"Follow the River"

While many outstanding fiction books are based on historical events, let me tell you about one novel owned by the Library that is written about a particularly interesting, if not inspiring, true-life adventure.

James Alexander Thom’s masterful story, “Follow the River”, tells of the kidnapping of a pioneer woman, Mary Ingles, by the Ohio Shawnee Indians.

Mary is a young pregnant woman living with her husband and two young sons in a settlement on the western edge of the Virginia Territory. In 1775, a distant band of Indians raid the settlement, kill most of the people, throw Mary, her children, and her sister-in-law on horses, and escape into the woods. Mary’s husband, who had been working in a remote field, escapes the massacre.

Her captors travel at night. Following ancient Indian trails, they slowing move westward. Eventually, they begin to travel alongside a tributary of a river known today as the Ohio. In the weeks that Mary and the other captives are bound to their horses, she memorizes the trails, the river junctions, and the landmarks along the way. She never gives up hope of escaping and returning to her husband.

In time, the Shawnees and their captives arrive at a huge encampment on a bend of the Ohio River—near the present-day city of Cincinnati. Mary’s boys are sold to Indian families to be adopted as replacement family members. Mary and several other white women kidnapped during other raids are sold as slaves, to a French trader. She gives birth to a daughter and she gives her up to an Indian woman who had lost a child in birth.

After several months of grueling work in the encampment, Mary and an older Dutch woman named Ghetel, travel with the French trader further down the Ohio River to the Mississippi River. There, the two women escape. Knowing that she would have a better chance to survive the trek back to her Virginia home alone, Mary abandons any hope of retrieving her children and begins to “Follow the River” back to her husband—near present-day Boone County, Kentucky

Nearly two thirds of this saga details the struggle of the two bare-feet women as they retrace Mary’s earlier trip across nearly 1,000 miles of forests, riverbanks, and canyons. As neither is able to swim, they must make their way up the tributaries until they can find a shallow area to wade across and then follow the river back downstream until it flows into the Ohio. When on the old trails, they are always on the outlook for Indians and white adventurers.

The women’s original cotton clothing rots and tears from their bodies. They sleep in the open, without blankets or mats, or bury themselves for warmth in the leaves and pine needles of the trees. With no knife or any kind of hunting or fishing implement to bring in game, Mary and her traveling companion resort to eating bugs, bark, and riverbank moss. They spend hours retching and can barely walk because of bouts of diarrhea.

“Follow the River” is a riveting story that will keep the reader turning the pages to learn what new obstacles confronts the two women. Mary Ingall’s true-life journey is a testament to the human spirit--- of indomitably and courage

The Library’s “Foreign Film Festival”, held each Tuesday evening at 7:00 PM will be featuring “Combination Platter” on November 29th. In this film, the main character, an illegal Chinese emigrant working in a Chinese restaurant in New York City, seeks a “green card” by courting a Caucasian woman. The final film in the series, a French film entitled “The Lover” will be shown on December 6th. The “Festival” is open to the public and is free of charge.