A True Narrative of the Sufferings of Mary Kinnan: Who Was Taken Prisoner by the Shawanee Nation of Indians

"Kinnan repeatedly emphasizes the effects of captivity on her body...juxtaposed against the savage cruelty of the Indian squaws, who revel in the torment of their captivities." -Genius in Bondage (2021)
"Kinnan's narrative portrays Indian women as surprisingly unkind and brutal." -The Literary and Legal Genealogy of Native American Dispossession (2017)
"Sympathetic depiction of native lifestyle...recognized as an early feminist statement...important contribution to narratives of captivity." -Encyclopedia of New Jersey (2004)
"Significant...what Mary Kinnan wanted from her reader was that their heart would melt with sorrow when they read of her terrifying suffering." -Truthful Pictures (2009)
"Within the cultural and philosophical entanglements undergirding the captivity narrative, Kinnan is doubly tyrannized...leaving her at the mercy of her foes." -Suffering Childhood in Early America (2011)

How did this heroic West Virginia pioneer woman, the lone survivor of a violent frontier raid, survive nearly three years of abuse and harrowing captivity among a hostile tribe?

In 1795, former captive Mary Lewis Kinnan (1763- 1848) published a short, 26-page account of her harrowing years of captivity titled "A True Narrative of the Sufferings of Mary Kinnan."

Kinnan was taken from her Virginia home in a Shawnee raid on her home near the Tygart Valley River in what is now Randolph County, West Virginia. At the time, Great Lakes-area tribes were frequently raiding settlements on the Ohio River in retaliation for British expeditions in the area. Kinnan's husband and daughter were killed in the raid, while Kinnan was sold by the Shawnees to a Delaware tribe, spending three years with them before she was rescued in Detroit by her brother. Her book was published a year later.

About the author:

Mary Lewis Kinnan, born August 22, 1763, was a West Virginia pioneer woman held captive by Shawnee Native Americans from 1791 to 1794, who published an account of her experience in 1795 in the book A true narrative of the sufferings of Mary Kinnan. She passed away March 12, 1848.

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