Before the arrival of the colonists, the Native Americans had already secured a foothold over the vast expanses of America. Initially, the Native Americans were treated with an almost cursory respect as the new settlers and pilgrims were afraid, apprehensive, yet friendly and hopeful. The newcomers befriended many and made what they thought were close ties with their new brethren. Unfortunately, it was not to last, and disease coupled with the settlers’ ravenous desire to claim the land as their own destroyed everything the native peoples held dear. However, most of these mistakes have since been admitted, and reparations have been made. Fortunately, history has not forgotten the many important faces and contributions of the original Americans. In honor of the United States’ Thanksgiving, here are 15 such heroes.

15 Red Cloud
1822–1909

Perhaps one of the most capable warriors from the Oglala Lakota (Sioux) tribes ever faced by the U.S. military, Makhpiya Luta, his Sioux name, led his people in what is known as Red Cloud’s War. This battle was for the rights to the area known as Powder River Country in northern Wyoming and southern Montana. Eventually, he led his people during their time on the reservation.

14 Cochise
1815–1874

Though actually pronounced “K-you Ch-Ish,” this Apache leader is second only to Geronimo when it comes to that tribe’s historical significance. Often described as having a classical Indian frame. He was muscular, large for the time, and known to wear his long, black hair in a traditional ponytail. Cochise aided in the uprising to resist intrusions by Mexicans and Americans in the 19th century.

13 Maria Tallchief
1925–2013

Born Elizabeth Marie “Betty” Tallchief to an Osage Nation father, she eventually became a well-known ballerina and is considered America’s first major prima ballerina. In 1947, Maria began dancing with the New York City Ballet until her retirement in 1965. Soon after, she founded the Chicago City Ballet and remained its artistic director for many years. Since 1997, she has been an adviser in Chicago-area dance schools and continues to astound future dancers with her always ahead-of-her-time abilities and was featured in a PBS special from 2007 to 2010.

12 Squanto
1581–1622

Assisting the Pilgrims during their first harsh winter, Tisquantum (Squanto) from the Patuxet tribe befriended the group to see them safely through to spring. In 1608, alas, Squanto and several others were kidnapped by Georgie Weymouth and taken aboard a ship to England. Though eventually earning a living and learning the English language, Squanto made his return home in 1613 aboard John Smith’s ship, only to find his tribe completely wiped out by the plague.

11 Crazy Horse
1840–1877

With a name in his native Lakota language, Thasuka Witko, which literally means “His-Horse-is-Crazy,” this Native American was actually born with the name: “Cha-O-Ha.” In Lakotan, it means “In the Wilderness,” and he was often called Curly due to his hair. In the Great Sioux War of 1876, Crazy Horse led a combined group of nearly 1,500 Lakota and Cheyenne in a surprise attack against General George Crook’s force of 1,000 English men and 300 Crow and Shoshone warriors. Though not substantial in terms of lives lost, the battle nearly prevented Crook from joining up with General Custer, ensuring Custer’s subsequent defeat at the Battle of Little Bighorn. Crazy Horse opposed the U.S. government in their various decisions on how to handle Indian affairs.

10 Sacajawea
1788-1812

Sacajawea is most well known for accompanying Meriwether Lewis and William Clark during their Corps of Discovery expedition of the western United States in 1806. She was born in a Shoshone tribe as Agaidika, or “Salmon Eater,” in 1788. In February of 1805, just after meeting Lewis and Clark, Lewis assisted in the birth of her son, Jean Baptiste Charbonneau. Her face now appears on the dollar coin.

9 Chief Joseph
1840–1904

Chief Joseph was a prominent figure among the Nez Perce Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest. He is best remembered as a leader during the Nez Perce War in 1877. As white settlers moved farther west and into the vast lands of the Nez Perce, Chief Joseph did not sign a treaty that would move his people to a reservation in Idaho. He chose to flee rather than face the U.S. Army sent to remove them forcefully. He was stopped only 40 miles from the Canadian border, where he gave a surrender speech, and his people eventually settled on a reservation in northcentral Washington. Chief Joseph died in 1904, never having been able to return to his much-loved homeland in the Wallowa Valley of Oregon.

