Frances Slocum

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Frances Slocum (Mo-con-no-quah, "Young Bear" or "Little Bear") was an adopted member of the Miami tribe. She was taken from her family home near Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania in 1778 by a small group of Indians of the Delaware tribe around the age of five. Slocum was raised by the Delaware tribe in what is now Ohio and Indiana. Not much is known about Slocum's life with Indians. Most of the information about her focuses on her later years after she was reunited with her white relatives near Peru, Indiana in 1837.[1]

Early life

The Slocum family were Quakers who emigrated from Rhode Island to the Wyoming Valley of Pennsylvania in 1777. Jonathan Slocum and his wife Ruth Tripp had ten children together, including Frances. The Slocum family remained in the settlement while many others had fled during the Battle of Wyoming in July of 1778.[2] British forces along with Seneca warriors destroyed a fort near Wilkes-Barre and killed over 300 American settlers. The Slocum family believed their Quaker belief and friendly relations with natives would protect them.[3] On November 2, 1778 Frances Slocum was taken captive at the family farm near Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. She was raised and married among the Delaware. Not much is known about Slocum's early life or her first marriage. She was married sometime in her late teens to a Delaware.[4] Her second marriage was to a Miami chief, Deaf Man. She was wandering through the forest with her father in-law one day and encountered what they thought was a dead body (apparently left there after a tribal war). They investigated and found the man to be in fact alive, although barely. His name was Shepoconah--Deaf Man, as the white men called him because of his almost total deafness They took them back to their village and brought him back to health, and Frances eventually married him. After the War of 1812 the Miami tribe, including Deaf Man and Slocum (now Young Bear), moved to the Mississinewa River Valley in Indiana. Together they had four children, two sons who died at a young age and two girls who survived.[5] The area in Pennsylvania where Frances was kidnapped from is Mocanaqua near Slocum township.

Discovery

Since her capture, Young Bear's white relatives continued to look for her, but did not meet her again for fifty-nine years. In 1835 Colonel George Ewing, an Indian trader who did business with the Miami and spoke their language fluently, stayed the night at a log cabin at what was known as Deaf Man's village. He spoke with an elderly Miami woman who revealed to him that she was by birth a white woman and remembered her Christian last name, Slocum. Ewing believed Young Bear revealed her identity to him because she appeared to be in poor health and wished to finally reveal a secret she had kept for many years.[6] However, it is more likely that Young Bear had finally decided to reveal her identity because her tribe faced forced removal to Kansas and her white identity might save her family from removal. When Ewing met Young Bear, she was a widow, living with her extended family in a double log cabin. Living with her were her two daughters, Kick-ke-se-quah (Cut Finger), O-shaw-se-quah (Yellow Leaf), Kick-ke-se-quah's husband (a métis named Jean Baptiste Brouillette), her three grandchildren, and another elderly relative.[5] Deaf Man's village was a cross-cultural meeting place and Young Bear's diverse family was not unique. Living in another cabin in Deaf Man's village was an African-American laborer who had assimilated and married into the Miami tribe.[7] Although Dead Man's village was a mix of European and Native culture because of the influential fur trade, Young Bear was thoroughly a member of the Miami tribe. The people of Deaf Man's village, including Young Bear, did not speak English and were not Christian. They practiced pluralism, and continued traditions and ceremonies that had not changed much from the century before.[5]

Reunion with white relatives

After Ewing found Young Bear he tried to track down her white relatives. He sent a letter to the postmaster in Lancaster, Pennsylvania asking if anyone in the Slocum family had a relative that was taken by Indians about the time of the Revolutionary War. The letter was lost and for two years Ewing heard no response. Then in 1837, Ewing received word from a brother to a Frances Slocum. In the autumn of 1837 two of Frances Slocum's brothers, Isaac and Joseph, journeyed to the Mississinewa River valley to find out if Young Bear were indeed their long lost sister.[8] The two brothers along with an interpreter traveled to Deaf Man's village just outside of Peru, Indiana. After meeting with Young Bear they confirmed that she was their lost sister, especially after Joseph Slocum recognized her disfigured finger resulting from a childhood accident prior to her capture. The brothers were thrilled to see their sister but were somehow shocked by her transformation. She could only speak to them through an interpreter and only spoke when asked a question directly. This could be a cultural trait that the white visitors did not understand or Young Bear could have been afraid she would be forced to go back and live with them.[9] Despite the pleadings of her brothers, Young Bear refused to leave her Native American family. She told them if she returned to her birthplace she would be "like a fish out of water."[10]

