Follow the River

Content Warning: This section includes discussions of anti-Indigenous racism, suicidal ideation, torture, potential sexual assault, wartime atrocities, and physical and psychological suffering. The source material’s use of outdated, racist language for Indigenous Americans is replicated only in direct quotations.

On Sunday, July 8, 1755, Mary Draper Ingles is pregnant and cooking in her cabin in Draper’s Meadows, Virginia. That morning, when her husband left for work, she had a premonition that something bad would happen. She looks out the door and sees Shawnee warriors approaching the settlement. They attack Colonel James Patton. He kills two of them with his Scottish broadsword before being killed himself. Mary’s sister-in-law, Bettie Draper, attempts to flee, but they shoot her in the arm and kill her baby. Meanwhile, Elenor Draper, Bettie’s mother, is in the fields with Mary’s four-year-old son, Tommy, and two-year-old son, Georgie. The Shawnee see them, kill Elenor, and scalp her. Then, the Shawnee tie up Mary, Bettie, and Mary’s sons. They threaten to knife Mary in the stomach but do not. They also capture Henry Lenard, another man from the settlement. Mary calls to her sons to try to calm them.