8 Pontiac
1720–1769

Known in his Ottawa tongue as Obwandiyag, Chief Pontiac is most well known for his defense of the Great Lakes Region of the U.S. from the British troop invasion and occupation. In 1763, Pontiac and 300 of his followers attempted to take Fort Detroit by surprise. Eventually, the revolt rose to 900 plus Native Americans, and they eventually took the Fort at The Battle of Bloody Run. Though historically a prominent figure, many are still unsure about his real importance and whether or not he was a mere follower rather than a leader. Increasingly ostracized, he was assassinated by a Peoria Indian in Illinois in 1769.

7 Geronimo
1829–1909

Geronimo (Chiricahua: “one who yawns,” often spelled Goyathlay or Goyahkla in English) was a prominent Native American leader of the Chiricahua Apache who defended his people against the encroachment of the U.S. onto their tribal lands for over 25 years. While Geronimo said he was never actually a chief, he was rather a military leader. As a Chiricahua Apache, this meant he was also a spiritual leader. He consistently urged raids and war upon many Mexican and later U.S. groups. Geronimo eventually went on to marry 6 wives, an Apache tradition. He staged what was to be the last great Native American uprising and eventually moved to a reservation, often permitting to appear at fairs and schools.

6 Tecumseh
1768–1813

A Shawnee leader whose name means “Panther in the Sky,” Tecumseh became well known for taking disparate tribes’ folk and maintaining a hold on the land that was rightfully theirs. In 1805, a religious native rebirth led by Tenskwatawa emerged. Tenskwatawa urged natives to reject the ways of the English and to stop handing over their lands to the United States. Opposing Tenskwatawa was the Shawnee leader Black Hoof, who worked to maintain a peaceful relationship with the United States. By 1808, tensions built and compelled Tenskwatawa and Tecumseh to move further northwest and establish the village of Prophetstown near Battle Ground, Indiana. He died in the War of 1812.

5 Sitting Bull
1831–1890

Sitting Bull (Sioux: Tatanka Iyotake—first named Slon-he or, literally, slow) was a Hunkpapa Lakota medicine man and holy man. He is famous in both American and Native American history, mostly for his major victory at the Battle of Little Bighorn against General Custer, where his ‘premonition’ of defeating them became a reality. Even today, his name is synonymous with Native American culture, and he is considered one of the most famous Native Americans ever.

4 Black Hawk
1767–1838

Though not a traditional tribe chief, even after inheriting a very important medicine bundle, Black Hawk was more well known as a War Chief. In his tribe’s (Sauk’s) tongue, his name, Makataimeshekiakiak, means “Be a large black hawk.” During the War of 1812, Black Hawk—the English shortened his name—became a fierce and powerful opponent. First fighting on the side of the British, Black Hawk eventually led a band of Sauk and Fox against settlers in Illinois and Wisconsin, eventually dying in Iowa. His legend is kept alive by many claiming to be directly related, like Jim Thorpe. This is, however, a myth.

3 Sequoiah
1767–1843

Though the exact location of Sequoiah’s birth and death are unknown due to historically inaccurate writings, he is well known through translation and spoken accounts of having grown up with his mother in Tuskegee, Tennessee. Sequoyah ( S-si-quo-ya in Cherokee), known as George Guess, Guest, or Gist, was a silversmith who invented the Cherokee Syllabary, earning him a place on the list of inventors of writing systems as well.

2 Pocahontas
1595–1617

Having taken many liberties with her overall appearance, Disney created the image many of us believe to be what Pocahontas may have looked like. This is far from accurate. Though the film’s history is similarly flawed, it does hold some truths. Pocahontas was a Native American woman who married an Englishman named John Rolfe, a Jamestown settler, and became a celebrity in London in the last year of her life. She was a daughter of Wahunsunacock (also known as Chief or Emperor Powhatan), who presided over an area comprised of almost all of the neighboring tribes in Virginia (called Tenakomakah then). Her formal names were Matoaka and Amonute; ‘Pocahontas’ was a childhood nickname referring to her frolicsome nature. In her last days, she went by Rebecca Rolfe, choosing to live an English life by abandoning her Native American heritage.

