Colonels in Blue - Union Army Colonels of the Civil War: The New England States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont Book

I gave this narrative 5 stars because of the stark and profound experience that Mary Jemison had to endure. While in her eighties, she gave this account to a Dr. Seaver who wrote down her remembrances. To actually hear of what she endured, her family being massacred by the Seneca(the description of the Indians cleaning off her parents' scalps is heartbreaking...she was but 15 years of age). Life was exceedingly hard for Mary but somehow she adjusted to life with the Senecas, carrying heavy loads on her back with only a burden strap across her forehead to lug corn or babies. It sounds like she rarely complained and was quite passive like the Indian squaws themselves. She was witness to brutal deaths, strange festivals and frolics and lived her years as an Indian on the Genessee River in upstate NY.
The absolute saddest aspect of the story comes in her later life after she births 8 children, 3 boys and 5 girls. They were "half breeds" but she extols the dangers of the "ardent spirits" or "the fire water" that the white man often gave the Indians. When they became intoxicated terrible quarrels would ensue and disaster often followed.
In fact, her middle son John, more Indian than white and accused of being witch at times was more jealous of his 2 other brothers who favored the white ways. He realized that these other brothers were his mother's favorites and tragedy strikes. I will not give what happens away, but it's just about the saddest account I've read about. But still Mary Jemison lives on. Ironically, she only grew to four and a half feet, so short for one of Scots-Irish blood. My own theory is that she was stunted due to the trauma she experienced and part of her would always be that young girl missing her family and longing to be reunited with them.
She had chances to return. Yet she worried about her half breed children and would they be accepted by her relatives? She thought not. This is a short book but she really brings to life some of the characters that come and go in her life. Ebeneizer Allen, a "white Indian" who lives on her land and then becomes a wanted man, her second husband the fierce warrior Hiakotoo. The narrative also helps understand what life was like around the Revolutionary War up near Fort Niagra and that the Seneca favored the French, fought with the British against the Americans and somehow dear Mary survived all these wars...for better or worse.
This is an eye opening account. For all those who think that Indians are peaceful spirits who smoke the peace pipe and pray to Father Sky will be sadly mistaken. The accounts of burning people alive, random and gratuitous killing, celebrating torture, hanging heads on pikes is grimly given in detail. But still it is a part of history that many do not know or understand. The Senecas had a law that if one of their people was killed by the white man, that a white must be captured or a scalp of an enemy must be presented to the mourning Indian. It's clear that the Seneca people were filled with the spirit of revenge and superstition but according to Mary Jemison she was treated with tenderness and mercy by those in the tribe. Informative and very interesting read as part of a little known time in history.