Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison

'Little woman of great courage'-the life of Mary Jemison



Mary Jemison's is a remarkable story. Born in 1743, she was captured by Indians whilst in her teenage years. Her family had emigrated from Ireland and settled on the troubled Pennsylvania frontier in lands controlled by the Iroquois. The Seven Years War broke out and its realisation in the New World, the French and Indian war set the border-lands ablaze. In 1755 a mixed raiding party of Shawnee warriors and Frenchmen captured the Jemison family and an unrelated boy but subsequently killed most of them. Mary was sold to the Senecas and disappeared into the wilderness. Her remarkable story of captivity that gradually led to integration into the life of the Indians of the Eastern woodlands makes vital reading for all those interested in the role of women in the opening up of early America. Jemison eventually elected to live her life as a Seneca despite much subsequent interaction with white settlers. Her descriptions of the part played by the Indian tribes during the Revolutionary War are both unusual and vitally interesting.

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