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Setting All the Captives Free
Among the many upheavals in North America caused by the French and Indian War was a commonplace practice that affected the lives of thousands of men, women, and children: being taken captive by rival forces. Most previous studies of captivity in early America are content to generalize from a small selection of sources, often centuries apart. In Setting All the Captives Free, Ian Steele presents, from a mountain of data, the differences rather than generalities as well as how these differences show the variety of circumstances that affected captives’ experiences. The product of a herculean effort to identify and analyze the captives taken on the Allegheny frontier during the era of the French and Indian War, Setting All the Captives Free is the most complete study of this topic. Steele explores genuine, doctored, and fictitious accounts in an innovative challenge to many prevailing assumptions and arguments, revealing that Indians demonstrated humanity and compassion by continuing to take numerous captives when their opponents took none, by adopting and converting captives into kin during the war, and by returning captives even though doing so was a humiliating act that betrayed their societies' values. A fascinating and comprehensive work by an acclaimed scholar, Setting All the Captives Free takes the study of the French and Indian War in America to an exciting new level.
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Diplomacy of Gift Exchange, 1756–62
Despite formidable Indian, European, and cross-cultural obstacles, and the intensifying poison of war itself, the freeing of captives through negotiation was a persistent theme between 1756 and 1762. Recovering captives as diplomatic gifts had been routine in the decade before war. During the years of active raiding, 1755–58, the Pennsylvania government and Quaker elite made somewhat frantic efforts to recover captives and make peace with the North Branch and Ohio Delaware. The evolution of this policy, which had no parallel in Virginia for a host of reasons, is revealing and instructive in itself. In the four years of truce
Book Chapter
Taken in Sieges and Surrenders, 1756–58
Although sieges had been a major part of the prewar maneuvering of both Virginians and Canadians, they were not part of local Indian warfare in Allegheny country before 1756. It had been northern Ottawa and Ojibwa allies, led by Ottawa-Canadiantroupes de la marinecadet Charles Langlade, whom the Canadians had induced to destroy the Piankashaw stockade at Pickawillany in 1752. As they went to war, Shawnee, Delaware, and Mingo raiders were intent upon the quick and casualty-free taking of adoptable captives, scalps, or loot; besieging fortified buildings, or “log pens,” was of no interest. Regardless of the eventual outcome
Book Chapter
Taken along Warriors’ Paths
On a hilltop north of Shamokin, overlooking the main Iroquoian Warriors’ Path to the south, two posts stood in the 1730s, each topped with a skull. These were defiant Catawba historical markers, countering the region’s numerous Iroquoian painted posts that boasted of victorious raids that had yielded prisoners and scalps. In this case, Catawba captives, already far from home, had turned on their Iroquois captors, killed at least two of them, and, though in the territory of their enemy, had taken the time to erect this mocking memorial. It is equally interesting that the Iroquois, who claimed intimidating power over
Book Chapter
Trails into Captivity
Trails into captivity could be particularly dangerous places for both captors and captives. Most captors were Indians who had worked together in preparation, travel, and combat, and who had then claimed captives and loot as individuals. As has been seen, there were tactical limits to taking captives in the first strike of a two- or three-strike raid, and there were bound to be some individual and intertribal negotiations and disputes over captives on the trail. Captors could not calculate in advance exactly who should take how many captives, or faultlessly discern which captives would prove able and willing to travel
Book Chapter
Redeemed and Exchanged, 1745–62
Before 1760 there had been little evidence that significant numbers of captives could be recovered through the diplomatic efforts of the Pennsylvania government or the British Army’s deputy superintendent of Indian affairs, George Croghan.¹ Two other kinds of negotiation were also being undertaken: private redemptions and military exchanges. In the cultural and military borderlands of Allegheny country, each of these approaches encountered major difficulties derived from different conceptions of captivity and redemption. Although each method had successes of great consequence to those involved, it seems fair to ask why they did not accomplish more.
Ransom or sale of some captives
Book Chapter
Taking Traders, 1745–54
The Kahnawake capture of six Pennsylvania traders in 1753 may have been incidental to their traditional raid on the Cherokee, but these captors had reason to hope for gratitude from the governor of Canada. Increasing numbers of Canadian and Pennsylvanian traders, backed by strikingly different levels and kinds of government support, were competing in Ohio country during the 1740s for the furs and deerskins gathered by Shawnee, Miami, Delaware, Mingo, and Wyandot communities. There were many signs that the Pennsylvanians were winning the contest, with a better supply of goods at lower cost. The Canadian traders, who included some post
Book Chapter
Captivating Accounts, 1755–1826
As thickets of subsequent literary and historical analysis can testify, a captivity narrative was seldom just a captivity narrative. These stories were much too popular to have merely satisfied the curiosity of those who wanted to know what happened to captives. Captivity accounts have long been published and studied as American adventures in suffering and redemption, captivity and freedom, exile and return. Although they may have needed no further justification, the emotional attractiveness of captivity themes has also made them irresistible, then and since, to those with various conscious or unconscious agendas.¹ This “escape” literature could be very potent and
Book Chapter
Restoring and Revising Identities
Felix Renick was never a captive, but he came from one Greenbrier River family that knew much captivity, and he married into another. In 1798 he and two companions traveled west, in the calm that followed the Treaty of Greenville (1795), to view and claim fertile lands at Wakatomica Bottom on the Muskingum River. These rich lands had been worked by Itawachcomequa’s people when he left on his fateful quest forty-five years earlier, but after four intervening wars this was becoming white American territory. Felix recorded an adage common among his people: “It is easy to make an Indian out
Book Chapter