The Beaded Moccasins

by Lynda Durrant

  In the first months of my captivity I often thought about what a torment I was as a daughter and a sister to the Campbells. Always complaining, always aggrieved, always so sure I was getting the worst part of the bargain at every turn. The way I was fills me with shame.

  But I was raging at them, too, because I was not the only one in the wrong. Families get set in a pattern, just like a quilt-the Selfish One, the Lazy One, the Favorite, the Martyr, the Tyrant-repeating the same squabbles and misunderstandings again and again.

  Life is too precious to waste in such vexing bitterness.

  The shame is gone now, as is the rage. What's left is overwhelming pain, dull eyed and stone cold. But if my grief means I love them, and forgive them, and miss them with all my soul, then surely the Campbells grieve for me too, in the same way and for the same reasons. Until we're all together again, that is my comfort.

  My pride reminds me of a family of mice that lived in our Connecticut corncrib. During an especially bitter winter evening, I placed fabric remnants in a snug corner of the crib for their bedding. The next morning every scrap of cloth had been moved to another corner of their choosing.

  Even mice want to re-create the world in their image. I know pride's a sin, but why would people be less prideful than mice?

  We all want to make our mark on the world. We all want to leave grand evidence of our having been here. Whether it's westering, or growing a garden, or mound building, or not letting the starfires burn out, or even pretending to be an ambassador's wife, we all want to leave a legacy as big as the hills.

  Next year we'll have more vegetable mounds, over there, I say to myself, in Unami this time. And over there in that sunny spot I'll plant my apple seeds. I can almost taste the apples crunching between my teeth.

  A breeze catches in the cornstalks; the drying stalks rattle a warning of winter's cold. The clouds roll in from the west and block the sun. A cold wind sounds like winter-it roars through the gorge and whispers through the pines. I shiver and I think cozy thoughts about sitting in front of the fire and listening to stories.

  Steam from the cookpots drifts past my nose. Every cooking pot we own is bubbling with something delicious-venison stews, corn chowders, berry soups. The wondrous smells make my stomach growl. But it's almost a snug, homey feeling to be so hungry, because I know there's plenty to eat.

  Every stewpot is bubbling in my honor.

  Tonight is my naming ceremony. From now on, only to myself will I be known as Mary Caroline Campbell.

  I wonder what name Grandfather has chosen for me.

  ***

  As the sun goes down, all two hundred Delaware are waiting for me by the storehouse. All two hundred are smiling at me. The woman who stole my lace collar is smiling. The two brothers who marched with me from the Susquehanna are smiling identical smiles. Even Smallpox Scars, the one who killed Sammy, is smiling and nodding.

  Hepte, White Eyes, and Chickadee are next to Grandfather, who is standing in front of our biggest caldron. As I walk toward him, the crowd separates and gives way.

  Grandfather hands me a huge turtle shell.

  "Drink," he says.

  I drink cool water with corn pollen floating on top.

  "Xkwe," he says. "Drink again."

  While I drink, I run the word over in my mind.

  "Schway, schway," I mutter to myself. "That means 'woman.'"

  "Wtaloksin? he says. "Drink again."

  I sip from the shell. "Wta lok sin," I say to myself. "'Help.' No, 'save.' No...'saved.'"

  "Haskwim," Grandfather says. "Drink again."

  That's easy. "Corn," I think. Woman-Who-Saved-the-Corn.

  That's me!

  "'Woman-Who-Saved-the-Corn,' is that right?" I whisper to Grandfather in English. "Is that my new name?"

  He puts his finger to his lips and gives me a wink.

  We feast all night. I can't remember a time when I was so full, except perhaps a Christmas years ago. My full stomach fills me with sleepy contentment, like a warm blanket but on the inside.

  For the first time since the deluge, my hands are completely free of bandages. My stubby, nailless fingers look like burned-down candles. They always hurt at the end of the day, especially if I've been working hard. My palms still look like raw meat, but they're healing. I hide my hands in my sleeves whenever I can.

  "Nuxkwis," Grandfather says. He draws my hands out of my sleeves and holds them. "You saved an entire people with these hands. Why do you hide them?"

  I rest my hands in my lap.

  Drums and turtleshell rattles come out from wigwams, and musicians play and play far into the night. Dancers circle a huge, popping bonfire, their intricate steps lit up in the firelight.

  All evening people bring me presents-new buckskin tunics, beaded jewelry, a beautifully carved spoon of cherry wood. Kolachuisen gives me a corn-husk doll and sits beside me.

  I think, Why not? I don't need it anymore. A promise springs from the heart and is savored in the mind. I will see the Campbells again.

  "I have something for you," I tell her. I run to our wigwam and come back with the bluebird feather I found last spring.

  "Oh!" she cries. "Thank you." Kolachuisen holds the feather in one hand and gives me a hug.

  "I'll keep it always," she whispers.

  "Tonn," Hepte cries in alarm, "you're not wearing your moccasins. For such a special occasion!"

