The Captivity Narrative of Mary Draper Ingles
—Chrissie

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One of the staples of American literature is the captivity narrative, stories told to emphasize the difficulties of frontier life and to demonize the Native Americans while lionizing the Euro-American colonists. They were embellished at best and flat-out fiction at worst, but they did have a basis in a factual situation: as whites pushed west, the tribes pushed back. This included raiding white settlements, often capturing and killing people there. This was in keeping with the various tribes’ traditions in conducting wars against each other. Raids were conducted in the context of ongoing warfare or to make a statement about one group encroaching upon another’s territory, or in response to a previous raid.

Captives taken in these raids might take on any number of roles in the captor’s village: some were enslaved, but others were made part of the community through adoption, sometimes as restitution for people taken or killed by their natal tribe. Above all, these raids should not be thought of as bloodthirsty, random, or purposeless, as they have often been presented.

One of the better-known captivity narratives of the colonial era is that of Mary Draper Ingles, during the French and Indian War. There are two main sources for this account, one by Mary’s son Thomas, who was born after she returned and wrote the story from what he had been told by his mother, and the other from Letitia Floyd, the granddaughter of one of the community members who witnessed the raid but was not captured and so did not have information about that part of it.  Both accounts are derived from oral family histories and have all of the inherent elements, including things embellished, things forgotten, and things purposefully left out. I’ll be mentioning these as I tell the story. There are a few other sources as well, which mostly elaborate on the information provided in the other two.

She and her family lived in Draper’s Meadow, Virginia colony, a settlement established by her family and their neighbors, the Ingles. Men in both families were officers in the British colonial army, and one of their neighbors was Colonel James Patton, and all of these men were involved in fighting against the local tribes at some point. Mary Draper and William Ingles married in 1750. By the summer of 1755, they had two sons, Thomas, who was four, and George, who was two, and Mary may have been near-term with a third child (one source says she was pregnant, the other does not mention it at all).  On 30 July 1755, a Shawnee raiding party attacked Draper’s Meadow. The Shawnee were allied with the French during this war, and so were attacking an enemy, English colonists, in a community that included both soldiers and civilians. One of their targets was Colonel Patton, whom they killed. Mary’s mother, Eleanor, a neighbor named Caspar Barger, and Mary’s infant niece were also killed. The tribesmen took Mary, her two sons, Bettie Robertson Draper (Mary’s sister-in-law and mother of the infant killed), and another neighbor, Henry Leonard, along with goods from the houses and some of the horses.

On this trip, it appears Mary had some consideration given by her captors; she described to her son being allowed to ride horseback even though the others walked, including Bettie who was suffering from a bullet wound in her arm. This relates to one of the major differences between the sources: John Ingles mentions Mary riding horseback, but does not give any reason why; Letitia Floyd’s account says that Mary was pregnant, but does not have details about the trip, nevertheless we could connect these two pieces of information to guess that the Shawnee may have taken pity on her heavily pregnant state. Here is where one of the other accounts is useful: Mary’s great-grandson, John Hale, wrote that Mary gave birth three days into the trip, whereas Floyd says three months after her capture. If Hale is correct on the timing, that creates context for Mary’s seeming special treatment, both on the trip and when they arrived in the village. Both sources say she had a daughter, and both say she was forced to abandon the child. There is also, to my mind, no discontinuity between the lack of its mention in the Ingles narrative and its inclusion in the others, it was simply too painful for Mary to discuss.

They traveled west along the New River and then the Ohio River for over a month, until they arrived at the village called Lower Shawneetown at the confluence of the Ohio and Scioto Rivers. There, the prisoners were made to “run the gauntlet,” except Mary. This could support the story that she had given birth en route, as they might have seen her as having already proved herself through pain, or they excused her due to her postpartum state. After this, the party was split up: Mary’s son Thomas was taken to Detroit, where he was adopted by a Shawnee family, George was also taken, probably with the same intent, but died soon after. Bettie Draper was sold or traded; she was later found living with a Cherokee family. Henry Leonard is said to have escaped; he is not heard from again after this. Mary was put to work by her captors, preparing hides and sewing shirts for French traders. While there, she befriended one of her fellow captives, whose name we don’t know, she is referred to as “The Old Woman” or “The Old Dutch Woman.” The latter may be a misunderstanding of “Deutch” as in German, but we cannot be sure.

In October, the two women were taken from Lower Shawneetown to a salt spring, from which they took the opportunity to escape. In the guise of a foraging trip to a nearby woods, the two women began the weeks-long journey of retracing their steps to Virginia. They had nothing but the clothes they wore, a tomahawk and a knife, and two blankets. Mary’s son Thomas discovered years later that only a cursory search was made when they did not return, as it was believed they’d been killed by animals. A few days into their journey, they found a cabin from which they took bags of corn and a horse. They took turns riding the horse until they lost it while trying to ford a river. At some point they also lost the tomahawk and knife and their clothes tore and rotted away. They barely subsisted on what they could forage or scavenge, while following the rivers east. After many weeks, the Dutch Woman attacked Mary, saying she would eat her. Mary talked her down, promising her money when they got to her home. This mollified her for a while, but she again attacked Mary when they were only a few days away from home. Mary got away from her by putting the river between them. On 1 December 1755, after 42 days of travel on foot with no provisions, Mary Draper Ingles arrived at the home of a family friend, Adam Harmon, for whom it took a moment to recognize the nearly naked form of skin and bones, barely keeping herself together. He and his sons set about getting her well enough to travel to the nearby fort at Dunkard’s Bottom. From there, a search party went out to find the Old Dutch Woman, and returned with her after a few days.

Mary and her husband did not return to Draper’s Meadow, instead living for a short time in Dunkard’s Bottom, then moving to Fort Vause, then finally settling in Bedford County, Virginia. There, they ran a ferry service over the New River, along with a tavern and blacksmith’s shop. They had four more children. Their eldest son, Thomas, was discovered with a Shawnee family in 1768 and was ransomed. He had completely acculturated to the tribal way of life and spent several years being “rehabilitated." We have no sources that tell us his thoughts on these events. He joined the colonial militia and participated in the Battle of Point Pleasant in 1774. The same year, he married Eleanor Grills. In 1782, Eleanor and their three eldest children were captured by natives of an unidentified tribe. The two oldest children were killed, but Thomas rescued his wife and youngest daughter. They moved to Bedford County and took over the family businesses for four years, then moved a few more times, eventually settling in Missouri. Thomas died in 1809. Bettie Draper was ransomed by her husband in 1761, after he discovered her location during treaty negotiations after the Anglo-Cherokee War, which was part of the French and Indian/Seven Years’ War.

Mary Draper Ingles died in 1815. She and her journey have been memorialized in a number of places across Virginia and West Virginia, and has been the subject of fictional accounts. The best, and best-known, of these accounts is the novel Follow the River by noted historical fiction author James Alexander Thom; this is where I first learned of her story. I highly recommend the novel to anyone who is intrigued by this story.

It’s available on Amazon and you can use our new affiliate link to buy a copy: https://amzn.to/3V5jWDb.