It Happened Here --The Captivity Narratives (Part 1)

While doing some reading for an upcoming blog on Roger's Rangers I was reminded of one of the early forms of colonial literature, the "Captivity Narrative." During the first "battle on snowshoes"  sixteen year old Thomas Brown was captured and would later write about his experience.

From the earliest days of colonial exploration and settlement accounts of settlers capture and captivity by Native Americans were part of the American experience that survivors of that experience felt compelled to record for their contemporaries and for posterity. Thus, Captain John Smith would describe his capture by Opechancanough, brother of the powerful chief Powhatan and his rescue by Pocahontas in 1607. In one of the most famous captivity narratives Mary Rowlandson would describe her eleven week captivity in the hands of the Nipmuc and Narragansett Indians during the the King Phillip's War in 1676.  Rowlandson's  The Sovereignty and Goodness of God:  Being a Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson became perhaps America's first best seller. Going through four printings in 1682, it was later studied extensively by scholars seeking to understand how Puritans viewed their Indian neighbors in the 17th century.

In Indian warfare, among the Eastern Woodland peoples. taking prisoners was probably always  as an important an objective as was capturing plunder and taking scalps. Prisoners might be used or sold as slaves, ritually tortured to appease spirits or to satisfy the need for revenge, or given for adoption to family members who had lost loved ones through disease or warfare. Contacts with Europeans only exacerbated these needs.  First contacts with Europeans had introduced diseases that decimated Native American communities. The loss of wives, children, and young men who would have become the future hunters/warriors in the tribe were keenly felt. The desire for European weapons and trade goods inspired a fierce competition for previously little valued beaver pelts.  Fueled by the desire to dominate the beaver trade, the Iroquois engaged in internecine warfare with most of their Native American neighbors throughout most of the 17th century.  The losses incurred by these "beaver wars" led to further raids, so called "mourning wars" motivated by the twin desires for revenge and replacement of lost family members. The outbreak of war between France and England, and their respective colonies added new incentives. Both English and French colonial authorities offered bounties for scalps and ransoms for live prisoners, with, of course, higher bounties paid for live prisoners. Particularly in labor-starved New France prisoners of war could be put to use in agricultural tasks. Britain would continue the practice on the frontier in the American War for Independence.

Writing in 1760, Thomas Brown produced a small pamphlet that detailed how he was taken prisoner while participating in a raid deep in enemy territory between the French forts of Carillon and St. Frederick at Crown Point. The raid led by Robert Rogers attacked a supply sled heading north from Carillon. As a detachment of Rangers attacked the sled, more sleds came into view and seeing the danger quickly turned tail for Carillon and made their escape. From the prisoners Roberts captured he learned that a force of nearly two hundred and fifty French and Indians had just arrived at Carillon and that being just arrived, would be fully equipped and available to intercept him.  One of Rogers precepts for scouting was never take the same route back from a scouting foray as you do on the way out, but he probably felt his best option, with the deep snow was to make his way back along the trail already broken through the snow to outrun any pursuers. Unfortunately, either through good luck or information brought by a foraging hunter,  the French found the Rangers' trail and were able to set an ambush. Only the cocking of some two hundred muskets gave away their position, too late to respond as a wave of fire tore through the Ranger ranks. Thomas Brown was shot through the side but was able to dispatch the prisoner he was guarding. Brown fired several shots before a musket ball smashed his gun stock. Dodging an attacking Indian, he broke his snowshoes, then kicking out of them lost his moccasins. Fighting through the afternoon,  he suffered additional musket ball wounds to his knee and shoulder.  Covered with blood, and probably slipping in and out of consciousness he was left for dead in the darkness when the order came for the Rangers to retreat back into the forest, as night fell.

