Product Description

A History of Jonathan Alder: His Captivity and Life with the Indians is one of the most extensive first person accounts to survive from OhioÂ’s pioneer and early settlement eras. AlderÂ’s reminiscence spans half a century, from his capture at the age of nine in 1782, when Ohio had no permanent European settlement and was still the exclusive domain of the Ohio Indian nations, to 1832, nearly a generation after the pioneer era had ended.

The narrative provides a unique perspective on frontier Ohio and its transformation from wilderness to statehood. It illustrates the continuing evolution in the relationship between OhioÂ’s Indians and whites from the Revolutionary War era to a time when many of the stateÂ’s native peoples had been removed.

AlderÂ’s recollection provides an exceptional look at early Ohio. The portrait of his captors is revealing, complex, and sympathetic. The latter part of his narrative is an extraordinarily rich account of early pioneer life in which he describes his experiences in central Ohio. Further, Alder was fortunate in that he encountered many of the persons and took part in many of the events that have become touchstones in OhioÂ’s pioneer history, including Simon Kenton, Simon Girty, and Colonel William Crawford. He participated in the Battles of Fort Recovery and Fallen Timbers, and his recollection of these actions are among the few extant accounts that describe these events from a Native American perspective.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #481677 in Books
• Published on: 2002-02-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 218 pages

About the Author

Customer Reviews

Interesting and Detailed Indian Captivity Narrative
This is the story of Jonathan Alder, who was captured by Indians at the age of nine from his home in western Virginia in 1782. He was adopted and lived among the Mingos for 13 years along the Mad River in Ohio. Alder became a respected hunter and warrior and gives a vivid and detailed account of his life among them. He gives a fascinating retelling of his life in a late 18th century Indian village, in an age when white settlers were beginning to push north of the Ohio River from Kentucky and West Virginia in the years after the Revolutionary War and how that increased conflict between the two groups for possession of the Ohio Country led, eventually, to the loss of Indian lands. After the Treaty of Greenville in 1795, Alder leaves the Indians to live in Pleasant Valley, near what is today Columbus, OH, though continuing to live as an Indian. Around 1805, he is persuaded by a friend to travel to Virginia and is reunited with his white family.

Alder's narrative is truly fascinating in all respects. He gives fully detailed accounts of his life among the Indians, from hunting and cooking, to relations with his Indian family which include a genuinely loving and kind mother and father, as well as an abusive sister who is resentful of the white boy and beats him for any infraction. Alder tells of his participation in several horse-stealing raids in Kentucky as well as his part in the Battle of Fort Recovery in 1794, . After Alder leaves the company of the Indians in 1795, he goes on to tell about his relations with the early white settlers in central Ohio and their often strained relations with the remaining Indian population. Although he is reunited with his white family in 1805, and subsequently drops his Indian dress and lives as a white settler, Alder, it seems, is never fully one of them. He views his neighbors through the eyes of one who lived a life far removed from their daily drudgery and often seems to reflect with nostalgia on his Indian days. One gets a sense of forelorn sadness and loneliness in his later years, as though he is the product of a lost time and place. His relationships with both his white and Indian family are intriguing, especially a poigniant encounter many years later with his Indian sister who abused him as a child.

This is a very intereing book and I recommend it highly.