1 Hiawatha
c. 1540

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote the story “The Song of Hiawatha” loosely based on an actual Native American. Though very little is known of the historical events in which Hiawatha was a part, he was a great peacemaker and spiritual guide of the Onondaga tribe of North American Indians, to whom Indian tradition attributes the formation of what became known as the Iroquois Confederacy. Longfellow’s story is well known, however, and much of what can be read can be found here.

Notable Omissions: Will Rogers, Tatonka, Robbie Robertson, Standing Bear

If you live in the the United States (and even if you don’t) you’ve probably heard about a number of the country’s prominent historical figures. But what about the history of those who were there before? Even many Americans know very little of Native American history.

One of many overlooked aspects of Native American history is the long list of exceptional men who led various tribes as chiefs or war leaders. Just as noble and brave as anyone on the Mexican, British, or American sides, many of them have been swept into the dustbin of history. Here are ten of the greatest Native American chiefs and leaders.

10 Victorio

A member of the Apache tribe, Victorio was also the chief of his particular band, the Chiricahua. He was born in what is now New Mexico in 1809, when the land was still under Mexican control.^[1] For decades, the United States had been taking Native American lands, and Victorio grew up in turbulent times for his people. Because of that experience, he became a fearsome warrior and leader, commanding a relatively small band of fighters on innumerable raids.

For more than ten years, Victorio and his men managed to evade the pursuing US forces before he finally surrendered in 1869. Unfortunately, the land he accepted as the spot for their reservation was basically inhospitable and unsuitable for farming. (It’s known as Hell’s Forty Acres.) He quickly decided to move his people and became an outlaw once again. In 1880, in the Tres Castillos Mountains of Mexico, Victorio was finally surrounded and killed by Mexican troops. (Some sources, especially Apache sources, say he actually took his own life.)

Perhaps more interesting than Victorio was his younger sister, Lozen. She was said to have participated in a special Apache puberty rite which was purported to have given her the ability to sense her enemies. Her hands would tingle when she was facing the direction of her foes, with the strength of the feeling telling how close they were.

9 Chief Cornstalk

More popularly known by the English translation of his Shawnee name Hokolesqua, Chief Cornstalk was born sometime around 1720, probably in Pennsylvania.^[2] Like much of the Shawnee people, he resettled to Ohio in the 1730s as a result of continuous conflict with invading white settlers (especially over the alcohol they brought with them). Tradition holds that Cornstalk got his first taste of battle during the French and Indian War, in which his tribe sided with the French.

A lesser-known conflict called Lord Dunmore’s War took place in 1774, and Cornstalk was thrust into fighting once again. However, the colonists quickly routed the Shawnee and their allies, compelling the Native Americans to sign a treaty, ceding all land east and south of the Ohio River. Though Cornstalk would abide by the agreement until his death, many other Shawnee bristled at the idea of losing their territory and plotted to attack once again. In 1777, Cornstalk went to an American fort to warn them of an impending siege. However, he was taken prisoner and later murdered by vengeance-seeking colonists.

Cornstalk’s longest-lasting legacy has nothing to do with his actions in life. After his death, when reports of a flying creature later dubbed the “Mothman” began to surface in West Virginia, its appearance was purported to have come about because of a supposed curse which Cornstalk had laid on the land after the treachery that resulted in his death.

8 Black Hawk

A member and eventual war leader of the Sauk tribe, Black Hawk was born in Virginia in 1767. Relatively little is known about him until he joined the British side during the War of 1812, leading to some to refer to Black Hawk and his followers as the “British Band.” (He was also a subordinate of Tecumseh, another Native American leader on this list.) A rival Sauk leader signed a treaty with the United States, perhaps because he was tricked, which ceded much of their land, and Black Hawk refused to honor the document, leading to decades of conflict between the two parties.

