Captives Return
My research interest is African-Native American people. I came across the below newspaper article that begs to be read.
Paper: Emancipator (New York)
Headline: Captives Returned
Date: 10 December 1840
Mr. Richard Blanton, in a letter dated Conway, Lafayette [county], Arkansas, says he had just returned from among the Chickasaw Indians, having ransomed his sister, Mrs. Tidwell, and her two children, who were taken captives by a party of eighteen Kichie Indians, on the 2nd of July last, from the Shroud settlement, on the Brassos river in Texas. Her husband, Mr. Milton Tidwell, was murdered and scalped in her presence, and after robbing the house of all its contents, they took her and her three small children, one an infant only five weeks old, and compelled them to travel day and night, until they were out of the reach of the Texans: after seven days of hard travelling, they arrived at the Kitchie town, somewhere she thinks on the [Trinny] River. She was then separated from her children and not allowed to be with them anymore. While in this awful state of distress, her infant sickened and perished in her arms. She was then taken out to be put to death, when a Delaware trader saw her, and bought her and brought her to the Chickasaw [nation], where she found an opportunity of writing to him, and he was with her in a few days after; and by furnishing the same Delaware trader with goods suitable for that trade, he was enabled to get her and her two surviving children out safe, but at a heavy expense.
While she was among the Kitchies she saw a white boy, about eight or ten years old. He could not speak a word of English, and she could not find out where they had taken him from. He is a good looking boy with blue eyes and light hair. There is also a boy by the name of Thomas Pierce about seven or eight years old, in the neighborhood of the Chickasaw Nation. He was bought from the Caldoes by a Chickasaw by the name of Is-ti-u-Cat-taby, who will give him up to his relations by refunding what he cost him. He is evidently a son of the unfortunate Pierce, who, with the balance of his family, was murdered on the Trammel trace, two or three years ago, as he gives a pretty correct account of where his parents were murdered and where they were from. He is a smart boy and if he has any relatives they would do well to get him away immediately. There are also a great many runaway slaves on the frontier of the Chickasaw Nation.------------Journal of Commerce.
preston