Indian Captivity by Rev. Oliver M. Spencer
August 2019
Cincinnati, Ohio, today is a metropolitan area with a population of over two million people. In 1790, when nine-year-old Oliver Spencer set out for the area with his family from “New-Jersey,” it was only a two-year-old frontier settlement named Losantiville—although the name had been changed to Cincinnati by the time they arrived—and it was so sparsely settled that two natives of the Shawnee tribe were able to grab him and march him through what is now the heart of a busy metropolitan area without being seen by a single person, white or native. Indian Captivity: A True Narrative of the Capture of the Rev. O. M. Spencer by the Indians, In the Neighbourhood of Cincinnati is Oliver’s story as it was originally published in 1835, told by himself in his own words, demonstrating once again the power of the first-person narrative.
It was nearly three years before Oliver was re-united with family members in New Jersey and two more years before he was re-united with his parents in Ohio. The reader will wonder at the primitive state of what we now know as a major metropolitan area, and gasp at the casual cruelty of the native warriors who thought of a young boy as merely a slave and possession, and marvel at the adventures he survived and the fortuitous events that eventually led to Oliver’s repatriation.
It was nearly three years before Oliver was re-united with family members in New Jersey and two more years before he was re-united with his parents in Ohio. The reader will wonder at the primitive state of what we now know as a major metropolitan area, and gasp at the casual cruelty of the native warriors who thought of a young boy as merely a slave and possession, and marvel at the adventures he survived and the fortuitous events that eventually led to Oliver’s repatriation.