In 1832, after having been forcibly resettled two years earlier, Black Hawk led between 1,000 and 1,500 Native Americans back to a disputed area in Illinois.^[3] That move instigated the Black Hawk War, which only lasted 15 weeks, after which around two-thirds of the Sauk who came to Illinois had perished. Black Hawk himself avoided capture until 1833, though he was released in a relatively short amount of time. Disgraced among his people, he lived out the last five years of his life in Iowa. A few years before his death, he dictated his autobiography to an interpreter and became somewhat of a celebrity to the US public.

7 Tecumseh

Another Shawnee war leader, Tecumseh was born in the Ohio Valley sometime around 1768. Around the age of 20, he began going on raids with an older brother, traveling to various frontier towns in Kentucky and Tennessee. After a number of Native American defeats, he left to Indiana, raising a band of young warriors and becoming a respected war chief. One of his younger brothers underwent a series of visions and became a religious prophet, going so far as to accurately predict a solar eclipse.

Using his brother’s abilities to his advantage, Tecumseh quickly began to unify a number of different peoples into a settlement known as Prophetstown, better known in the United States as Tippecanoe.^[4] One day, while Tecumseh was away on a recruiting trip, future US president William Henry Harrison launched a surprise attack and burned it to the ground, killing nearly everyone.

Still angered at his people’s treatment at the hands of the US, Tecumseh joined forces with Great Britain when the War of 1812 began. However, he died at the Battle of the Thames on October 5, 1813. Though he was a constant enemy to them, Americans quickly turned Tecumseh into a folk hero, valuing his impressive oratory skills and the bravery of his spirit.

6 Geronimo

Perhaps the most famous Native American leader of all time, Geronimo was a medicine man in the Bedonkohe band of the Chiricahua. Born in June 1829, he was quickly acclimated to the Apache way of life. As a young boy, he swallowed the heart of his first successful hunting kill and had already led four separate raids before he turned 18.^[5] Like many of his people, he suffered greatly at the hands of the “civilized” people around him. The Mexicans, who still controlled the land, killed his wife and three young children. (Though he hated Americans, he maintained a deep-seated abhorrence for Mexicans until his dying day.)

In 1848, Mexico ceded control of vast swaths of land, including Apache territory, in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. This preceded near-constant conflict between the new American settlers and the tribes which lived on the land. Eventually, Geronimo and his people were moved off their ancestors’ land and placed in a reservation in a barren part of Arizona, something the great leader deeply resented. Over the course of the next ten years, he led a number of successful breakouts, hounded persistently by the US Army. In addition, he became a celebrity for his daring escapes, playing on the public’s love of the Wild West.

He finally surrendered for the last time on September 4, 1886, followed by a number of different imprisonments. Shortly before his death, Geronimo pleaded his case before President Theodore Roosevelt, failing to convince the American leader to allow his people to return home. He took his last breath in 1909, following an accident on his horse. On his deathbed, he was said to have stated: “I should never have surrendered; I should have fought until I was the last man alive.”

5 Crazy Horse

A fearsome warrior and leader of the Oglala Sioux, Crazy Horse was born around 1840 in present-day South Dakota.^[6] One story about his name says that he was given it by his father after displaying his skills as a fighter. Tensions between Americans and the Sioux had been increasing since his birth, but they boiled over when he was a young teenager. In August 1854, a Sioux chief named Conquering Bear was killed by a white soldier. In retaliation, the Sioux killed the lieutenant in command along with all 30 of his men in what is now known as the Grattan Massacre.

Utilizing his knowledge as a guerilla fighter, Crazy Horse was a thorn in the side of the US Army, which would stop at nothing to force his people onto reservations. The most memorable battle in which Crazy Horse participated was the Battle of the Little Bighorn, the fight in which Custer and his men were defeated. However, by the next year, Crazy Horse had surrendered. The scorched-earth policy of the US Army had proven to be too much for his people to bear. While in captivity, he was stabbed to death with a bayonet, allegedly planning to escape.

