Jemison, Mary (1742–1833)

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Jemison, Mary (1742–1833)

Captive of the Iroquois Indians in the French and Indian War who, having decided to stay with the Senecas following the war, survived tremendous hardship during the American Revolution and became a great, though temporary, landowner in western New York. Name variations: Dickewamis (Di-keh-WAH-mes), Dehewamis (Deh-he-WA-mes), Dehgewanus (Deh-ge-WAH-nus). Born Mary Jemison in 1742 aboard the ship William and Mary en route to America; died at the Buffalo Creek Reservation, near Buffalo, New York, on September 19, 1833; daughter of Thomas Jemison (an Irish-born farmer) and Jane (Erwin) Jemison; married Delaware warrior Sheninjee, in 1760 (died); married Seneca warrior Hiokatoo, around 1766; children: (first marriage) Thomas; (second marriage) John, Nancy, Betsey, Polly, Jane, Jesse.

Family moved to western Pennsylvania soon after their landing in Philadelphia (1742); captured by a French and Indian raiding party and adopted by the Seneca (1758); migrated with Seneca to town of Wiishto (1760); moved with Seneca brothers to Genishau in Genessee Valley, western New York (1763); moved to Gardow Flats with five of her then six children (1779); decided to stay with the Seneca following the Revolution; given possession of Gardow Flats by Iroquois chiefs at Council of Big Tree (1797); naturalized and given title to land by special act of New York Legislature (1817); sold all of reservation except 4,000 acres with approval of council of chiefs and U.S. Commissioner of Indian Lands in exchange for $300 perpetual annuity (1823); gave narrative of her life to Dr. James Seaver (1823); exchanged perpetual annuity and remaining 4,000 acres for lump sum payment and removed to Buffalo Creek Reservation, New York (1831); converted to Christianity shortly before her death (1833).

Women in the Iroquois Confederacy of northern New York enjoyed many powers. They aided in the selection of chiefs, decided whether war prisoners would be killed or adopted to replace slain family members, and prepared children for their expected future roles. Sons were trained to be hunters and warriors, as their mothers allowed them to torture prisoners, and daughters were taught child-rearing and cornraising techniques. Iroquois women were so powerful because they alone raised the corn crop, which was the Iroquois' chief staple, while men hunted, waged war, and conducted foreign affairs. This traditional picture of Iroquois life changed, however, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, when most Iroquois faced the encroachment of whites and the restriction of reservations. In this time of crisis, one woman took initiative and entered the men's councils as a respected landowner, thus attaining power rare to any New York woman, white or Iroquois. Her name was Mary Jemison. In 1823, she gave an account of her life to Dr. James Seaver; the narrative reveals the impact of war and white encroachment on the Iroquois Confederacy.

Mary Jemison's life was constantly related to social and political change. She was the fourth child of Thomas and Jane Jemison , who, according to Mary's narrative, left their native Ireland because of the "intestine divisions, civil wars, and ecclesiastical rigidity and domination" which plagued that country. Mary was born on the ship William and Mary during the voyage to America. After landing in Philadelphia, the family settled in western Pennsylvania around Marsh Creek, where Thomas Jemison established a farm. The French and Indian War, begun in 1754 when Virginians under Colonel George Washington tried to make good their claims on the Ohio country, soon shattered the Jemisons' quiet frontier life. In the spring of 1758, a party of four Frenchmen and six Shawnee Indians attacked the Jemisons' house, killed a neighbor, and took Mary, her parents, her two younger brothers and older sister, and the neighbor's wife and three children prisoner. Mary's two older brothers escaped to Virginia, where their uncle lived.

Except for Mary and a son of the neighboring family, all of these prisoners were killed and scalped, as the French and Indian party feared the ongoing pursuit of other neighbors. Before her death, Jane Jemison became a model of strength, noted her daughter. She "manifested a great degree of fortitude, and encouraged us to support our troubles without complaining." Jemison's father, however, was "absorbed in melancholy" and "lost all his ambition" as soon as they were captured.

Several days later, the raiding party arrived at Fort Duquesne (in modern-day Pittsburgh). There Mary's young neighbor was taken away by the French, while two Seneca squaws, seeking an enemy's scalp or a prisoner to avenge the loss of their brother in the war, claimed Mary and took her to a nearby Seneca town on the Ohio River. There, in a deeply mournful ceremony, they adopted her into their family. Jemison reported that the Seneca name then given her was Dickewamis, meaning "pretty girl," but Seaver and historian Charles Milliken later gave other variations of this name, Dehewamis or Dehgewanus, which can be translated as "Two-Females-Letting-Words-Fall."

