USA > Wyoming > Wyoming; its history, stirring incidents, and romantic adventures > Part 16
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When a boy in our native town, near "the sources of the Susquehanna," in the State of New York, we knew a young man who was with the Indians from the commencement to the close of the Revolutionary war. He was the son of our father's next-door neighbor, and we were a close observer of his manners and habits, seeing him every day, and often spending hours, and even days, in his company. We often listened to his romantic story at our father's fireside, both from him and from his old mother.
Daniel M'Allum-ordinarily called Dan M'Allum, and Indian Dan-was stolen when he was two years and a half old from the head of Red Creek, Middle- field. Before the commencement of hostilities be- tween the parent government and the colonies, an old squaw was in the habit of coming from an Indian camp in the swamp, which lay hard by, and spending hours with " Aunt Molly M' Allum," and caressing little Dan, showing him her trinkets, and allowing him to play with them. When the war broke out, the savage woman set her heart on making the child a prize. She was hid in the brush for days, waiting for an opportuni- ty to effect her object. At length the little fellow was taken by his father to "the sugar-bush" in the month of March, and becoming weary, and wishing to go to his mother, he was put into the path to return alone to the house, which was only a few rods distant. The squaw slid from her hiding-place, seized her prey, and bore him away. The mother was at ease until near night, when her husband came in, and, to their great consternation, it was discovered that the child was spir- ited away, and the agency by which he had disappear-
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ed was shrewdly suspected. It might be that a wild beast had devoured him, but it was deemed more prob- able that he had fallen into the hands of the Indians. The woods were scoured, and the cry for help sent through the settlements, but all in vain. The Mo- hawks, and with them the squaw with her prize, had fled to the north, and the child was given up for lost.
At the close of the war he was a stout lad and a perfect Indian. When the prisoners were required to be given up, Dan said his old "Indian mother cried bitterly ;" but there was no evading the requisition of the British authorities, and she made her preparations for the separation. She filled a little bag with parched corn and dried venison, and, putting it in his hand, she went with him near to the place where the prison- ers were rendezvoused-either on the Mohawk River or at Cherry Valley, we are not certain which-and, pointing him out the way, she flung her blanket over her head, and turned about and ran. He paused, look- ed after her, and his heart almost came into his mouth. He maintained that no one could have felt deeper sor- row at burying his own mother. He could not endure the separation, and set off at full speed after her. She, however, managed to elude him, and he was found by some one in the path, giving boisterous vent to his sorrow, and was taken to the depôt of the prisoners, where his father found him and bore him to his mother.
And now another trial awaited the poor boy. The usages of civilization were like the chains of slavery to him. To wear pants and jacket, and sleep upon a bed, and to eat bread, and salt meat cooked in an iron pan -all this was so strange-every thing so unnatural, that he sighed and cried, and said a thousand times
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over, "Oh that I was again in the wild woods, chas- ing the deer and the bear, and enjoying the luxury of sleeping upon the ground, under a blanket, with my feet before a great warm fire!"
" Dan M'Allum," so long as we knew him, which was until we entered our eighteenth year, exhibited strong traits of Indian character. He was fond of hunt- ing, loved rum, would have his Indian pow-wows, and, when under the influence of the intoxicating draught, his Indian whoop rang through the neighborhood, but excited no terror. Dan was not quarrelsome when sober, and when intoxicated he had neither the power nor tact of a warrior or a bully. When so drunk that he could not stand, he would ride his horse upon a run perfectly erect, and scarcely ever fell from his horse's back. Often have we heard the poor fellow say, apparently from the bottom of his heart, "I wish to God I had never left the Indians, for I was a good Indian, but I shall never make a white .man." He finally married and settled, and his character became much modified by the kindly influences of home, and the independence and associations gathering round the husband and the father. When he was no longer re- garded a's "a fool," "an Indian booby," and the like, his manhood developed, and he became a respectable citizen ; but the process of transformation was slow and painful.