4 Chief Seattle

Born in 1790, Chief Seattle lived in present-day Washington state, taking up residence along the Puget Sound. A chief of two different tribes thanks to his parents, he was initially quite welcoming to the settlers who began to arrive in the 1850s, as were they to him. In fact, they established a colony on Elliot Bay and named it after the great chief. However, some of the other local tribes resented the encroachment of the Americans, and violent conflicts began to rise up from time to time, resulting in an attack on the small settlement of Seattle.^[7]

Chief Seattle felt his people would eventually be driven out of every place by these new settlers but argued that violence would only speed up the process, a sentiment which seemed to cool tempers. The close, and peaceful, contact which followed led him to convert to Christianity, becoming a devout follower for the rest of his days. In a nod to the chief’s traditional religion, the people of Seattle paid a small tax to use his name for the city. (Seattle’s people believed the mention of a deceased person’s name kept him from resting peacefully.)

Fun fact: The speech most people associate with Chief Seattle, in which he puts a heavy emphasis on mankind’s need to care for the environment, is completely fabricated. It was written by a man named Dr. Henry A. Smith in 1887.

3 Cochise

Almost nothing is known about the childhood of one of the greatest Apache chiefs in history. In fact, no one is even sure when he was born. Relatively tall for his day, he was said to have stood at least 183 centimeters (6′), cutting a very imposing figure. A leader of the Chiricahua tribe, Cochise led his people on a number of raids, sometimes against Mexicans and sometimes against Americans. However, it was his attacks on the US which led to his demise.

In 1861, a raiding party of a different Apache tribe kidnapped a child, and Cochise’s tribe was accused of the act by a relatively inexperienced US Army officer.^[8] Though they were innocent, an attempt at arresting the Native Americans, who had come to talk, ended in violence, with one shot to death and Cochise escaping the meeting tent by cutting a hole in the side and fleeing. Various acts of torture and execution by both sides followed, and it seemed to have no end. But the US Civil War had begun, and Arizona was left to the Apache.

Less than a year later, however, the Army was back, armed with howitzers, and they began to destroy the tribes still fighting. For nearly ten years, Cochise and a small band of fighters hid among the mountains, raiding when necessary and evading capture. In the end, Cochise was offered a huge part of Arizona as a reservation. His reply: “The white man and the Indian are to drink of the same water, eat of the same bread, and be at peace.” Unfortunately for Cochise, he didn’t get to experience the fruits of his labor for long, as he became seriously ill and died in 1874.

2 Sitting Bull

A chief and holy man of the Hunkpapa Lakota, Sitting Bull was born in 1831, somewhere in present-day South Dakota.^[9] In his youth, he was an ardent warrior, going on his first raid at only 14. His first violent encounter with US troops was in 1863. It was this bravery which led to him becoming the head of all the Lakota in 1868. Though small conflicts between the Lakota and the US would continue for the decade, it wasn’t until 1874 that full-scale war began. The reason: Gold had been found in the sacred Black Hills of South Dakota. (The land had been off-limits thanks to an earlier treaty, but the US discarded it when attempts to buy the land were unsuccessful.)

The violence culminated in a Native American coalition facing off against US troops led by Custer at the aforementioned Battle of the Little Bighorn. Afterward, many more troops came pouring into the area, and chief after chief was forced to surrender, with Sitting Bull escaping to Canada. His people’s starvation eventually led to an agreement with the US, whereupon they were moved to a reservation. After fears were raised that Sitting Bull would join in a religious movement known as the Ghost Dance, a ceremony which purported to rid the land of white people, his arrest was ordered. A gunfight between police and his supporters soon erupted, and Sitting Bull was shot in the head and killed.

1 Mangas Coloradas

The father-in-law to Cochise and one of the most influential chiefs of the 1800s, Mangas Coloradas was a member of the Apache. Born just before the turn of the century, he was said to be unusually tall and became the leader of his band in 1837, after his predecessor and many of their band were killed. They died because Mexico was offering money for Native American scalps—no questions asked. Determined to not let that go unpunished, Mangas Coloradas and his warriors began wreaking havoc, even killing all the citizens of the town of Santa Rita.

When the US declared war on Mexico, Mangas Coloradas saw them as his people’s saviors, signing a treaty with the Americans allowing soldiers passage through Apache lands.^[10] However, as was usually the case, when gold and silver were found in the area, the treaty was discarded. By 1863, the US was flying a flag of truce, allegedly trying to come to a peace agreement with the great chief. However, he was betrayed, killed under the false pretense that he was trying to escape, and then mutilated after death. Asa Daklugie, a nephew of Geronimo, later said this was the last straw for the Apache, who would began mutilating those who had the bad luck to fall into their hands.