At this time, Mary was about 16 years old. She told Seaver that her capture and adoption occurred in 1755, the same year, according to her, when the British captured Fort Duquesne from the French. The seizure of the fort, however, occurred in 1758, and this date is generally accepted as the start of her captivity.

As a teenager among the Iroquois, Jemison was expected to help care for children and, along with other children, to carry game for hunters. Children of both sexes could thus be exposed to the violence of the hunt, but Seneca women had no place in war; instead, their duty was to help keep village harmony and maintain the corn crop. Several years later, when Mary's Seneca sisters wished her to witness the burning of a prisoner, her adoptive mother admonished her two natural daughters: "Our task is quite easy at home, and our business needs our attention. With war we have nothing to do."

In her first summer with the Seneca, Jemison also tended the corn crop, but she tried to maintain her European identity. That spring, when she and many Senecas traveled to Fort Duquesne (newly named Fort Pitt) to negotiate peace with the British, some of the English took an interest in her situation. Her Seneca sisters, not wanting to lose her, took Jemison away from the fort, and Mary was temporarily disheartened. At that time, she still longed for rescue, reciting her catechism privately in English so that she would not forget the language. As time went on, however, she became more comfortable with the Iroquois way of life.

In 1760, her Seneca family moved to their summer home, the town of Wiishto in the Ohio country, over 300 miles below Pittsburgh on the Ohio River. In the winter, they moved to better hunting grounds on the nearby Sciota River. There her adoptive family arranged her marriage to Sheninjee, a Delaware. Jemison expressed her genuine love for Sheninjee, with whom she had two children, a daughter, who died shortly after birth, and a son, Thomas. About three years later, her "anxiety to get away, to be set at liberty, and leave them," said Jemison, "had almost subsided." She began to think that her lot as an adopted Iroquois was better than that of white women, seeing benefits in the steady routine of female-directed Iroquois agriculture:

Our labor was not severe; and that of one year was exactly similar … to that of the others, without that endless variety that is to be observed in the common labor of the white people. … [W]e … had no master to … drive us, so that we could work as leisurely as we pleased.

In the early summer of 1763, Jemison left Wiishto with Sheninjee, two of her adoptive brothers, and her infant son Thomas to trade furs at Fort Pitt. Another adoptive brother met them on the way and convinced them to live at Genishau (near Geneseo) on the Genessee River in western New York, where her adoptive Seneca mother and two adoptive sisters had moved two summers earlier. Mary took Thomas along, but Sheninjee remained behind to continue the trading mission. Though Jemison received a warm welcome at Genishau, she was anxious about her husband's fate. In her second summer there, she learned that Sheninjee had become ill and died the previous winter.

At Genishau, Jemison demonstrated her unwillingness to return to white society. After the conclusion of the French and Indian War in 1763, the British Crown offered a bounty for returned war prisoners. John Van Sice, a Dutch trader, wanted to redeem Jemison at Fort Niagara, but Mary fled until Van Sice gave up the chase. Soon after, the "old King" at Genishau also wanted to redeem Mary, but, forewarned by an adoptive brother, she hid in the woods until the "old King" left with the prisoners he already had. About 1766, Jemison was married to Hiokatoo, a fierce warrior 34 years her senior. The couple had six children: four girls, Jane, Nancy, Betsey, and Polly, and two boys, John and Jesse.

According to Jemison, between the end of the French and Indian War and the beginning of the Revolution the Iroquois led "happy" lives, the men "hunting" and the women attending "to agriculture, their families, and a few domestic concerns of little consequence … with but little labor." Before the widespread use of "spiritous liquors" among the Seneca after the Revolution, "Their fidelity was perfect …; they were strictly honest; they despised deception and falsehood. … They were temperate in their de sires, moderate in their passions."

But the conduct of the Iroquois chiefs around the time of the Revolution belied Jemison's characterization. Moravian missionaries recorded widespread use of alcohol among the Seneca in the 1740s and 1750s, and Jemison stated that British promises of rum and riches convinced the Iroquois chiefs to break their pledged neutrality and fight against the American colonists. This unfortunate side of Iroquois life, alcohol consumption, would also lead to the death of her sons in the 1810s.

Jemison helped the Iroquois war effort in support of the British, preparing food and supplies for Mohawk leader Colonel Joseph Brant. The Seneca, however, would suffer for their breach of neutrality, and during this trial Jemison would earn great respect from Iroquois chiefs.

