The Return of the Captives

The Return of the Captives. Walking Tour Stop 1. Near Pittsburgh, on July 9, 1755, a French and Native American force decimated a small British and colonial army led by Edward Braddock, opening all of Pennsylvania to Indian raids. The Delaware tribe, under their leader Shingas, raided, killing and scalping settlers from Scranton to Virginia. They often took able-bodied settlers, including women and children, captive, weaving them into the fabric of their tribes. The raids reached Carlisle in January 1756 when nine settlers were killed and scalped about ten miles from this square. In November, raiders burned twenty-seven homes in the valley and killed or took captive fifty settlers. A truce was struck in 1758, but raids began again in 1764, and a girl named Dysart was murdered on July 6 near Big Spring. To end the raids, Colonel Henry Bouquet led a force of 1,500 men into Ohio, and the tribes sued for peace. Bouquet insisted on the return of all captured colonists. The tribes quickly complied, bringing nearly 200 captives to Fort Pitt. Bouquet brought many of them back to Carlisle. On December 31, 1764, here in the square, a large group of colonists looking for loved ones met them., One captive was an 18 year-old girl who could not give her name. A German widow, Magdalena Hartman, thought she recognized her as Regina, one of two daughters lost during a raid near Selinsgrove in October 1755, but the girl gave no indication that she knew Magdalena. Perhaps at Colonel Bouquet's suggestion, the woman started to sing a hymn she had sung to her daughter at bedtime, “Allein und doch nicht ganz alleing bin ich.” (Alone and yet not alone am I). Regina recognized the song and began singing it too, thus providing the most poignant and best remembered of all the reunions of loved-ones long lost that took place that day here in this square.