A strange thing happened on Western Frontier. During the days of Wild West, American pioneers were moving out into untamed and treacherous land. They were building their homes in a virtual war zone, on land stolen from the natives, and that meant that their lives—and the lives of their children—were constantly at risk.

Pioneer children, in the days of the American frontier, would often be kidnapped by raiding warriors. When Native American tribes lost their own children in wars with the settlers, they would even the score. They would raid a white village, take their children, and carry them back to their homes as hostages. But when their families tracked them down and tried to rescue them, sometimes, the children didn’t want to go home.

It was a strange phenomenon the settlers of America struggled to understand. Even Benjamin Franklin commented on it. “They become disgusted with our manner of life,” he once wrote about the white children captured by native tribes, “and take the first good opportunity of escaping again into the woods, from whence there is no reclaiming them.”^[1]

10 Frances Slocum

In 1835, a trader named George Ewing met an elderly woman of the Miami tribe named Maconaquah. She was in her sixties and a respected woman among the tribe, a widowed grandmother whose husband had been their chief. And so you can imagine his surprise when this old woman told him she had born to white parents.

As a child, he soon found out, Maconaquah’s name had been Frances Slocum, the daughter of a Quaker family who had been stolen away from home by Seneca warriors when she was five years old. A Miami family had bought her for a few pelts, and they’d raised her as their own.

57 years had passed since her capture. She’d grown up among the Miami, gotten married, seen her husband rise to chiefdom, given him four children, and raised them until they had children of their own.

Frances’s brothers hadn’t stopped looking for her since the day she was captured. When word got out that she was still alive, her brother Isaac met with the sister he’d lost decades ago and begged her to come home.

Frances, though, had forgotten how to speak English. Communicating through an interpreter, she told him, “I do not wish to live any better, or anywhere else, and I think the Great Spirit has permitted me to live so long because I have always lived with the Indians.”^[2]

True to her word, she stayed with her captors until the day she died—and she was buried next to the man who had been her husband.

9 Cynthia Ann Parker

Cynthia Ann Parker was nine years old when she was kidnapped by Comanche Indians in 1836.^[3] Her family was slaughtered, and she and four other children were dragged off into the night. Incredibly, she survived the whole horrific ordeal—but she wouldn’t survive going back home.

Four years after her capture, a trader named Williams heard that she was still alive, living among the Comanche. He rode into their camp and offered their chief any amount of money he wanted for her freedom. But when he was given the chance to speak to her, Parker simply stared at the ground and refused to say a word.

It took another 20 years before she was freed. A Texas Ranger force attacked the Comanche tribe, and upon seeing the white-skinned Parker among them, brought her back to her family. After 24 years living among the Comanche, though, Parker wasn’t happy about going home.

She had been there so long that she’d married one of the Comanche warriors, a man named Peta Nocona, who the Rangers had killed. As far as she was concerned, these men weren’t her liberators. They were murderers who had killed the man she loved.

They brought her to her uncle’s farm, but Parker didn’t want to be there. She repeatedly tried to run away, and when she realized she wouldn’t escape, she simply stopped eating. Rather than live among the white man, Cynthia Ann Parker starved herself until, weakened and plagued by influenza, she died.

8 Eunice Williams

Eunice Williams’s father got to see her change. After she was kidnapped by Mohawk warriors (reenactment pictured above), her father, Reverend John Williams, tracked her down and tried to get them to let him buy her freedom. The Mohawks refused to sell her, but they did let Rev. Williams talk to the daughter who would never be his again.

Young Eunice was terrified by everything around her. She told her father about the rituals the Mohawks performed, telling him they were “mocking the Devil.”^[4] She’d described a French Catholic missionary who’d been making her pray with him. “I don’t understand one word of [the prayers],” she told her father. “I hope it won’t do me any harm.”