In the fall of 1779, the American army under General John Sullivan advanced on the Genessee region and destroyed Seneca houses and fields, leaving little food for the Seneca upon their return. Mary Jemison had fled from the advancing troops with one child on her back, another on horseback, and three on foot. With food scarce when she returned to Geneseo, she seized the initiative. Carrying her two youngest children on her back, she led her three other children on foot to the nearby Gardow Flats in one night. There she discovered two fugitive black slaves living in a cabin. In exchange for a share to feed her family through the harsh winter, she agreed to help them harvest their corn crop. The escaped slaves also let Jemison and her children live in their cabin until she constructed her own shelter the following spring. When the former slaves abandoned the flats three years later, they left the land in Jemison's control.

After the Peace of 1783, Jemison's adoptive Seneca brother Kaujisestaugeau offered her the opportunity to return to white society. Jemison, however, expressed her desire to stay. She did not want to be separated from her adult son Thomas, whom the chiefs would not let go because of his leadership potential, nor did she want her Iroquois children to be treated with "cold indifference" in white society. Kaujisestaugeau then decided that for her loyalty over the years Jemison should receive compensation. He spoke to the Seneca chiefs at Buffalo about conferring a tract of land to his sister at the next great council.

When this council finally convened in 1797 at Big Tree (near Geneseo), all of the Seneca lands west of the Genessee River—except for several reservations totalling 310 square miles—was sold for $100,000 to Robert Morris and the Holland Land Company. The money was to be divided among certain Senecas in annuities. Chief Farmer's Brother also presented Jemison's claim, but another chief, the orator Red Jacket (who got his name for his service as messenger for the British during the Revolution), opposed the claim, likely because it frustrated his own visions of gain. Farmer's Brother won the day, however, and Jemison was given the 17,927-acre Gardow Tract, where she had lived since 1779. For two years, Red Jacket refused to surrender Mary's share of the $100,000 until Jasper Parrish, a U.S. Indian agent and former Iroquois captive, convinced him that white officials recognized her claim. Finding the tract too large for her and her daughters to farm, Jemison gained permission from the chiefs to lease small parcels of land to white settlers. The leases and annuity provided Mary with a generous income.

Jemison tried to promote peace within her village. She hid and fed Ebenezer Allen, a white fugitive who had frustrated British and Iroquois plans to attack white American settlements. Allen had misrepresented his own wampum string to American officials as an Iroquois peace offering, which, though fraudulent, the Iroquois would not dishonor. The Senecas, including Jemison, supported Allen, but the British and other Iroquois nations kept up the pursuit. Though Allen was eventually captured, he was acquitted of any crime.

Jemison had trouble keeping peace in her own family, however. Her two oldest sons had many disagreements over the years, as the often drunk Thomas strongly disapproved of half-brother John's bigamy and even accused John of witchcraft. Thomas had also struck John's father Hiokatoo, thus aggravating the hatred. Though Mary beseeched them to "become reconciled to each other," in July 1811, the "somewhat intoxicated" Thomas started another quarrel with his half-brother. John had had enough. Suddenly seizing Thomas, he killed him with his tomahawk. In council, the Seneca chiefs acquitted John of any wrongdoing because of Thomas' constant "abuses." But other Senecas shunned John, including younger brother Jesse, whom Mary favored because of his frequent assistance with household chores. In May 1812, John fatally stabbed Jesse after an argument. Mary was "overcome with grief" following Jesse's death, especially as it came so soon after the deaths of Thomas and Hiokatoo the previous November.

Jemison also had to worry about the growing presence of whites unsympathetic to Iroquois interests. In 1810, for example, a man by the name of George Jemison—in debt and nearly destitute—came to Gardow Flats claiming to be Mary's cousin. A trusting and sympathetic Mary gave him a parcel of land, horses, livestock, furniture, farming implements, and supported George Jemison for eight years. Nonetheless, in George's sixth or seventh year at Gardow, a supposed friend of Mary's convinced her to give George 40 more acres of land. In fact, the deed which they presented for Mary's signature was for 400 acres, of which George had conspired to give the friend half. Though the friend eventually gave his ill-gotten land back to Mary, George sold his 200 acres. Mary finally persuaded George to leave Gardow; she later became certain that he was not her cousin.

Meanwhile, her son John continued his dangerous ways. In May 1817, while drinking "freely" with two other Iroquois named Doctor and Jack, he quarrelled with them and was beaten to death because of his earlier crimes. Though Mary felt that John's murder was "just," she insisted that the two killers be exiled. Soon after this binding order, Jack committed suicide; the Doctor died of consumption two years later.

Meanwhile, Jemison still faced the growing presence of whites. Through federal government purchases, the Iroquois were gradually losing control of their lands and moving onto reservations, such as Buffalo Creek. There was also the pressure of white immigration. In 1816, Micah Brooks, a lawyer from Ontario County, New York, offered to procure a special act of the New York Legislature which would protect Jemison's property rights. In exchange for his services, Brooks wanted half of the Gardow Flats. Jemison then consulted her neighbor Thomas Clute and his brother Jellis Clute, Esq., who agreed with Brooks to present a petition on Jemison's behalf to Congress. Brooks, however, petitioned the State Legislature, which passed the special act naturalizing Jemison and confirming the title to her land on April 19, 1817.