A curious fact in this case was that the poor Indian captive seemed not to have much affection for his real mother. He never made a secret of the fact that he loved his "Indian mother" the best. He declared that the moment in which she tore herself from him was the most sorrowful moment of his life, and her tears, sobs, and wild shrieks, as she ran away, were the very
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sorest of his remembrances. Such is habit, such edu- cation, such the impressions of childhood. How per- fectly imbedded in the human heart is the image of that being whose watchful care and sympathies are as- sociated with our earliest recollections, although it be the image of a wild savage woman !
Dan M'Allum is not the hero of our story, but a specimen of a class, the whole of which constitute a series of illustrations of the principles of savage life, and specimens of human nature in its vast general- ization. The more particular relations of his Indian life we simply recollect were curious and interesting, but the details are not now sufficiently clear in our mind for record, and, with the brief notice of his case which we have taken, we shall dismiss it, and proceed to another case characterized by a different class of cir- cumstances and a different sequel.
Among the enterprising emigrants from the east to the famous Valley of Wyoming was a member of the society of Friends by the name of Jonathan Slocum. The place of his previous residence was Warwick, Rhode Island. He emigrated in 1777, with his wife and nine children. The road through the swamp had now been so far improved as to allow, although with great difficulty, wagons to pass. Mr. Slocum removed with his family and effects in a large covered wagon. He located himself near the fort, on lands a portion of which is now in possession of the family, within the present borough of Wilkesbarre, near the public square. Mr. Slocum, being from principle a noncom- batant, considered himself and his family comparative- ly free from danger from the attacks of the savages. His son Giles, not practicing upon the principles in
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which he had been trained at home, took up arms with the settlers in defense of their hearths and homes against the anticipated attacks of the Indians and To- ries. He was in the famous Indian battle in 1778, and it is supposed that this circumstance was the occa- sion of the terrible vengeance taken upon the family. The battle had taken place in July, and thenceforward, until the conclusion of peace with England, parties of Indians continued to visit the Valley to steal, make prisoners, kill, and scalp, as opportunity offered.
On the second day of November of this year, a party of Delaware Indians visited Wyoming, and directed their way to Mr. Slocum's residence. Nathan Kings- ley had been made prisoner by the Indians, and his wife and two sons were taken in by Mr. Slocum, and afforded the protection and comforts of a home. When the Indians came near, they saw the two Kingsley boys grinding a knife before the door. The elder of the lads was dressed in a soldier's coat, which, it is presumed, was the special reason of his being marked as a victim. One of the savages took deadly aim at this young man, and he fell. The discharge of the gun alarmed Mrs. Slocum, and she ran to the door, when she saw the In- dian scalping the young man with the knife which he had been grinding. She secreted herself until she saw a stalwart Indian lay hold of her son Ebenezer, a little lad, who, by an injury in one of his feet, had been made lame. The idea that the little fellow would fail to keep up with the party, and would be cruelly butch- ered, rushed with such force upon the mind of the mother that she forgot all considerations of personal safety, and, running up to the Indian, and pointing at the foot of the boy, she exclaimed, "The child is lame; he can do thee no good." Little Frances, about
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five years old, had hid, as she supposed, under the stairs, but had been discovered by the Indians. The savage dropped the boy and seized the little girl, and took her up in his arms. All the entreaties of the mother in this case were treated with savage scorn. The oldest daughter ran away with her youngest brother, about two years old, with such speed and in such affright that the savages, after yelling hideously at her, roared out laughing. They took the remaining Kingsley boy and a colored girl, and away they went, little Frances screaming to "mamma" for help, hold- ing the locks of hair from her eyes with one hand, and stretching out the other.
There were three Indians in the gang, and each having a prisoner, they fled to the mountain. An alarm was given at the fort, which was not more than a hundred rods from Mr. Slocum's house, but the wily savages escaped with such celerity, and hid themselves so securely, that no traces of them could be found. That was a gloomy evening in the Slocum family. Mr. Slocum was from home when the descent upon his peaceful dwelling was made by the ruthless sav- ages. He returned to see the gory corpse of young Kingsley, and to find Mrs. Slocum writhing in agony on account of poor little Frances, who was in the hands of a band of Indians, whom her phrensied imag- ination pictured out as so many demons just let loose from Tophet. Mr. Slocum was petrified with horror ; but the deep current of his grief, with characteristic self-control, was not allowed to break over all its natu- ral barriers. Sobs and broken sentences gave charac- ter to the scene around that desolate hearth. Sleep fled from that family circle. The last look at the in- nocent little creature, with outstretched hands, and
LOSSING-BABBITT
THE CAPTURE OF FRANCES SLOCUM.