  "They no longer fit. My feet are too big."

  Hepte's eyes fill with tears.

  "But I want to keep them, always," I say quickly. "I want to remember the daughter who had them before me. Although our feet are no longer the same, perhaps one day our hearts will be."

  "Perhaps," Hepte says. When she fills my bowl with another helping of berry soup, her eyes are shining.

  "Gahes," I say softly, "thank you."

  * * *

  Afterword

  Except for Chickadee, Hepte, and Kolachuisen, everyone in The Beaded Moccasins was a real person. Even the Frenchman, Francois Sequin, had a trading post on the banks of the Cuyahoga River, close to where downtown Cleveland, Ohio, is now.

  Mary Campbell, Mary Stewart, and her son Sammy were captured by the Delaware in the summer of 1759, at Penn's Creek, near the banks of the Susquehanna River in Snyder County, Pennsylvania. Sammy Stewart was killed soon after their capture. Mary and Mrs. Stewart were then taken to a Delaware village along the Allegheny River in Armstrong County, in western Pennsylvania.

  Mary Campbell was adopted as the granddaughter of Netawatwees Sachem, and was well treated during her captivity.

  That same summer the British sent the few Delaware who were still living in the eastern woodlands westward into the Ohio wilderness. Mary Campbell and Mrs. Stewart went with them as their prisoners.

  Mary Campbell really did live in a wide, shallow cave above the Cuyahoga River that first winter. That cave, now called the Mary Campbell Cave, is located in Gorge Park in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. The following spring the Delaware built a village on flat land near the cave.

  Why were Mary and Mrs. Stewart kidnapped in the first place? The tradition of captive taking goes back to prehistoric America. Tribes were eager to replace loved ones lost to warfare and illness. The replacements, if they were willing to be replacements, were treated just as lovingly as the originals.

  According to Norman Heard (in White Into Red: A Study of the Assimilation of White Persons Captured by the Indians), the assimilation process took approximately five years, and rarely did a child successfully resist it. For girls under twelve years old and boys under fourteen-that is, before puberty-the assimilation process was much faster than for adults.

  The rest of the story-Mary's long march, what it felt like to be so far from home, spending a long, cold Ohio winter in a cave, what happened to Mrs. Stewart, what it was like living with people so different from herself-is fiction.

  In real life Mary did see the Campbells again.

  In 1764 the British ordered all white captives o
n the western frontier to return to Fort Pitt. In November of that year a Swiss mercenary named Lt. Col. Henry Bouquet collected captives on the Tuscawaras River and escorted them to the fort. One historian said that on the Tuscawaras, Netawatwees "wept as he handed Mary to the commanding officer."

  In the spring of 1765 some 356 captives were reunited with their long lost families at Fort Pitt. Almost six years after her capture, Mary was met by her mother and her brother, Dougal Campbell. There is no evidence that she saw her father again. According to the records, Mary "showed some reluctance at being returned to her family."

  Mary Stewart was reunited with a husband she hadn't seen in six years. She brought with her a four-year-old daughter named Samantha.

  Mary went back to Penn's Creek, Pennsylvania, and married a man named Joseph Willford. She had twelve children.

  The British signed a treaty with the Delaware and all the other native people of Ohio. No white settlers would be allowed in if all white captives were returned.

  The British kept their word. Except for missionaries in the mission towns of Schoenbrunn, Salem, and Gnadenhutten, the westward expansion of the frontier stopped at the Ohio River.

  In 1778 White Eyes was a sachem in his own right. He was killed by a seventeen-year-old frontiersman named Lewis Wentzel.

  In March 1782 American troops led by Col. David Williamson entered the town of Gnadenhutten. They killed over ninety Delaware converts. The first to be killed was an old man named Abraham Netawatwees.

  After the Revolutionary War the British lost the Ohio Valley. George Washington himself claimed more than ten thousand acres of prime Ohio River land as American settlers poured into what was then the western wilderness. One of those settlers was Mary's oldest son.

  The Delaware, Wyandot, Shawnee, and Miami were pushed west into what is now Indiana.

  There is one fascinating bit of evidence about Mary's later years. Neighbors referred to her children as "those Mohawks," so we can only assume she taught them to appreciate Native American culture.

  Mary Campbell Willford died in 1801, two years before Ohio was admitted into the Union as the seventeenth state. Her Willford descendants still live in Wayne County, Ohio.

  ***

  Mary wonders if the mound builders saw the mastodons (the yah-qua-whee). We know this would not have been possible. Archeologists have dated mastodon bones to the Paleo-Indian era (23,000-3,000 b.c.). The mound builders lived in the Hopewell era (200 b.c.-a.d. 500). The mounds they left still dot the northeastern Ohio countryside, especially near the rivers.

  The Delaware do have a story of why they killed the mastodons, and how the mastodons' extinction brought about the cranberry.