Even though the legislation was probably motivated by self-interest (as Brooks and Jellis Clute eventually bought Jemison's land), it was remarkable. As New York law stood until 1848, women's property rights were limited. For the most part, unmarried and widowed women acquired land only through inheritance, and once married or remarried their property went to their husband (unless the spouses made a prenuptial agreement). Since the Iroquois had also been selling their lands, Jemison's security of tenure as a Seneca and a woman was extraordinary.

With the consent of her daughters, who also lived on the Flats, Jemison decided to sell most of her land, feeling too old to manage it. In September 1823, with the approval of a council of Iroquois chiefs and a U.S. Commissioner of Indian Lands, she sold all but 4,000 acres (about two square miles) to Brooks, Jellis Clute, and Canandaigua banker H.B. Gibson, in exchange for a $300 perpetual annuity. However, finding herself increasingly surrounded by white settlements, Jemison in 1831 sold her annuity and her remaining two square miles at Gardow for a lump sum and moved to Buffalo Creek Reservation. She converted to Christianity a few months before her death on September 19, 1833.

In 1874, William Letchworth, a prominent businessman and Genessee Valley landowner, moved Jemison's remains to his estate, now Letchworth State Park. There he also placed her Gardow house and commissioned a statue of Jemison from H.K. Bush-Brown. The statue, representing Jemison and her infant son Thomas during their trek to the Genesee Valley, was dedicated in 1910. Letchworth State Park is on Mt. Morris Lake, about ten miles southwest of the modern-day town of Geneseo.

Most of the information concerning Mary Jemison comes from Dr. James Seaver's A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison, which was first published in 1824 and went through 21 editions over the next 100 years. The story was later made into a children's book and adapted for chamber theater. As June Namias points out in White Captives, the intense interest in Mary Jemison's story may have stemmed from white society's desire to see how a white woman preserved "civilized" manners while living with "savages." Milliken asserts that many readers were interested in Indian society's response to growing white encroachment.

Whatever the reason, readers must take care to distinguish fact from fiction. Beginning with Seaver, many accounts of Jemison assume that she believed white culture superior to that of the Iroquois. The Narrative is, after all, a secondhand report, told through James Seaver, who embellished the story somewhat. Given Mary Jemison's preference for the Seneca way of life, it becomes questionable that she would think of her life as a "reduction from a civilized to a savage state." In fact, she maintained that Iroquois and white societies were distinct, not inferior or superior to each other: "I have seen … the effects of [white] education upon some of our Indians," she wrote, "but I have never seen one of those but was an Indian in every respect after he returned."

Lois Lenski 's children's story, Indian Captive: The Story of Mary Jemison, published in 1941 and adapted into a play by Gertrude Breen in 1961, also depicts Jemison as a continually resistant member of Seneca society. In these versions, the 12-year-old Jemison, treated badly by a "cross" adoptive sister, frequently tries to run away and hides and cries in the woods. She also asks a white trader Fallenash to help her escape. Only after she learns about her family's murder does she consent to remain with the Seneca. Of course, this account differs from Jemison's narrative. Though she initially wanted to be rescued, she was not abused by her adoptive sisters, and she went into the woods to work, not to run away. She also foiled the trader Van Sice's attempt to return her to white society.

Mary Jemison stayed with the Seneca because with them she derived a secure, powerful identity. She loved her Seneca family, particularly her children, whom she feared would not be well regarded by white relatives. She also enjoyed the power of Seneca women over domestic affairs, as her references to "my house" and "my flats" illustrate. Thus, she took pride in her Seneca identity.

sources:

Lenski, Lois. Indian Captive: The Story of Mary Jemison (adapted and arranged for Chamber Theater by Gertrude Breen). Chicago, IL: Coach House Press, 1961.

Milliken, Charles F. "A Biographical Sketch of Mary Jemison, the White Woman of the Genessee," in Researches and Transactions of the New York State Archeological Association. Vol. IV, no. 3. Rochester, NY: Lewis H. Morgan Chapter, 1924.

Namias, June. White Captives: Gender and Ethnicity on the American Frontier. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1993.

Seaver, James. A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse Univ. Press, 1990 (first published, 1824).

Vanderhoof, E.W. Historical Sketches of Western New York. NY: AMS Press, 1972.

Wallace, Anthony F.C. The Death and Rebirth of the Seneca. NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970.