The Beaded Moccasins (17 page)

In the spring of 1765 some 356 captives were reunited with their long lost families at Fort Pitt. Almost six years after her capture, Mary was met by her mother and her brother, Dougal Campbell. There is no evidence that she saw her father again. According to the records, Mary "showed some reluctance at being returned to her family."

Mary Stewart was reunited with a husband she hadn't seen in six years. She brought with her a four-year-old daughter named Samantha.

Mary went back to Penn's Creek, Pennsylvania, and married a man named Joseph Willford. She had twelve children.

The British signed a treaty with the Delaware and all the other native people of Ohio. No white settlers would be allowed in
if
all white captives were returned.

The British kept their word. Except for missionaries in the mission towns of Schoenbrunn, Salem, and Gnadenhutten, the westward expansion of the frontier stopped at the Ohio River.

In 1778 White Eyes was a sachem in his own right. He was killed by a seventeen-year-old frontiersman named Lewis Wentzel.

In March 1782 American troops led by Col. David Williamson entered the town of Gnadenhutten. They killed over ninety Delaware converts. The first to be
killed was an old man named Abraham Netawatwees.

After the Revolutionary War the British lost the Ohio Valley. George Washington himself claimed more than ten thousand acres of prime Ohio River land as American settlers poured into what was then the western wilderness. One of those settlers was Mary's oldest son.

The Delaware, Wyandot, Shawnee, and Miami were pushed west into what is now Indiana.

There is one fascinating bit of evidence about Mary's later years. Neighbors referred to her children as "those Mohawks," so we can only assume she taught them to appreciate Native American culture.

Mary Campbell Willford died in 1801, two years before Ohio was admitted into the Union as the seventeenth state. Her Willford descendants still live in Wayne County, Ohio.

***

Mary wonders if the mound builders saw the mastodons (the
yah-qua-whee).
We know this would not have been possible. Archeologists have dated mastodon bones to the Paleo-Indian era (23,000-3,000 b.c.). The mound builders lived in the Hopewell era (200 b.c.-a.d. 500). The mounds they left still dot the northeastern Ohio countryside, especially near the rivers.

The Delaware do have a story of why they killed the mastodons, and how the mastodons' extinction brought about the cranberry.

There were once twenty tribes among the Delaware.
Mary mentions the Unami, Mohicans, and Munsees. The Wappingers, Esopus, Raritans, Massapequas, Wampanoags, Susquehannas, Catskills, Hackensacks, Rockaways, Nanticokes, Minisinks, Unahachaugs, and Powhatans were also part of the Delaware confederacy.

The Delaware lived in what is now eastern New York State, including New York City and Long Island; eastern Pennsylvania; New Jersey; Delaware; Maryland; and Virginia.

The ancient name of the Delaware is
Ianni Lenape,
which means "the People." They changed their name to Delaware more than 350 years ago because of the first governor of Virginia, Baron Thomas West de la Warr.

Today there are few Delaware left. The Stockbridge-Munsee band of Mohicans live in Wisconsin; more Mohicans live in Ontario, Canada. The Unami and other Delaware live in Anadarko, Oklahoma. I'm indebted to The Language Project of the Delaware Tribe of Western Oklahoma for all their help with the Unami words in
The Beaded Moccasins: The Story of Mary Campbell.

Buchahelagas
(buck a HEL a gus): Killbuck

chitanisinen
(chee tah NEE see nen): strength

Coquetakeghton
(coke TA keg ton): White Eyes

Cuyahoga
(kye a HOE ga): Crooked River

gahes
(ga HEESS): mother

haskwim
(ha SKEEM): corn

heh-heh
(heh-heh): yes

Hepte
(HEP teh): Swan

hocking
(HO king): territory

kamis
(KA meess): sister

keko windji?
(GEH ko WIN jee): why?

Kishelemukong
(kih shel MOO kong): the Creator

Kolachuisen
(ko la CHEW ee sen): Beautiful Bluebird

ku
(coo): no

lappi
(la PEE): again

Makiawip
(MAHK ee a wip): Red Arrow

makwa
(MAHK wah): bear

muxomsa
(moo CHUM sa): grandfather

nuxkwis
(NUK wiss): grandchild

Netawatwees
(neh ta WAT wees): newcomer

sipi
(SIP ee): river

Tamaqua
(TOM ah kwah): Beaver

Tankawon
(TON ka won): Little Cloud

tonn
(tawn): daughter

Tuskawaras
(tus ka WAR as): Old Town

Wapashuiwi
(wap a SHOE wee): White Lynx

wtaloksin
(wta LOK sin): saved

xkwe
(shway): woman

yah-qua-whee
(YAH kwah wee): mastodon

Demos, John.
The Unredeemed Captive.
New York: Knopf, 1994.

Eckert, Allan W.
That Dark and Bloody River: Chronicles of the Ohio River Valley.
New York: Bantam, 1995.

Grumet, Robert S.
The Lenapes.
Frank W. Porter III, ed. New York: Chelsea House, 1989.

Hawke, David Freeman.
Everyday Life in Early America.
New York: Harper, 1989.

Heard, J. Norman.
White Into Red: A Study of the Assimilation of White Persons Captured by Indians.
Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow, 1973.

Heckewelder, Reverend John.
Narrative of the Mission of the United Brethren Among the Delaware and Mohegan
Indians.
Reprint: New York: Arno and The New York Times, 1971.

"Hopewell, Prehistoric America's Golden Age," from
Early Man,
Winter 1979. Reprint: Chillicothe, Ohio: Craftsman Printing, 1990.

The Language Project, Delaware Tribe of Western Oklahoma. Anadarko, Oklahoma.

McCutchen, David.
The Red Record: The Wallam Olum: The Oldest Native North American History.
Garden City Park, NY: Avery, 1993.

McPherson, J. Beverly. "Mary Campbell, the First White Child on the Western Reserve." Paper given to the Cuyahoga Falls Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, 1934. Akron Public Library archives.

National Archives.
Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty-and-Warrant Application Files.

Saguin, Marilyn. "The Legend of Mary Campbell."
Our Town Magazine, The Akron Beacon Journal,
December 1985.

Schumacher, Fred, Head Librarian, Cleveland Metroparks Zoo.

Smithsonian Bureau of Ethnology.
Guide to North
American Indian Tribes.
Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Press, 1979.

Taylor Memorial Library, Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. "The Mary Campbell Papers."

Weslager, C. A.
The Delaware Indians: A History.
New Brunswick, NJ.: Rutgers University Press, 1972.

Lynda Durrant's fascination with the story of Mary Campbell began when she was eleven years old, during a visit to the Mary Campbell cave in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio.

"I thought about a girl my age living among a people very different from herself. Mary says, 'The strength we need is the strength we have,' but I wondered if I could have been as strong as Mary Campbell."

Ms. Durrant is also the author of
Echohawk
for Clarion Books. She has a double master's degree in writing and teaching English from the University of Washington in Seattle, and teaches remedial reading to children. She lives with her husband and son on a horse farm in rural Ohio.