Today in History: Kidnapped!

On this day (May 21) in 1758, ten year old Mary Campbell was kidnapped by the Lenape during the French and Indian War. She was probably adopted by a Lenape family. Six years later the British forced the Lenape to return Mary to her family along with many other captive children (60 names are recorded). To the shock of both the British and the families of these children, about half of them tried to return to the Lenape. The forced return of these children was the subject of two fictional novels by Conrad Richter, The Light in the Forest and A Country of Strangers. I read both as a child—they are haunting novels of children kidnapped at a young age who assimilated with the Lenape and could not transition back to the civilizations they were born into.