried to persuade their lost sister to return with them, and if she desired it, bring her children. They would transplant her again on the banks of the Susquehanna, and of their wealth make her home happy. But no. She had always lived with the Indians - they had always been kind to her, and she promised her late husband on his death bed, that she would never leave the Indians. And there they left her and hers, wild and dark heathens, though sprung from a pious race. You can hardly imagine how much this brother is interested for her. He says he intends this autumn to go again that long journey to see his tawny sister - to carry her some presents, and perhaps will go and petition Congress that if ever these Miamis are driven off, there may be a tract of land reserved for his sister and her descendants! His heart yearns with an indescribable tenderness for the poor helpless one, who sixty years ago was torn from the arms of her mother. Mysterious Providence! How wonderful the tie which can thus bind a family together with a chain so strong that nothing can break its links!

I will only add, that nothing has ever been heard of the boy Kingsley. The probability certainly is, that he is not living. This account, hastily and imperfectly given, I had from the lips of Mr. Slocum, the brother, and the same who was two and a half years old when little Frances was carried away. I believe I had altered nothing, though I have omitted enouigh to make a good part of an interesting volume.

Civis.

Letters from the Interior. No. XVII. Valley of Wyoming


Saturday, December 13, 2008

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Valley of Wyoming - The Lost Settler
An Account of Frances Slocum
Published August 29, 1839; North American

After the battle and massacre (Wyoming), most of the settlers fled. But here and there a straggler returned from the mountains or wilderness, and in the course of three or four months, other cabins were going up over the ashes of their former homes, and quite a little neighborhood was collected. But the Indians kept prowling around on the mountains, now descending here and there, killing this family, scalping that, or making it captive. At a little distance from the present Court House at Wilkesbarre, lived a a family by the name of Slocum, upon whom the visitations of the Indian's cruelties were awfully severe. The men were one day away in the fields, and in an instant, the house was surrounded by Indians. There were in it, the mother, a daughter about nine years of age, a son aged thirteen, another daughter aged five, and a little boy aged two and a half. A young man and a boy by the name of Kingsley, were present grinding a knife. The first thing the Indians did was to shoot down the young man and scalp him with the knife which he had in his hand. The nine year old sister took the little boy two and a half years old, and ran out of the back door to get to the fort. The Indians chased her just enough to see her fright, and to have a hearty laugh as she ran and clung to and lifted her chubby little brother. They took the Kingsley boy and young Slocum, aged thirteen, and little Frances aged five, and prepared to depart. But finding young Slocum lame, at the earnest entreaties of the mother, they set him down and left him. Their captives were the young Kingsley and the little girl. The mother's heart swelled unutterably, and for years she could not describe the scene without tears. She saw an Indian throw her child over his shoulder, and as her hair fell over her face, with one hand she brushed it aside, while the tears fell from her distended eye, and stretching out her hand toward her mother, she called for her aid. The Indian turned into the bushes, and this was the last seen of little Frances. This image, probably, was carried by the mother to her grave. About a month after this they came again, and with the most awful cruelties, murdered the aged grandfather, and shot a ball in the leg of the lame boy. This he carried with him in his leg for nearly fifty years, to the grave. The last child was born a few months after these tragedies! What were the conversations, what were the conjectures, what were the hopes and fears respecting the fate of little Frances, I will not attempt to describe. Probably the children saw that in all after life, the heart of a stricken mother was yearning for the little one whose fate was so uncertain, and whose face she could never see again.

As the boys grew up and became men, they were very anxious to know the fate of their little fair haired sister. They wrote letters, they sent inquiries, they made journies through all the West and into the Canadas, if peradventure they might learn anything respecting her fate. Four of these long journies were made in vain. A silence deep as that of the deepest forest through which they wandered, hung over her fate, and that sixty years.