Ten years later, a man named John Schuyler went to see Eunice—but now she was a completely different woman. She dressed and lived like a Mohawk. She had converted to Catholicism, married a warrior, and refused to speak English. He only got four words out of her the whole two hours he spoke to her. When he asked her to come home and see her father, Eunice simply said: “It may not be.”

7 Mary Jemison

Mary Jemison went through one of the most brutal kidnappings of any child. The story of how her Iroquois kidnappers massacred her family is absolutely horrifying—and yet, for some reason, she willingly stayed with her captors until the day she died.

Mary was 13 years old when a raiding party from the Iroquois Confederacy attacked her home. The Jemisons were forced to march through the woods, urged on by a warrior with a whip who lashed them whenever they slowed their step. They were not fed. If someone asked for water, the Iroquois warriors would force them to drink urine.

In the morning, Mary was pulled apart from her family and forced to march another day. She spent the day wondering what had become of her parents. Then, when nightfall came and they stopped to rest, she found out. While she watched, a warrior pulled her mother and father’s severed scalps out of a bag, scraped them clean, and dried them over a fire.^[5]

She remembered seeing her parents’ scalps dry for the rest of her life. In her old age, she would relate the story as if it was a swashbuckling adventure from an exciting childhood, but she never left her home. She moved in with a Seneca family, married a Delaware man, and, for reasons only Mary Jemison truly understood, became so attached to her family that she refused to ever leave their side, regardless of what had happened to her parents.

6 Herman Lehmann

Herman Lehmann didn’t see himself as a white boy living among the Apaches. To him, he was an Apache warrior through and through. He was kidnapped at age ten, and it changed him so much that when he was found eight years later, he couldn’t even remember his own name.

By then, Lehman was a respected warrior in his tribe who called himself “En Da.”^[6] He’d been made a petty chief for his ability to fight, and he’d joined the Apaches in raids and battles, even leading a charge right into a fort full of Texas Rangers.

All that changed, though, when a medicine man killed his adoptive father, an Apache warrior named Carnoviste. Lehman took his revenge and killed the medicine man. He then had to flee into the wilderness. For a year, he lived alone, hiding from the Apaches and the white men alike, until he finally settled down in a Native American reservation.

When his mother heard there was a white-skinned, blue-eyed boy on the reservation, she came out, praying it was her son. At first, she didn’t recognize him, and Herman was less than friendly. “I was an Indian,” he explained, “and I did not like them because they were palefaces.” But Herman’s sister spotted an old scar only he could have and, overcome with joy, cried out, “It’s Herman!”

The sound of the name puzzled him. Somehow, Herman thought he’d heard it before. It took a long moment, Herman would later recall, before he realized that he was hearing his own name.

5 Olive Oatman

When Olive Oatman wrote about her life as a Mohave captive, she called them “savages.” She wrote about them as if they were wild men and her time with them had been hell, but there were hints she wasn’t telling the truth. The biggest clue was as a plain as her face: the large, blue tattoo that covered her jaw.

Oatman had grown up in a Mormon family, but she was captured by Apaches while her family was traveling to California. The Apaches had sold her to a Mohave family that took her as her own, and for five years, she lived as a Mohave.

When Olive’s brother—the sole surviving member of her family—found her, her tribe was suffering through a famine, and many were starving. The people around her were dying, and, worried for her life, her adoptive family let her go home.

Oatman wrote a book about her experiences that criticized the Mohave, but there were signs she wasn’t being totally honest. She dressed like them, lived like them, and had willingly agreed to the blue tattoo on her face. And she’d claimed that the “savages” had not made her “unchaste”—but her name among the Mohave was “Spantsa,” a name meaning “sore vagina.”^[7]

Nobody knew the truth about Olive Oatman’s experience except for her. But some believe that living among the Mohave may have changed her more than she was willing to admit.

4 The Boyd Children

The five Boyd children managed to get away from their captors. After years living with Iroquois and Delaware families, their father brought them back home. Instead of being grateful, though, they bolted into the night. They fled their father’s home to get back to the people who had kidnapped them.

