Haunted Akron by Jeri Holland

Author:Jeri Holland
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing Inc.
Published: 2013-03-16T16:00:00+00:00

MARY CAMPBELL AND THE LENAPE INDIANS

Many of you may have learned about Native Americans early in school; the various tribes and cultures were found across North America. These clans lived here for thousands of years, but once the white settlers reached the eastern coast of the United States, the Indians were pushed westward. Tempers flared between both the natives (who felt that the land belonged to them) and the European settlers (who thought that they had a right to the land instead of the “savages”), but the angry feelings also caused issues and turmoil between the various tribes of Indians. Such discontent and warring happened right here in what is now Akron and Summit County.

The Leni-Lenape (or Delaware) nation lived on the East Coast for thousands of years, according to archaeological record. By the early eighteenth century, the Dutch and English had swindled them out of their land and forced the tribes westward into Pennsylvania. It was here where forces collided and gave birth to a legendary kidnapping.

In 1758, a settler by the name of Campbell lived with his family on the banks of Canncoquin Creek in Cumberland County’s Tuscarora Valley. Their neighbors—the Stuart family—lived at a nearby farm. One day, Mrs. Stuart took a trip to visit a distant neighbor, entrusting her children to the care of the red-haired and freckled ten-year-old Campbell daughter. When she returned, Mrs. Stuart heard her children screaming. As she neared the house, a party of Lenape Indians rushed out the front door with the household prisoners in tow, including her infant and their babysitter, Mary Campbell. The tribe captured Mrs. Stuart as well and headed for their camp in what is now Armstrong County, Pennsylvania. According to an account from General Lucius V. Bierce, the natives soon grew tired of the Stuart baby, and they “dashed out its brains in presence of its mother.” One of Mrs. Stuart’s children, a little seven-year-old boy named Sammy, was so exhausted during the trip that he couldn’t walk another step to save his life. For three days, the Indians carried him on their backs. On the third day, the Lenape responsible for carrying Sammy fell behind the group of natives and prisoners, but he soon caught up without the child. As he came closer, Mrs. Stuart recognized the curly locks of hair hanging from his belt. Poor Sammy had been scalped.

The remainder of the trip to camp was quite a miserable journey for Mrs. Stuart. But throughout the ordeal, she, Mary and the rest of the young prisoners began to adapt to life with the Indians. The only documentation of the experience came from later recollections of Mary Campbell herself. The story, as she told it, goes that she gained the fatherly love of the tribe’s chief and (as was common practice among the Native Americans of that period) was adopted by Chief Netawatwees, leader of the Turtle Clan of the Lenape nation.

The native custom of kidnapping and adopting white children and women primarily was caused by their own dwindling numbers during the mid- to late 1700s.

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