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streaming eyes, and disheveled locks, and her shrieks of "mamma! mamma!" haunted their imaginations like ghosts of darkness. And then the question, which no human reason could solve, was, "What would be- come of the child?" Would she be cruelly murdered? or would she be worn out with fatigue ? or would she suffer a lingering death from want of comfortable food and clothing? Any supposition which was at all probable seemed worse than death. The heart-strick- en family passed a little more than a month in sad- ness and gloom, not then to find relief to their aching hearts, but to feel another blow from savage hands still more terrible.
The venerable historian of Wyoming, Hon. Charles Miner, says: "The cup of vengeance was not yet full. December 16th, Mr. Slocum and Isaac Tripp, Esq., his father-in-law, an aged man, with William Slocum, a youth of nineteen or twenty, were feeding cattle from a stack in the meadow, in sight of the fort, when they were fired upon by Indians. Mr. Slocum was shot dead; Mr. Tripp wounded, speared, and tomahawked; both were scalped. William, wounded by a spent ball in the heel, escaped and gave the alarm, but the alert and wily foe had retreated to his hiding-place in the mountain. This deed, bold as it was cruel, was per- petrated within the town plot, in the centre of which the fortress was located. Thus, in little more than a month, Mrs. Slocum had lost a beloved child, carried into captivity; the doorway had been drenched in blood by the murder of an inmate of the family; two others of the household had been taken away prison- ers; and now her husband and father were both strick- en down to the grave, murdered and mangled by the merciless Indians. Verily, the annals of Indian atroc-
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ities, written in blood, record few instances of desola- tion and woe to equal this."
The husband and the father were dead, and their ash- es reposed beneath the green turf. Time gradually mod- ified the poignancy of the widow's grief, occasioned by the cruel death of her loved husband and venerated fa- ther; but Frances, poor child ! she knew not where she was. Suspense more terrible than death hung over her fate. The lapse of time only increased the vividness of the traces of memory relating to the minutest circum- stances connected, nearly or remotely, with the sad trag- edy of her capture. The mother called up all the little griefs and disappointments which family discipline had inflicted upon her dear child. One circumstance dis- tressed her almost incurably. Frances had a pair of new shoes, and, as a matter of economy, she had been required to lay them up for colder weather. She went away with bare feet, and in that condition would doubt- less be obliged to travel rough roads, and perhaps through the frost and snow to make long journeys. "Oh! if the poor little creature only had her shoes !" The little shoes were a source of torture to the soul of the bereaved mother for long and weary years.
Time passed, and Mrs. Slocum's sons had become prosperous business men ; and peace having been con- cluded with Great Britain, and every effort made upon the part of Congress to conciliate the Indian tribes, the young men began to meditate serious efforts to recover their sister, or, at least, to ascertain her fate. In 1784, two of the brothers visited Niagara, and made inqui- ries of the Indians, and offered them liberal rewards if they would give any information concerning their sister. Their mission was without the least shadow of success, no trace of the lost one having been discover-
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ed. They returned, after an absence of several weeks, with the impression that Frances was dead. They thought it almost impossible that the secret should be kept if Frances were above ground, especially as a re- ward had been offered for the information which would be exceedingly tempting to the cupidity of the Indians. They did not consider that, when an Indian undertakes to keep a secret, nothing can break the seal of his lips, nor especially the criminality and disgrace of betray- ing to white men secrets confided by Indians. Little Frances was extensively known among the Canadian and Western Indians, but she was now a treasure which Indians felt a common interest in concealing.
Four years subsequently the Slocums were on a search among the Western Indians for several months, Indian agents and traders giving them every facility in their researches, and again offering the large reward of five hundred dollars for any information with regard to their sister's whereabouts, but all to no purpose.
