Mary Campbell

• Reference: Ancestry Genealogy - SmartCopy: Apr 16 2016, 22:44:07 UTC

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Mary Campbell: Bierce Account

In 1759 Dugald Campbell, a Highland Scotchman of the Campbell Clan was living in Tuscarora Valley on the bank Canncoquin Creek, in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania. In the same house with Campbell resided a family by the name of Stuart - consisting of the man, his wife and several children - one of which was an infant.

Campbell had a daughter, Mary, a black-eyed, lovely little child of seven summers. Mrs. Stuart left home one day to visit a neighbor’s entrusting her children to the care of Mary Campbell. On her return and when near the house, she heard the children screaming and at that instant a party of Delaware Indians came out of the house with all the children, including her infant and Mary Campbell, prisoners. They seized Mrs. Stuart and added her to the number of captives and then started for their camp on the Catanions in what is now Armstrong County. Soon becoming tired of the infant, they dashed out its brains in presence of its mother. Mrs. Stuart also had a little boy about seven years old, who was either unable to walk or refused to do so And the Indians carried him for three days on their backs. On the third day the Indian who had him on his back, fell behind the company, but soon came up without the child, but with a little white scalp hanging to his belt. Mrs. Stuart recognizing the curly locks of her little Sam, the Indian said “Hoo! Otter skin.”

Mrs. Stuart and the rest of her children, remained prisoners until the Treaty of the Muskingum, by Bradstreet and Bouquet in 1763, when they were given up. Mary Campbell was adopted by Netawatwees, head Chief of the Turtle band of the Delawares, who, in 1718, signed the Treaty of Conestoga. From the time of her adoption by Netawatwees, Mary was treated with great kindness and shared equally in the affections of her adopted parents with the other children.

The following year Netawatwees, with his band, left Pennsylvania and removed to the big falls of the Cuyahoga, just below what is now the village of Cuyahoga Falls, in Summit County, Ohio. Mary Campbell and other prisoners were taken along and became residents of what is now Ohio. The Falls are a series of rapids of about two miles in length, with three perpendicular descents of twenty-two, eighteen and sixteen feet over which the Cuyahoga river rushes.

At the foot of these falls were two villages, one on the south side. Belonging to the Iroquois, the one on the north side belonging to the Delaware, the river being the boundary between their nations.

Soon after the removal of Netawatwees to the Fall of the Cuyahoga, the Indians made another incursion into Pennsylvania, and murdered a number of people, and took many prisoners at Tulpehauken, in what is now Bercks County. Among the prisoners was a Dutch woman, who was taken to the Falls of Cuyahoga. A council was then called to decide on the fate of the prisoners. They gave the Dutch woan the choice to marry one of three Indians who where willing to marry her, or be killed. One of the three was the murderer of her husband, one a miserable ugly Indian and the third was the adopted uncle of Mary Campbell. She chose the uncle of Mary, to whom she was married and with whom she lived till the Treaty of 1763. They had four children and as by the Treaty, all persons having white blood were to be given up, her husband became almost frantic at the thought of a separation. Gladly would he have abandoned his savage life and returned with them; but such was the hustillity of the whites toward them that he was advised that his life would be the price of doing so. His wife finally consented to divide the children - she taking two and leaving two.

While Mary was living at the Falls honey bees first made their appearance among the Indians. The Indians were much frightened as they said bees were the forerunners of the pale faces.

The reason the Indians did not fight Bradstreet and Bouquet, was Bouquet had sent a man by the name of Owen to carry dispatches to Bradstreet, but he was captured with his dispatches by the Indians. The dispatches, which the adopted uncle of Mary Campbell could read, showed the strength of the whites to be superior to that of the Indians, that they decided to treat, and not fight. Netawatwees refused to attend the Treaty, but attempted to escape. He was intercepted by Bouquets Indian spies and brought before Col. Bouquet, who deposed him from his Chieftainship and put another in his stead. No sooner, however, were the whites gone than the Delaware reinstated him, and he held his office till 1776, when he died at Pittsburgh.

While Mary resided at the Falls a papoose was killed in a mysterious manner. Suspicion rested on an old squaw, but there was not sufficient proof against her to convict. - Soon after a squaw was murdered while at work in a cornfield a little below the present village of Cuyahoga Falls, on the north side of the river. Suspicion attached to the same old squaw, but still with little proof against her. Soon after an Indian Preacher came among, who had probably been among the whites and got some of their ideas about a future state. He had two rude paintings, one representing a narrow road in which were a few persons going to a good place; the other a broad road in which were many persons going to a bad place. In the midst of his discourse he stopped, fixed his eyes on the suspected squaw and exclaimed in a shrill voice that moved even the stoicism of the Indians “She is a murderer!” This carried the excitement so high that she was driven from the tribe. From there she wandered west, but her reputation preceded her and she was trial and condemned as a witch. The Indians said that witches were brought there by the pale faces and she should be put to death in the way the pale faces did. She was accordingly sentenced to be hung and a gallows erected by placing a pole in the crotches of two Trees to which she was suspended in true Christian style. This execution took place on the bank of a creek, near the present saw mill in the southeast corner of the Township of Hinckley, Medina County. She was buried with her silver brooches and wristlets and with a kettle and cooking apparatus for her accommodation in a world where the gallows is unknown and legalized murder not tolerated. Fifty-threes afterward, William Cogswell, now of Bath, Summit County, dug up her remains, and as she appeared to have no further use for her trinkets or kettle, he appropriated them to his own use.

After being a prisoner seven years, Mary Campbell was surrendered up at the Treaty of Muskingum in 1763 and taken home. In 1771 she was married to Joseph Wilford of Cumberland County, Pa. father of the Rev. Samuel and grandfather a Joseph Wilford Esq., lately a Member of the Legislate of Ohio, from Green Township, Wayne County, Ohio, where they now reside.

Summit Beacon, Akron, Ohio, November 22, 1854 3:2 ABJ Microfilm Series University of Akron, L.V. Bierce Library

Early Scenes in Ohio

Mr. Teesdale: - In a sketch from my unpublished “History of the Western Reserve,” published in your paper of last week it was stated that William Coggswell, of Bath, dug up the Squaw, who was hung as a witch, in Hinckly, Medina County. Mr. Coggswell requests me to say he was not personally concerned in it, - but that it was done by some of the early settlers of Richfield.

L.V. Bierce