  There were once twenty tribes among the Delaware. Mary mentions the Unami, Mohicans, and Munsees. The Wappingers, Esopus, Raritans, Massapequas, Wampanoags, Susquehannas, Catskills, Hackensacks, Rockaways, Nanticokes, Minisinks, Unahachaugs, and Powhatans were also part of the Delaware confederacy.

  The Delaware lived in what is now eastern New York State, including New York City and Long Island; eastern Pennsylvania; New Jersey; Delaware; Maryland; and Virginia.

  The ancient name of the Delaware is Ianni Lenape, which means "the People." They changed their name to Delaware more than 350 years ago because of the first governor of Virginia, Baron Thomas West de la Warr.

  Today there are few Delaware left. The Stockbridge-Munsee band of Mohicans live in Wisconsin; more Mohicans live in Ontario, Canada. The Unami and other Delaware live in Anadarko, Oklahoma. I'm indebted to The Language Project of the Delaware Tribe of Western Oklahoma for all their help with the Unami words in The Beaded Moccasins: The Story of Mary Campbell.

  * * *

  Glossary

  Buchahelagas (buck a HEL a gus): Killbuck

  chitanisinen (chee tah NEE see nen): strength

  Coquetakeghton (coke TA keg ton): White Eyes

  Cuyahoga (kye a HOE ga): Crooked River

  gahes (ga HEESS): mother

  haskwim (ha SKEEM): corn

  heh-heh (heh-heh): yes

  Hepte (HEP teh): Swan

  hocking (HO king): territory

  kamis (KA meess): sister

  keko windji? (GEH ko WIN jee): why?

  Kishelemukong (kih shel MOO kong): the Creator

  Kolachuisen (ko la CHEW ee sen): Beautiful Bluebird

  ku (coo): no

  lappi (la PEE): again

  Makiawip (MAHK ee a wip): Red Arrow

  makwa (MAHK wah): bear

  muxomsa (moo CHUM sa): grandfather

  nuxkwis (NUK wiss): grandchild

  Netawatwees (neh ta WAT wees): newcomer

  sipi (SIP ee): river

  Tamaqua (TOM ah kwah): Beaver

  Tankawon (TON ka won): Little Cloud

  tonn (tawn): daughter

  Tuskawaras (tus ka WAR as): Old Town

  Wapashuiwi (wap a SHOE wee): White Lynx

  wtaloksin (wta LOK sin): saved

  xkwe (shway): woman

  yah-qua-whee (YAH kwah wee): mastodon

  * * *

  Sources

  Demos, John. The Unredeemed Captive. New York: Knopf, 1994.

  Eckert, Allan W. That Dark and Bloody River: Chronicles of the Ohio River Valley. New York: Bantam, 1995.

  Grumet, Robert S. The Lenapes. Frank W. Porter III, ed. New York: Chelsea House, 1989.

  Hawke, David Freeman. Everyday Life in Early America. New York: Harper, 1989.

  Heard, J. Norman. White Into Red: A Study of the Assimilation of White Persons Captured by Indians. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow, 1973.

  Heckewelder, Reverend John. Narrative of the Mission of the United Brethren Among the Delaware and Mohegan Indians. Reprint: New York: Arno and The New York Times, 1971.

  "Hopewell, Prehistoric America's Golden Age," from Early Man, Winter 1979. Reprint: Chillicothe, Ohio: Craftsman Printing, 1990.

  The Language Project, Delaware Tribe of Western Oklahoma. Anadarko, Oklahoma.

  McCutchen, David. The Red Record: The Wallam Olum: The Oldest Native North American History. Garden City Park, NY: Avery, 1993.

  McPherson, J. Beverly. "Mary Campbell, the First White Child on the Western Reserve." Paper given to the Cuyahoga Falls Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, 1934. Akron Public Library archives.

  National Archives. Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty-and-Warrant Application Files.

  Saguin, Marilyn. "The Legend of Mary Campbell." Our Town Magazine, The Akron Beacon Journal, December 1985.

  Schumacher, Fred, Head Librarian, Cleveland Metroparks Zoo.

  Smithsonian Bureau of Ethnology. Guide to North American Indian Tribes. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Press, 1979.

  Taylor Memorial Library, Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. "The Mary Campbell Papers."

  Weslager, C. A. The Delaware Indians: A History. New Brunswick, NJ.: Rutgers University Press, 1972.

  * * *

  About the Author

  Lynda Durrant's fascination with the story of Mary Campbell began when she was eleven years old, during a visit to the Mary Campbell cave in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio.

  "I thought about a girl my age living among a people very different from herself. Mary says, 'The strength we need is the strength we have,' but I wondered if I could have been as strong as Mary Campbell."

  Ms. Durrant is also the author of Echohawk for Clarion Books. She has a double master's degree in writing and teaching English from the University of Washington in Seattle, and teaches remedial reading to children. She lives with her husband and son on a horse farm in rural Ohio.

  * * *

 

 

 
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