A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison

A woman who, as a child of about twelve, was captured and lived for decades among an Indigenous community recounts her capture and the murder of her immediate family, her marriages to two members of that society, struggles raising children, and repeated hardships during wartime on the frontier. The account interweaves personal memory with descriptions of daily life, ceremonies, and customs, and includes an appendix detailing a frontier massacre, a punitive military expedition, and oral traditions. Presented as a careful transcription of her spoken recollections, the memoir emphasizes survival, cultural adaptation, and the human costs of border conflict.