|
This is " |
|
The Story of |
|
My Captivity by |
|
Savages," or " |
|
How I Learned to |
|
Fight"by |
|
Eliza Elizabeth |
|
Cook, age 13 |
|
Writ in my own hand on this, the 23rd day of |
|
August, 1829." |
|
Fine Day for a |
|
Flaying," or " |
|
The Brutal |
|
Massacre of |
|
All I Held |
|
Dear." |
|
Chapter one. |
|
The valley that runs down the trail over the west bank of the glorious state of |
|
Natchez-Pierce was the site of my own hideous undoing. |
|
My whole family was lain waste, no care taken by the natives that even baby |
|
Coolidge was to be spared an ounce of pain. |
|
How I came to be spared, by the grace of |
|
God, I shall never know. |
|
I had been smashed in the head with a boulder over fourteen times by a young |
|
Indian brave. |
|
When I awoke, with eyes still stinging from the smouldering decimation, my large blue eyes looked up into the burning sun of the late summer sky. |
|
No sooner had |
|
I stirred when four horsemen approached my wilted carcasse. |
|
In their stilted |
|
English, they told me in great detail how they had massacred mine own |
|
Ma and Pa, how my elder brother |
|
Ham had given no resistance to his own flogging, and how easy it had been to make my sickly sister, |
|
Sarah Susanna, wail and sob like a sea creature. (Boo hoo!) |
|
I clenched my long, graceful fingers into tight fists at my sides, and turning my head away, laughed quietly to myself. (Ha ha ha!) |
|
If these human animals believed that they had captured a nubile and willing young white slave girl, they were sorely mistaken. |
|
I felt about my waist for a weapon. |
|
Oftentimes, |
|
I kept sewing tools hanging from ribbons pinned to my dress. " |
|
Looking for this?" the handsomest warrior asked, holding my sterling pinking shears up between two red fingers as he looked down from his steed at my writhing confusion. |
|
Brushing a strand of pale yellow hair from my brow, |
|
I pretended to reach for a stray silken slipper that |
|
I had spied nearby, but swiftly darted up and in between the flanks of the wild mustangs that stood majestically before me! |
|
The silent commander had only to reach down to capture me by the hair. |
|
Yanking hard, he pulled me upright, and twisted my fair face up to meet his cold, cold gaze. |
|
I shall never forget my realization upon that moment that my freedom had thus been robbed. |
|
And that although my pleasing mortal shell was intact, |
|
I, Eliza Elizabeth |
|
Jane Cook, was to become a handmaiden to a number of verile, half-naked nomads, and that this ordeal would continue fourteen years. |