My reader will now pass over 59 years from the time of this captivity, and suppose himself in the far wilderness in the furthest part of Indiana. A very respectable agent of the United States is traveling there, and weary and belated, with a tired horse, he stops at an Indian wigwam for the night. He can speak the Indian language. The family are rich for Indiana, have horses and skins in abundance. In the course of the evening, he notices the hair of the woman is light, and her skin, under her dress is also white. This led to a conversation. She told him she was a white child, but had been carried away when a very small girl. She could only remember her name was Slocum, that she lived in a little house on the banks of the Susquehanna, and how many there were in her father's family, and the order of their ages! But the name of the town she could not remember. On reaching his home, the agent mentioned this story to his mother. She urged and pressed him to write and print the account. Accordingly he wrote it and sent it to Lancaster of this state, requesting that it might be published. By some, to me, unaccountable blunder, it lay in the office two years before it was published. In a few days it fell into the hands of Mr. Slocum, of Wilkes-Barre, who was the little two and a half year old boy, when Frances was taken. In a few days he was off to seek his sister, taking with him his oldest sister, (the one who aided him to escape) and writing to a brother who know lives in Ohio, and who I believe was born after the captivity, to meet him and go with him.

The two brothers and sisters are now (1838) on their way to seek little Frances, just sixty years after her capitivity. After traveling more than 300 miles through the wilderness, they reach the Indian country, the home of the Miami Indian. Nine miles from the nearest white, they find the little wigwam. "I shall know my sister, because she lost the nail of her first finger. You, brother, hammered it off in the blacksmith shop when she was four years old." They go into the cabin and find an Indian woman having the appearance of seventy-five. She is painted and jeweled off, and dressed like the Indians in all respects. Nothing but her hair and skin would indicate her origin. They get an interpreter and begin to converse. She tells them where she was born, her name, etc., with the order of her father's family. "How came your nail gone?" said the older sister. "My older brother pounded it off when I was a little child in the shop!" In a word, they were satisfied that this was Frances, their long lost sister! They asked her what her christian name was? Was it Frances? She smiled and said "yes". It was the first time she had heard it pronounced for 60 years! Here, then, they were met - two brothers and two sisters! But what a contrast! The brothers were walking the cabin unable to speak; the oldest sister was weeping, but the poor Indian sister sat motionless and passionless, as indifferent as a spectator. There was no throbbing, no fine cords in her bosom to be touched.

When Mr. Slocum gave me this history, I said to him - "but could she not speak English?" "Not a word." "Did she know her age?" "No - had no idea of it." "But was she entirely ignorant?" "Sir, she didn't even know when Sunday comes!" This was indeed the consummation of ignorance in a decendant of the Puritans!

But what a picture for a painter the inside of the cabin have afforded! How were the children of civilization, respectable, temperate, intelligent and wealthy, able to overcome mountains to recover their sister. There was the child of the forest, not able to tell the day of the week, whose views and feelings were all confined to that cabin. Her whole history might be told in a word. She lived with the Delawares who carried her off, till grown up, and then married a Delaware. He either died or ran away, and then she married a Miami Indian, a chief as I believe. She has two daughters, both of whom are married and who live in all the glory of an Indian cabin, deer-skin clothes, and cow-skin head-dresses. No one of the family can speak a word of English. They have horses in abundance, and when the Indian sister wanted to accompany her new relatives, she whipped out, bridled her horse, and then, a la Turk, mounted astride and was off. At night she could throw a blanket around her, down upon the floor, and at once be asleep.

The brothers and sister tried to persuade their lost sister to return with them, and if she desired it, bring her children. They would transplant her again on the banks of the Susquehanna, and of their wealth make her home happy. But no. She had always lived with the Indians - they had always been kind to her, and she promised her late husband on his death bed, that she would never leave the Indians. And there they left her and hers, wild and dark heathens, though sprung from a pious race. You can hardly imagine how much this brother is interested for her. He says he intends this autumn to go again that long journey to see his tawny sister - to carry her some presents, and perhaps will go and petition Congress that if ever these Miamis are driven off, there may be a tract of land reserved for his sister and her descendants! His heart yearns with an indescribable tenderness for the poor helpless one, who sixty years ago was torn from the arms of her mother. Mysterious Providence! How wonderful the tie which can thus bind a family together with a chain so strong that nothing can break its links!

I will only add, that nothing has ever been heard of the boy Kingsley. The probability certainly is, that he is not living. This account, hastily and imperfectly given, I had from the lips of Mr. Slocum, the brother, and the same who was two and a half years old when little Frances was carried away. I believe I had altered nothing, though I have omitted enouigh to make a good part of an interesting volume.

Civis.
Letters from the Interior. No. XVII. Valley of Wyoming