A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison

by James Seaver

Overview

As one of the earliest literary forms of colonial America, the Indian captivity narrative is important not only in the history of American letters but also as an indispensable source concerning the colonization of the "frontier," the peoples who dwelt on either side of it, and the often limited understanding they had of one another. A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison is one of the best of this literary genre.

In 1758, fifteen-year-old Mary Jemison and her family were captured near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, by a Shawnee and French raiding party. Shortly thereafter, her family was killed; she was turned over to a Seneca family, adopted by them, and four years later taken to their western New York homeland--where, by choice, she spent the rest of her life as an Iroquois wife, mother, and landed proprietor. In time she gained respect as a negotiator and was known in New York and adjacent states as the "white woman of the Genesee."

James E. Seaver's account of her life, written in the first person, taking on her voice as narrator, tells not only of her own adventures and misfortunes but also of the lives, customs, and attitudes of the Indians with whom she identified. When Seaver (about whom very little is known) interviewed Jemison in 1823, she was eighty years old. She did not read or write English, but she spoke it fluently. The book, published in 1824 and reprinted more than thirty times both in the United States and abroad, lives on; for readers continue to wonder at the strength and complexity of this remarkable woman's life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780815624912
Publisher:	Syracuse University Press
Publication date:	05/28/1990
Series:	Iroquois and Their Neighbors Series
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	196
Sales rank:	1,150,732
Product dimensions:	5.06(w) x 7.62(h) x 0.55(d)

About the Author

Tiffany Potter is Professor of Teaching in the Department of English Language and Literatures at the University of British Columbia. Willow White is Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Fine Arts & Humanities at the University of Alberta, Augustana.

Table of Contents

Introduction 7

Mary Jemison 7

A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison 10

A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison, Who was taken by the Indians, in the year 1755, when only about twelve years of age, and has continued to reside amongst them to the present time 19

In Context 119

Mary Jemison, Identity, and Indigenous Kinship 119

Henry K. Bush-Brown, images of the statue Mary Jemison (1910) 121

Artist unknown, Mary Jemison, the Captive (1892) 123

Seaver's Understanding of Gender and Governance in Seneca Culture 124

From James E. Seaver, appendices to A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison (1824) 124

Of Their Government 124

Of Family Government 125

An Account of the End of Jemison's Life 126

From James E. Seaver, William Seaver, and Ebenezer Mix, Deh-He-Wa-Mis: or A Narrative of the Life of Mary Jemison (1842, revised and expanded edition) 126

Seneca Voices: Sagoyewatha / Red Jacket and Gyantwahia / Cornplanter 130

On good-faith negotiation: Red Jacket at Philadelphia, 31 March 1792 132

On religion and colonial missionaries: the meeting with Jacob Cram, November 1805 138

On bad-faith negotiation: 1790 Philadelphia speech to George Washington 144

The Treaty of Fort Stanwix and the Treaty of Big Tree 150

The Treaty of Fort Stanwix (1784) 150

The Treaty of Big Tree (1797) 152

Excerpts from Earlier Narratives of Female Captives 160

From Mary Rowlandson, The Sovereignty and Goodness of God, Together With the Faithfulness of His Promises Displayed, Being a Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson (1682) 160

From Elizabeth Meader Hanson, God's Mercy Surmounting Man's Cruelty, Exemplified in the Captivity and Redemption of Elizabeth Hanson 164

A Fiction of Indigeneity 168

From James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans: A Narrative of 1757 (1826) 169

Map 1 Genesee River Area 173

Map 2 New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio Locations 174

Editorial Reviews

A reprint of the E.L. Carey and A. Hart edition, 1834. Mrs. Jemison's account of her life with the Senecas--as told to upstate New York Doctor James Everett Seaver in 1824. The story has gone through countless editions, reprints, and retellings before the creation of this rigorous edition by feminist scholar of ethnicity June Namias. The extensive introduction and the bibliography put Jemison and Seaver's Narrative in its ethnographic, historical, and literary contexts, and offer new interpretations of the many earlier editions and of Jemison as a woman both white and American Indian. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews

Like Mary Jemison’s Narrative itself, this much-needed edition resists a settler-focused analysis of Indigenous resistance and entangled colonial nation-states and epistemologies. Footnotes and editorial language peel back the layers of male settlers’ voices and editorial choices that attempt to package Jemison’s words and life and instead emphasize her identity as an adopted Seneca woman with deep ties to her chosen community. With contextual materials that connect the Narrative to histories of the Seneca’s displacement and continued ‘survivance,’ in the words of Gerald Vizenor, women’s captivity narratives, and sentimental fiction, this edition will allow educators to introduce this important text into discourses of both the long eighteenth century as a historical period and its impact on contemporary Anglo-American culture.” — Kate Ozment, Cal Poly Pomona

“This is a thoughtful edition of a captivity narrative which expands the scope of the form beyond the earlier Puritan accounts which are still predominately studied. A fascinating and widely read account of transculturation, this text offers rewarding teaching opportunities in women’s history, Indigenous, and settler-colonial studies. The editors provide important contextual materials to help navigate this complex and often ambiguous book. A valuable text to add to the literature of the contact zone.” — Robbie Richardson, Princeton University

“A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison extends challenges in the classroom, as students must grapple with the mediated and intertextual nature of its seeming autobiographical framework—namely, James Seaver’s position as editor of Jemison’s life narrative. Willow White and Tiffany Potter offer an important and necessary entry-point within Haudenosaunee, and specifically Seneca, practices of kinship formation and adoption that seek to situate Jemison’s perspective—what they call her ‘doubled voice’—within ongoing nineteenth-century Indigenous survivance. In this, their edition importantly draws deeply from recent scholarly emphases in Native American and Indigenous Studies on extricating community- and nation-centered Indigenous critiques of settler expansion, dispossession and removal, and forced assimilation. In particular, the ‘In Context’ section of the edition beautifully foregrounds late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century Seneca perceptions on colonial history as counters to Seaver’s racialized rhetoric of Indigenous vanishing. I look forward to using this edition in my own teaching.” — Shelby Johnson, Oklahoma State University

“Thirty years after June Namias’s recovery of this important text, the Broadview edition reinforces the continued relevancy of the Jemison narrative to early U.S. literature, Native American literature, and women’s literature. Its timely republication builds on Jemison’s significance to contemporary considerations of intersectional identities, citizenship, and as-told-to narratives, and it builds from the earlier edition by providing new contextual documents such as crucial Seneca treaties, Seneca voices, comparative captivity narratives, and a discussion of interracial and Indigenous kinship. Most importantly, it demonstrates how recovery work can remain relevant and make a deep, lasting impact on the study of American literature.” — Amy Gore, North Dakota State University

From the Publisher