Mary Jemison (1743-1833)

Mary Jemison (Deh-he-wä-nis) was a Scots-Irish colonial frontierswoman in Pennsylvania and New York, who became known as the “White Woman of the Genesee.” As a young girl, she was captured and adopted into a Seneca family, assimilating to their culture, marrying two Native American men in succession, and having children with them. In 1824, she published a memoir of her life, a form of captivity narrative.

During the French and Indian War, in spring 1755, Jemison at age 12 was captured with most of her family in a Shawnee raid in what is now Adams County, Pennsylvania.[1] The others of her family were killed. She and an unrelated young boy were adopted by Seneca families. She became fully assimilated, marrying a Delaware (Lenape), and, after his death, a Seneca man. She chose to remain a Seneca rather than return to American colonial culture.

Jemison told her story late in life to an American minister, who wrote it for her. He published it as Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison (1824). It was reprinted in the late 20th century. In 1874 her remains were reinterred near a historic Seneca council house on a private estate, in what is now Letchworth State Park.

Mary Jemison was born to Thomas and Jane Jemison aboard the ship William and Mary in the fall of 1743, while en route from British Ireland (in today’s Northern Ireland) to America. They landed in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and joined other Protestant Scots-Irish immigrants in heading west to settle on cheaper available lands in the backcountry, what was then the western frontier (now central Pennsylvania). They “squatted” on territory that had been purchased by the Penn family in 1736 from chiefs of the Iroquois Confederacy, six nations that were based in central and western New York.

The Jemisons had cleared land to develop their farm, and the couple had several children. By 1755, conflicts had started in the French and Indian War, the North American front of the Seven Years’ War between France and Britain. Both sides made use of Native American allies, especially in the frontier areas where they had few regular forces. One morning in early 1755, a raiding party consisting of six Shawnee Indians and four Frenchmen captured Mary, the rest of her family (except two older brothers), and a young boy from another family. En route to French-controlled Fort Duquesne (present-day Pittsburgh), the Shawnee killed Mary’s mother, father, and siblings, and ritually scalped them.

Mary later learned that it was a Seneca custom, when one of their own was killed or taken prisoner in battle, to take an enemy as prisoner or to take their scalp in a mourning ritual. Two Seneca women had lost a brother in the French and Indian War a year before Mary’s capture, and in this mourning raid, the Shawnee intended to capture a prisoner or obtain an enemy’s scalp to compensate them. The 12-year-old Mary and the young boy were spared, likely because they were of suitable age for adoption. Once the party reached Fort Duquesne, Mary was given to the two Seneca women, who took her downriver to their settlement. After a short ceremony, a Seneca family adopted Mary, renaming her as Deh-he-wä-nis (other romanization variants include: Dehgewanus, Dehgewanus and Degiwanus, Dickewamis). She learned this meant “a pretty girl, a handsome girl, or a pleasant, good thing.”

When she came of age, Mary married a Delaware man named Sheninjee, who was living with the band. They had a son whom she named Thomas after her father. Sheninjee took her on a 700-mile (1,100 km) journey to the Sehgahunda Valley along the Genesee River in present-day Western New York state. Although Jemison and their son reached this destination, her husband did not. While hunting one day on their journey, he was taken ill and died.

As a widow, Mary and her child were taken in by Sheninjee’s clan relatives; she made her home at Little Beard’s Town (where present-day Cuylerville, New York later developed). She married again, to a Seneca named Hiokatoo, and together they had seven children: Nancy, Polly, Betsey, Jane, John, Thomas, and Jesse. John had a troubled life. He killed his brother Thomas in 1811, then killed his brother Jesse in 1812, and was later also killed.

During the American Revolutionary War, the Seneca allied with the British, hoping that a British victory would enable them to expel the encroaching colonists. Jemison’s account of her life includes observations of this time. She and others in the Seneca town helped supply Joseph Brant (Mohawk) and his Iroquois warriors from various nations, who fought the rebel colonists.

After the war, the British ceded their holdings east of the Mississippi River to the United States, without consulting their Native American allies. The Seneca were forced to give up their lands to the United States. In 1797, the Seneca sold much of their land at Little Beard’s Town to Americans. At that time, during negotiations with the Holland Land Company held at Geneseo, New York, Mary Jemison proved to be an able negotiator for the Seneca tribe. She helped win more favorable terms for surrendering their rights to the land at the Treaty of Big Tree (1797).

Late in life, Jemison told her story to the minister James E. Seaver, who published it as Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison (1824; latest ed. 1967). It is considered a classic captivity narrative. Although some early readers thought that Seaver must have imposed his own beliefs, since the late 20th century, many history scholars have thought the memoir is a reasonably accurate account of Jemison’s life story and attitude. When she was given her liberty, she decided to stay with the Senecas, because her eldest warrior son was not allowed to go with her and, mostly, she feared her relatives “… would despise [my Indian children] if not myself; and treat us as enemies; or, at least with a degree of cold indifference, which I thought I could not endure.”

In 1823, the Seneca sold most of their remaining land in that area, except for a 2-acre (8,100 m2) tract of land reserved for Jemison’s use. Known by local European-American residents as the “White Woman of the Genesee”, Jemison lived on the tract for several years. In 1831 she sold it and moved to the Buffalo Creek Reservation, where some Seneca lived (others had gone to Ontario, Canada). Jemison died on September 19, 1833, aged 90. She was initially buried on the Buffalo Creek Reservation. Jemison’s heirs later changed their surname to “Jimerson” and established the community of Jimersontown on the Allegany Indian Reservation.

Source: Wikipedia

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