Sylvanus Johnson in the Woods

As described yesterday, in 1754, at the age of six or seven Sylvanus Johnson was taken prisoner by Native Americans, probably Wabanaki, from Fort No. 4 in New Hampshire. (The image here, a detail from the photograph by Ann M. Little here, shows a young reenactor at that recreated fort.)

Sylvanus was adopted into a Native American family and remained with them for four years. The British authorities then “redeemed” him for cash, and Israel Putnam conducted him back to his family.

Johnson lived along the Connecticut River in New Hampshire for the rest of his life. He married and had children starting in the early 1770s. But Johnson always said the Native culture he experienced as a child was superior.

In his History of the Town of Rockingham, Vermont (1907), Lyman Simpson Hayes recorded traditions about “Uncle Vene” Johnson. The first is incredibly sad:

After paying the ransom, his white friends traveled a day’s journey and encamped for the night. So homesick was little Sylvanus for his forest home that he stole away in the darkness and followed the trail back to the wigwams of his masters. In doing so he had to cross a river, swimming over with his clothes tied on his head. His Indian friends would not speak to him or recognize him in any way. They had received the money demanded for his ransom and he was theirs no longer. During his whole life he so much preferred the modes of Indian life to the prevalent customs of civilization that he often expressed regret that he was ever ransomed.

Johnson lived into his eighties and was remembered in the region as quite a character.

The young men of North Walpole and Bellows Falls counted it a treat to be taken by Uncle Vene on a hunt. Often the old man would pretend to get lost almost in sight of home and keep the frightened and bewildered boys out all night in a shelter made in true Indian style. . . .

At one time he was crossing the river in his canoe, having indulged his appetite in the taverns at Bellows Falls. He was caught by the strong current and would have gone over the dam had not one of his neighbors put out in a boat and towed him to shore. The old gentleman was very indignant at being treated thus. When he was told that he would surely have gone over the dam he exclaimed, “Couldn’t I have put out a foot and braced?”

Adding more poignancy to that last story, two of Johnson’s sons drowned in the Connecticut River.

Sylvanus Johnson “returned from captivity”

A few years ago, Ann M. Little shared this analysis of a passage, and an event, from A Narrative of the Captivity of Mrs. [Susanna] Johnson, Containing an Account of her Four Years of Suffering with the Indians and French:

First published in 1796, it told of her family’s experiences from 1754-58 as prisoners during the Seven Years War after they were captured in a raid on Fort Number Four in what’s now Charlestown, New Hampshire. Johnson relates this about the return of her son Sylvanus, whom she last saw at age six or seven. He was eleven before she saw him again:

In the October following [1758], I had the happiness to embrace my son Sylvanus; he had been above three years with the Indians, followed them in all their hunting excursions and learnt too many of their habits; to civilize him, and learn him his native language was a severe task, (136).

…In successive editions of her narrative, Susanna Johnson either gives us more details about Sylvanus’s condition, or she embroiders the story. From the 1814 third edition published after her death in 1810:

In October, 1758, I was informed that my son Sylvanus was at Northampton [Massachusetts], sick of a scald [a skin disease]. I hastened to the place, and found him in a deplorable situation; he was brought there by Major [Israel] Putnam, afterwards Gen. Putnam, with Mrs. [Jemima] How and her family, who had returned from captivity. The town of Northampton had taken the charge of him; his situation was miserable; when I found him, he had no recollection of me, but, after some conversation, he had some confused ideas of me, but no remembrance of his father. It was four years since I had seen him; he was then eleven years old. During his absence, he had entirely forgotten the English language, spoke a little broken French, but was perfect in Indian. He had been with the savages three years, and one year with the French. But his habits were somewhat Indian; he had been with them in their hunting excursions, and suffered numerous hardships; he could brandish a tomahawk or bend the bow; but these habits wore off by degrees, (130).

…The additions and changes in Susanna Johnson’s account also demonstrate the ways in which historical memory changes according to the times. Her account of her experiences in 1754-58 wasn’t published until nearly fifty years after the fact, but even then we see evidence of how the times continue to shape the story in the successive editions. By 1814, the “Indians” in the 1796 account became “the savages,” and she was much more fulsome about the injuries and changes that captivity had wrought on her young son in 1814, 1834, and perhaps successive editions too. In the later editions, what had been her “happiness to embrace [her] son Sylvanus” became a much more ambiguous account of their reunion, one that emphasized the child’s “deplorable” and “miserable” condition, as well as his trouble remembering his parents.

Henry Saunderson (among other nineteenth-century local historians) claims in his History of Charlestown, New Hampshire, that Sylvanus Johnson “so much preferred the modes of Indian life to the prevalent customs of civilization, that he often expressed regret at having been ransomed. He always maintained, and no arguments could convince him to the contrary, that the Indians were a far more moral race than the whites.” His boyhood captivity apparently had no long-term effects on his life and health, as he died at 84 in 1832, “leaving the reputation of an honest and upright man,” (458.)

Little was exploring the lives of captured children in connection with a biography she published last year, The Many Captivities of Esther Wheelwright. Like Sylvanus Johnson, Esther Wheelwright was seized at age seven and adopted into a Wabanaki family. Unlike him, Esther never returned to her family.

Instead, Esther Wheelwright became an Ursuline nun in French Canada and eventually a superior of her order. Her family in Boston tried to lure her back with bequests if she returned, and she never did. Her British heritage, while mostly forgotten, proved useful when Gen. James Wolfe captured Québec the year after Sylvanus Johnson returned to his mother.

TOMORROW: Sylvanus Johnson in the woods.