The children had been taken by Iroquois raiders and dragged out so they could be sold to other tribes. On their painful road into captivity, they were forced to watch as the warriors beat their pregnant mother to death for failing to keep up the pace. Her dead body was left behind.

It took four years before their father, John Boyd, was able to rescue any of them. The first one he saved was his eldest son, David. The boy wasn’t as happy to see his father again as John had hoped. David protested and said he didn’t want to leave his Delaware family and, after a short time, snuck out in the night, left his father’s farm, and went back to the tribe.^[8]

Over the next four years, his father went from tribe to tribe, buying his children’s freedom and bringing them back home—and saw nearly every single one sneak out into the night and leave him to go back to their captors. He freed every single one of his children, but he wasn’t able to keep them all at home.

3 Mary Campbell

Mary Campbell is just one name among hundreds of children who were kidnapped during Pontiac’s War. She, and the other children like her, were stolen away from their parents’ homes and sent to live with native tribes as revenge for the deaths of their own people, meant to replace the children the native tribes had lost.

When the war ended, Colonel Henry Bouquet demanded the children be released. He drew up a list of over 200 names of children who had been abducted from their homes, handed it to Pontiac’s warriors, and made them promise to return every one if they ever wanted to see peace in their lives again.

The tribes agreed, and the 200-plus children were sent back to their families. Mary Campbell, though, had to be dragged back to her family by force. She didn’t want to go home—and even once they brought her back, she still tried to escape and run back to the Lenape family that had captured her.

It’s a strange story, but Campbell wasn’t the only one who tried to run from her parents. Of the children Col. Bouquet freed, nearly half tried to escape their biological families, preferring to live with the families that had kidnapped them rather than the ones that had brought them into the world.^[9]

2 Theodore Babb

Theodor Babb, 14 years old, was determined to hate his Comanche captors. They had murdered his mother and dragged him and his ten-year-old sister Bianca into captivity. They could kill him if they wanted, Theodor decided, but he would not live among them.

After days of being beaten for his stubbornness, Theodor tried to escape from his captors, but he didn’t get far. The Comanche dragged him back and beat him brutally. Theodore, though, wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of crying. He wouldn’t even flinch, no matter how hard they hit him.

Frustrated, the Comanche tied him to a tree and started placing grass and branches at his feet, ready to burn him alive. Bianca wailed and cried for her brother’s life, but Theodor still wouldn’t flinch. Throughout it all, he stared the men who were getting ready to kill him in the eyes, daring them to go through with it.^[10]

They didn’t. The Comanche realized this young boy was unusually brave and, instead of killing him, trained him to be a warrior. They armed him, taught him to ride like a Comanche warrior, and showed him how to run raids.

For all he’d resisted it, as a Comanche warrior, Theodore started tapping into a part of himself he’d never been able to touch before. Within six months, he was so much a part of the tribe that when his father tried to buy him back, the Comanche chief was convinced he would refuse to leave.

In the end, Theodore did go home—but he had changed. After just six short months of captivity, he was already a Comanche warrior who had joined in on multiple raids on white men’s farms.

1 Adolph Korn

After Adolph Korn was freed from his Comanche captors, his parents moved him far away from the tribe that had harassed them. Unlike the other children on this list, he had no way to get back to the people who had kidnapped him, so, rather than live with his own parents, he fled into the wilderness and spent his life alone in a cave.

Korn had been captured when was ten years old and sold to a childless Comanche woman. She took him in as his own, and although he was initially distraught over losing his family, he soon started to enjoy it. Living in a frontier home, he’d struggled to get any attention from his eternally busy parents. Now, though, he had an adoptive mother who focused every second of her energy on him. He felt more loved that he had ever felt before.

His parents managed to get him home three years later, but he never stopped being a Comanche. He would raid his neighbors’ farms and steal their cattle. Soon, he’d built up a long police record, and terrified they’d lose their boy to a different type of captivity, his parents moved far away to a remote ranch.

Korn, though, refused to become a white man. Instead, he left his parents’ home and moved into a cave, where he lived in solitude until the day he died. As a family member said, for the rest of his life, “Adolph kept a solitary vigil for the Comanche brothers whom he knew would never return.”^[11]