In 1789, when a large number of Indians assembled at Tioga Point to make a treaty with Colonel Proctor, and a large number of prisoners were brought in to be surrendered to their friends, Mrs. Slocum made a jour- ney, with great labor, to the place, and, after weeks of examination among the prisoners, found no one she could own as Frances.
Still the bereaved mother entertained the idea that her child was alive, and might, after all, be found. The zeal of the brothers in the search did not decline with the lapse of years, and the four brothers undertook an- other expedition in 1797, and were traveling in the western wilderness, among the Indian settlements, for nearly the whole summer. They conversed with the Indians-offered, as they had done before, the reward
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of five hundred dollars for any information with regard to their sister: they found captives and examined them, but Frances they neither found nor heard from.
A female captive, hearing of the efforts made by the Slocums to recover their lost one, and hoping that she might be recognized as the real Frances, came to Mrs. Slocum, and told her that she was taken prisoner some- where on the Susquehanna when a child, and she was anxious to find her friends. She knew not the name of her father, she knew not her own name, but she had come to see if she, Mrs. Slocum, was not her real moth- er. Mrs. Slocum saw at once that it was not Frances, but bade her welcome. "Stay with me," said Mrs. Slocum, "as long as thee pleases; perhaps some one else may extend the like kindness to my dear Fran- ces." The poor stranger, after a few months, finding herself regarded as a mere object of charity, without the sympathies and attachments of natural relation- ship, left, and the Slocums heard no more of her.
Mrs. Slocum went down to the grave without find- ing the least trace of her lost one, but left with her sons a charge never to give up the search so long as the possibility remained of their recovering their sis- ter, or their learning the circumstances of her story or her fate. Mrs. Slocum's death occurred in 1807.
When the mission among the Wyandots became a matter of public interest, and the chiefs Between-the- Logs and Menuncu were converted, the report that Between-the-Logs had a white woman for his wife, the idea of the possibility of her being the lost Frances Slocum induced Mr. Joseph Slocum, attended by a nephew, to visit the mission. In 1826 they made a weary and expensive journey to Upper Sandusky, and found the woman, but were convinced that she was
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not Frances. They were treated with great hospitality and kindness, and received strong impressions with re- gard to the influence of Christianity upon the moral character and social condition of the Wyandot Indians.
Hope had been fondly cherished in the mind of the Slocums of some light upon the history or fate of Frances for many long years, but all efforts to gain in- formation with regard to her having utterly failed, they began to despair. They had spent time and money; they had performed long and perilous jour- neys; they had enlisted Indian agents and traders in the object, but not the slightest trace, as yet, had been found of the little captive. The last they knew of her was that she was borne away by a stout Indian, who disappeared among the trees and shrubs, while the shrieks of the child died away in the distance. From that moment an impenetrable cloud of darkness had enshrouded her story, which all efforts had failed to penetrate. The probability of the removal of the veil of mystery from the subject was now becoming so ex- ceedingly faint, if it had not, indeed, wholly passed away, that the search was given over, and the subject ceased to be matter of conversation, excepting as the capture of the child, and the great efforts which had been made for her discovery, were connected with
the history of the classic vale. This was the con- dition of things when a new scene opens to our vis- ion, apparently by accident, but really under the guid- ing hand of Providence. A train of circumstances brought to light the whereabouts of the long-lost FRANCES SLOCUM.
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THE DISCOVERY OF FRANCES.
Colonel Ewing, a gentleman connected with the public service among the Indians, having acquired the language in use among the Western tribes, and having business with these tribes, made frequent jour- neys through the wilderness and among the Indian settlements. On one of these journeys he happened to be benighted near what was called "The Deaf Man's Village," on the Missisinewa, a branch of the Wabash. He asked for and received the hospi- talities of a respectable Indian dwelling. The mis- tress of the house was a venerable and respectable- looking Indian woman, to whom great deference was paid by the whole family circle, composed of children and grandchildren. Colonel Ewing was weary and rather indisposed, and, after taking some refreshments, he laid himself down to rest upon some skins in a cor- ner of the room. The family disappeared, with the exception of the venerable head of the circle, and she lingered, being busy with some of her small arrange- ments for the night. The colonel's attention was at- tracted by the color of her skin and hair, and, shrewdly suspecting that she was a white woman, he commenced conversation with her. She said she was a white wom- an, and was carried into captivity by the Indians when a child, and her father's name was SLOCUM. She had never revealed her history before, for fear that her white relations might come and take her away. But she was now old, and should not stay much longer; and she was willing, if any of them were alive, that they should know where she was.
