In this classic frontier adventure, Lois Lenski reconstructs the real life story of Mary Jemison, who was captured in a raid as young girl and raised amongst the Seneca Indians. Meticulously researched and illustrated with many detailed drawings, this novel offers an exceptionally vivid and personal portrait of Native American life and customs.

Mary was born during an Atlantic Ocean crossing in 1743, the daughter of Irish immigrants who came to settle in the new world, attracted by the freedom and inexpensive land this nation offered. During the French and Indian War, fifteen year old Mary was captured by a raiding party of Shawnee and French who killed most of her family. At Fort Duquesne, she was sold to the Seneca Indians. She was adopted into the Seneca tribe, took on their customs as well as the name Dehgawanus meaning “Two Falling Voices.”

As a young woman, she took a Delaware husband named Sheninjee and gave birth to a daughter who died in infancy, followed by a son she named Thomas, after her father. In the 700 mile trek from their home in Ohio to the banks of the Genesee river, her first husband died. The widow was taken in by her husband’s family, and she eventually remarried a Seneca named Hiakatoo, giving birth to six more children.

After the Revolutionary War broke out, and as settlers began to take more and more of the land that was once home to the Native American, life became increasingly difficult for Mary’s adopted people. Through negotiations at the Treaty of Big Tree, Mary was instrumental in helping safeguard almost 18,000 acres of land known as the Gardeau Reservation.

Eventually, most of that land was sold and in 1831, Mary sold off title to the last 2-acre parcel of land reserved to her use and moved to the Buffalo Creek Reservation where she passed away in 1833.