George Winter's influence

After the news spread that the "Lost Sister of Wyoming" had been found,the story of Frances Slocum became famous. The Slocum family hired European artist George Winter to paint a portrait of Frances. In antebellum America, most Americans viewed all Indians as uncivilized no matter the circumstances. George Winter is one of the few reliable Euro-American sources from the time, and as a recent immigrant from Europe did not possess the racial biases of many Americans in the Old Northwest region. Unfortunately the journal he kept was not published in his lifetime, nor anytime in the nineteenth century so his views could not be shared with other Americans. He wrote many descriptions of the Miami Indians, Deaf Man's village, and Young Bear and her family in his journals. He was hired to do a painting of Frances Slocum for the Slocum family but he also did one of his own. The two paintings are significantly different. In the painting for the Slocum family, Frances's skin appears whiter and her clothes not as vibrant. In his other painting, Young Bear appears with her daughters in elaborate dress and is darker skinned. Also one of her daughters in a common Indian practice, refused to face the artist.[11] The description Winter wrote in his journal of Young Bear more closely fits the painting he drew of her in his journal, "Though bearing some resemblance to her white family, her cheekbones seemed to have the Indian characteristics--face broad, nose bubbly, mouth indicating some degree of severity, her eyes pleasant and kind."[12]

Avoiding removal to Indian territory

After it was public knowledge that Young Bear was white, her presence encouraged the community of Deaf Man's village to construct itself as white and mask their Indian identity. This strategy combined with the politics of maneuvering, the tribal community (namely Miami chief Francis Godfroy), gained enough support to block forced removal. Young Bear had repeated opportunities to reveal her identity but never did until the 1830s when her Indian community was threatened with removal. To gain sympathy in Congress, Manaquanah's lawyer, appointed by her white relatives, played to his audience portraying Frances Slocum as an old woman who had endured years of torture and captivity and only wished to remain near her family—both white and Indian. Pennsylvania Congressman Benjamin Bidlack, who introduced the bill, stressed the importance of Frances staying close to her newly found white relatives although they only ever met a few times.[13] Frances Slocum petitioned to stay in Indiana and on March 3, 1845 Congress passed a joint resolution exempting Slocum and about twenty-one of her Indian relatives from removal to Kansas.[14]

Young Bear's legacy among the Miamis

Much of Young Bear's story is clouded with the perceptions of Euro-Americans in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Details of her years spent with the Slocum family and her years as an elderly woman after reuniting with her white relatives have been recorded in history. Very little detail exists on the majority of her life which was spent with the Miamis. Perhaps this is because she told very little of her life directly to whites. Young Bear and the other inhabitants of Deaf Man's Village are barely on the history records, most glimpses of their world come from outsiders, like George Winter. Understanding of her world best comes from the oral traditions of the Miamis. An oral tradition told by Chief Clarence Godfroy, the great-great grandson of Young Bear was written down in the 1960s. He told a story of woman who was revered by the Miami community, especially after her husband, Deaf Man died. Members of the community often went to her for council. She also enjoyed breaking ponies and playing games right alongside the men. While this behavior by a woman would have been shocking in the Euro-American pioneer setting, it was not uncommon for women to have these roles within the Miami tribe.[15]

Death and aftermath

Frances Slocum (Young Bear) died in Indiana in 1847 when she was 74 years old. On May 6, 1900 her descendants, both white and Indian, raised a monument at her grave site that still stands today. The zinc marker, with a long epitaph, is a tribute to her life as both Young Bear and Frances Slocum, as well as to her husband, who is commemorated on one side.[16] Many other attractions are also named after her, including Frances Slocum State Park in Pennsylvania.

  • Frances Slocum's Grave

  • Frances Slocum's Grave

  • Frances Slocum Cemetery

References

  1. ↑ Susan Sleeper-Smith, Indian Women and French Men: Rethinking Cultural Encounter in the Western Great Lakes (Amherst:University of Massachusetts Press, 2001), 124.
  2. ↑ John F Meginnes,Women in America from Colonial Times to the 20th Century: Biography of Frances Slocum (New York: Arno Press, 1891, reprint 1974), 9.
  3. ↑ Stewart Rafert,The Miami Indians of Indiana: A Persistent People 1654-1994 (Indiana Historical Society, 1996), 43.
  4. ↑ James Axtell, The Invasion Within: The Contest of Cultures in Colonial North America(New York: Oxforf University Press, 1985),313.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Sleeper-Smith,124.
  6. ↑ Meginnes, 38.
  7. ↑ Rafert, 107.
  8. ↑ Meginness, 43.
  9. ↑ Jim J. Buss, "They Found and Left Her an Indian: Gender, Race, and the Whitening of Young Bear. "Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, Jun 01, 2008; Vol. 29, No. 2/3, p. 1-35.
  10. ↑ Rafert, 103.
  11. ↑ Susan Sleeper-Smith, Enduring Nations: Native Americans in the Midwest, ed. R. David Edmunds(Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2008), 114-116.
  12. ↑ "Winter's Description of Francis [sic]Slocum," Indiana Quarterly Magazine of History 1:3 (1905), 116.
  13. ↑ Sleeper-Smith Enduring Nations, 114-116.
  14. ↑ Bert Anson, The Miami Indians (Norman:University of Oklahoma Press, 1970), 212.
  15. ↑ Buss, 20.
  16. ↑ Buss, 22.
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