The colonel, presuming that the information which had been communicated to him might be of great im-
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portance to persons still living, concluded to take meas- ures to make the matter public. He accordingly ad- dressed the following letter to the postmaster of the city of Lancaster, Pennsylvania :
"Logansport, Indiana, January 20, 1835.
"DEAR SIR,-In the hope that some good may re- sult from it, I have taken this means of giving to your fellow-citizens-say the descendants of the early set- tlers of the Susquehanna-the following information ; and if there be any now living whose name is Slocum, to them, I hope, the following may be communicated through the public prints of your place.
"There is now living near this place, among the Miami tribe of Indians, an aged white woman, who a few days ago told me, while I lodged in the camp one night, that she was taken away from her father's house, on or near the Susquehanna River, when she was very young-say from five to eight years old, as she thinks-by the Delaware Indians, who were then hos- tile toward the whites. She says her father's name was Slocum; that he was a Quaker, rather small in stature, and wore a large-brimmed hat; was of sandy hair and light complexion, and much freckled; that he lived about half a mile from a town where there was a fort; that they lived in a wooden house of two stories high, and had a spring near the house. She says three Dela- wares came to the house in the daytime, when all were. absent but herself, and perhaps two other children : her father and brothers were absent making hay. The Indians carried her off, and she was adopted into a family of Delawares, who raised her and treated her as their own child. They died about forty years ago, somewhere in Ohio. She was then married to a Mi-
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ami, by whom she had four children; two of them are now living-they are both daughters-and she lives with them. Her husband is dead; she is old and feeble, and thinks she will not live long.
" These considerations induced her to give the pres- ent history of herself, which she would never do be- fore, fearing that her kindred would come and force her away. She has lived long and happy as an In- dian, and, but for her color, would not be suspected of being any thing else than such. She is very respect- able and wealthy, sober and honest. Her name is without reproach. She says her father had a large family, say eight children in all-six older than her- self, one younger, as well as she can recollect; and she doubts not there are yet living many of their descend- ants, but seems to think that all her brothers and sis- ters must be dead, as she is very old herself, not far from the age of eighty. She thinks she was taken prisoner before the two last wars, which must mean the Revolutionary war, as Wayne's war and the late war have been since that one. She has entirely lost her mother tongue, and speaks only in Indian, which I also understand, and she gave me a full history of herself.
"Her own Christian name she has forgotten, but says her father's name was Slocum, and he was a Quaker. She also recollects that it was upon the Susquehanna River that they lived, but don't recollect the name of the town near which they lived. I have thought that from this letter you might cause something to be in- serted in the newspapers of your country that might possibly catch the eye of some of the descendants of the Slocum family, who have knowledge of a girl hav- ing been carried off by the Indians some seventy years
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ago. This they might know from family tradition. If so, and they will come here, I will carry them where they may see the object of my letter alive and happy, though old and far advanced in life.
" I can form no idea whereabout upon the Susque- hanna River this family could have lived at that early period, namely, about the time of the Revolutionary war, but perhaps you can ascertain more about it. If so, I hope you will interest yourself, and, if possible, let her brothers and sisters, if any be alive-if not, their children-know where they may once more see a rela- tive whose fate has been wrapped in mystery for seven- ty years, and for whom her bereaved and afflicted pa- rents doubtless shed many a bitter tear. They have long since found their graves, though their lost child they never found. I have been much affected with the disclosure, and hope the surviving friends may ob- tain, through your goodness, the information I desire for them. If I can be of any service to them, they may command me. In the mean time, I hope you will excuse me for the freedom I have taken with you, a total stranger, and believe me to be, sir, with much re- spect, your obedient servant,
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