During that night Thomas came upon his Captain and a British volunteer, both severely injured but alive. To prevent them from freezing to death Brown kindled a small fire. Later he watched in horror as he observed an Indian creeping toward them. Brown managed to crawl out beyond the light of the fire as the Indian attacked Captain Speakman stripping him of his clothes and scalping the still living officer.  Confronted with the horror of Speakman's scalping, Baker, the British volunteer attempted to cut his own throat but the Indian knocked his knife away and with a whoop grabbed the wounded soldier and bolted away into the darkness. Speakman, still conscious, begged Brown to end his life. Brown refused.  After Speakman died Brown began to hobble his way southward until about 11AM the next day when he was tracked down by a party of four Indians. Much to Brown's surprise, they staunched his wounds with leaves and took him to the French encampment,  near the battle site.  There he was reunited with private Baker and five other Rangers. The prisoners were ordered to march to Carillon but Baker was at the end of his endurance and refused to go on. As an Indian stepped forward, grabbing the British soldier's hair to scalp him, Brown swung the soldier's arms over his back, demonstrating he would carry him the one and a half miles to Ft. Carillon.

At Carillon Brown and the other captives were  well treated. The French Commandant fed them, bandaged their wounds and even gave them a bottle of claret. By the end of March, Brown was recovered enough to travel. His new master, one of the Indians who had captured him, hitched him to a heavy sledge and compelled him to pull it up the frozen lake to Crown Point. Near the Fort, as he reached the point of exhaustion, Brown invited three Indian women to climb on board the sled and told them he wished he could pull them as well. This act of bravado, along with his previous acts of courage, stamina and endurance led his captors to begin to consider the teenager as a candidate for adaption, instead of a slave and a war trophy.  Relieved of his heaviest burdens he was stripped of his clothes and given a blanket.  His hair was cut in the fashion of his captor's tribe, his face painted and his hand was tattooed. All of this he accepted.  When another captive resisted such treatment he was burned at the stake and Brown was compelled to participate in the Indians rituals and dancing around the fire.   Taken to an Indian village, a few miles from Montreal, Brown endured a version of the gauntlet ritual. Stripped naked he was forced to run to a wigwam as the villagers chased him, pelting him with sticks and stones.

That summer Brown was taken by his captor to his home in the Missisippi country and given to a women who was to be his adopted mother. Throughout the winter of 1757-1758 he hunted and dressed pelts for her. In the spring a French trader arrived. The trader needed help transporting the pelts he had bought back to Montreal. Brown convinced her to let him go with the voyageur. Back in Montreal Brown was traded to a Canadian farmer to work on his farm for food and clothing. Over the summer he became acquainted with another prisoner, a boy working on an adjacent farm. They conspired to escape together, and Brown, who was allowed the use of a gun for shooting pigeons, shot extra, drying them and hiding them in the woods. In September Brown and the boy made their escape. After a week, however, their food gave out and they survived for another fifteen days on roots worms and frogs, before the boy died. Brown considered cannibalism and even removed some of the flesh from the boy's body before burying it, but he could not bring himself to eat his friend's flesh. Brown was on the verge of succumbing, himself,  when a partridge landed nearby which he was able to shoot, cook and eat, along with two other pigeons.  His gunshots led a group of Canadian foragers to signal back to him and he was able find them before collapsing.  In their company he made a feeble attempt to present himself as a Dutchman in the service of the French army but they took him to Crown Point where he was quickly recognized. Under guard, the boy Ranger was returned to his Canadian master in Montreal. For the next several weeks he skirted extreme abuse from his outraged master by seeking the friendship and protection of a French officer quartered in the his master's home. In November 1758 Thomas Brown was included in a prisoner exchange and returned to Boston.

A Plain Narrative of the Uncommon Sufferings, and Remarkable Deliverance of Thomas Brown was published two years later in Boston.  Selling for "8 Coppers", it was very popular and had a second printing that same year.

Marker of the Week -- A remnant of the horse-powered society.

 

In one of his posts last week,  Hoxsie!  blogger Carl Johnson featured an 1863 advertisement for an Albany dealer of hay and feed. It is easy to forget the accommodations that were necessary to provide for a horse-powered society. Occasionally the NYSHM's remind us of some of those accommodations.

  The Reformed Church in Unionville on Rte 443 in Albany County is pretty typical of most country churches built in the first half of the 19th century.  What sets it apart from most churches of its day is the survival of a very large 1840 horse shed. While it seems reasonable that many churches should have had these, with services running for four or five hours or more,  in both summer heat and through winter storms,  there is little evidence at most churches that this type of building ever existed.