Description

Mary Ingles Draper Cabin

Mary Draper Ingles (1732 – February 1815), also known in records as Mary Inglis or Mary English, was an American pioneer and early settler of western Virginia. In the summer of 1755 she and her two young sons were among several captives taken by Shawnee after the Draper’s Meadow Massacre during the French and Indian War. They were taken to Lower Shawnee town at the Ohio and Scioto rivers. Ingles escaped with another woman after two and a half months, making a trek of 500–600 miles through the frontier, crossing numerous rivers and creeks, and over the Appalachian Mountains to return home.

Captivity

The Indians and their captives traveled for a month to Lower Shawneetown, located at the confluence of the Scioto and Ohio rivers. The Shawnee killed James Cull and Henry Leonard during the ritual of running the gauntlet.  Mary was separated from her sons, who were adopted by Shawnee families.

Some sources suggest that Mary gave birth to a daughter while in captivity although there is evidence to the contrary.As  a prisoner, Mary sewed shirts using cloth traded to the Indians by French traders, and was paid in goods for her work.  In October 1755 she was taken to the Big Bone salt lick to make salt for the Indians by boiling brine.

Escape and journey home

While working at Big Bone Lick, in late October 1755, Mary persuaded another captive woman, referred to as the “old Dutch woman” but who may have been German, to escape with her. The next day (probably 19 October) they set off, retracing the route that the Indians had followed after Mary was taken captive in July. They wore moccasins and carried only a tomahawk and a knife (both of which were eventually lost), and two blankets. As they were leaving the camp, they met three French traders from Detroit who were harvesting walnuts. Mary traded her old dull tomahawk for a new one.

They went north, following the Ohio River as it curves to the east. Expecting pursuit, they tried to hurry at first. As it turned out, the Shawnee made only a brief search, assuming that the two women had been carried off by wild animals. The Shawnee told this account to Mary’s son Thomas Ingles when he met some of them many years later after the Battle of Point Pleasant (1774).

After four or five days the women reached the junction of the Ohio with the Licking River, near the present-day location of Cincinnati. There they found an abandoned cabin, which contained a supply of corn, and an old horse in the back yard. They took the horse to carry the corn, but he was lost in the river when they tried to take him across what was probably Dutchman’s Ripple.

They followed the Ohio, Kanawha, and New rivers, crossing the Licking, Big Sandy, Little Sandy rivers, Twelvepole Creek, the Gyvabdotte and Coal rivers, Paint Creek, and the Bluestone River. During their journey, they crossed at least 145 creeks and rivers—remarkable as neither woman could swim. On at least one occasion they “tied logs together with a grape-vine [and] made a raft” to cross a major river. They may have traveled as much as five to six hundred miles, averaging between eleven and twenty-one miles a day.

Once the corn ran out, they subsisted on black walnuts, wild grapes, pawpaws, Sassafras leaves, and blackberries but, as the weather grew cold, they were forced to eat dead animals that they found along the way. On several occasions they saw Indians hunting, and each time managed to avoid being seen.

At some point during the journey, the old Dutch woman became “very disheartened and discouraged” and tried to kill Mary. (Letitia Preston Floyd’s account states that the two women drew lots to decide “which of them was to be eaten by the other.”) Mary managed to “keep her in a good humor”, and soon afterward they reached the mouth of the Kanawha River. But, shortly after they reached the New River, the old Dutch woman made a second attempt on Mary’s life, probably on 26 November.