Dramatizes the life of Frances Slocum, who was born into a Quaker family, abducted by Native Americans in 1778 at the age of five, and came to like her new life so much she resisted 'rescue.'

A supplemental textbook for middle and high school students, Hoosiers and the American Story provides intimate views of individuals and places in Indiana set within themes from American history. During the frontier days when Americans battled with and exiled native peoples from the East, Indiana was on the leading edge of America’s westward expansion. As waves of immigrants swept across the Appalachians and eastern waterways, Indiana became established as both a crossroads and as a vital part of Middle America. Indiana’s stories illuminate the history of American agriculture, wars, industrialization, ethnic conflicts, technological improvements, political battles, transportation networks, economic shifts, social welfare initiatives, and more. In so doing, they elucidate large national issues so that students can relate personally to the ideas and events that comprise American history. At the same time, the stories shed light on what it means to be a Hoosier, today and in the past.

It was on the frontier, where “civilized” men and women confronted the “wilderness,” that Europeans first became Americans—or so authorities from Frederick Jackson Turner to Theodore Roosevelt claimed. But as the frontier disappeared, Americans believed they needed a new mechanism for fixing their collective identity; and they found it, historian Molly K. Varley suggests, in tales of white Americans held captive by Indians. For Americans in the Progressive Era (1890–1916) these stories of Indian captivity seemed to prove that the violence of national expansion had been justified, that citizens’ individual suffering had been heroic, and that settlers’ contact with Indians and wilderness still characterized the nation’s “soul.” Furthermore, in the act of memorializing white Indian captives—through statues, parks, and reissued narratives—small towns found a way of inscribing themselves into the national story. By drawing out the connections between actual captivity, captivity narratives, and the memorializing of white captives, Varley shows how Indian captivity became a means for Progressive Era Americans to look forward by looking back. Local boosters and cultural commentators used Indian captivity to define “Americanism” and to renew those frontier qualities deemed vital to the survival of the nation in the post-frontier world, such as individualism, bravery, ingenuity, enthusiasm, “manliness,” and patriotism. In Varley’s analysis of the Progressive Era mentality, contact between white captives and Indians represented a stage in the evolution of a new American people and affirmed the contemporary notion of America as a melting pot. Revealing how the recitation and interpretation of these captivity narratives changed over time—with shifting emphasis on brutality, gender, and ethnographic and historical accuracy—Americans Recaptured shows that tales of Indian captivity were no more fixed than American identity, but were consistently used to give that identity its own useful, ever-evolving shape.

When Connecticut Yankees began to settle the Wyoming Valley in the 1760s, both the local Pennsylvanians and the powerful native Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) strenuously objected. The Connecticut Colony and William Penn had been granted the same land by King Charles II of England, resulting in the instigation of the Yankee-Pennamite Wars. In 1788, during ongoing conflict, a band of young Yankee ruffians abducted Pennsylvania official Timothy Pickering, holding him hostage for nineteen days. Some kidnappers were prosecuted, and several fled to New York's Finger Lakes as the political incident motivated state leaders to resolve the fighting. Bloody skirmishes, the American Revolution and the Sullivan campaign to destroy the Iroquois all formed the backdrop to the territorial dispute. Author Kathleen A. Earle covers the early history of colonial life, war and frontier justice in the Wyoming Valley.

Illustrated with archival photographs, and encompassing twenty states—from Florida to Washington, Alaska to Maine—and many different tribes, this book brings together the lesser known stories of the Native American women who shaped their cultures and changed the course of American history.

Courtney Moses was always about basketball, from an early age playing AAU ball, up and through grade school. In the 7th grade, the high school coaches saw a girl with skills and moves that far out did other girls her own age. What would possess a little girl from Sweetser, Indiana to dream about one day being Indiana Miss. Basketball. Could it be that she was destined to become the greatest player in all of Oak Hill basketball history? Or was all this just chance? Being at the right place at the right time. Courtney will tell you she knew from an early age she was going to be someone special with the basketball. But as fate would have it, God had given her a gift to play, and become one of the best, on and off the court. Now the only question was, will she do what it takes to become the best, or will she just do what is needed? Her story is an inspiration to all, but her story is to all those young girls who were told they can't, because they are too small, or too short, or because they are a girl. Her answer is a simple one, yes you can.