In December 1779, a woman lay dying in the Hudson Valley, and as she passed, she left behind a story so harrowing that her kinswoman felt compelled to share it. That story, first published in serial form that same year by Ann Eliza Bleecker, was written to comfort women who had lost children in the brutal Indian raids along the American frontier. It was presented as a true history, though the author supplied many of the conversations and details, making it something closer to historical fiction. At its heart, however, lay a real and terrible ordeal, one that had been passed down through a family shattered by violence.
The woman in the story was Maria K. D. , born in 1721, the only child of prosperous farmers who cultivated a large estate on the banks of the Hudson, eighteen miles above Albany. She was described as accomplished and industrious, beloved by her female companions and admired by many suitors, but she gave her heart to a near relation, Mr.
K. D. , a man of learning and virtue. They married when Maria was fifteen, and he moved her to a small, neat house set among tall cedars on an eminence, with a garden on one side and a clear stream rushing over white pebbles on the other.
There they lived in quiet happiness, known for their charity to the poor and even respected by the local Indians, who often stopped by for refreshment while hunting and expressed great admiration for the family. Within a little more than a year, they had a daughter, Anna, a lovely child who grew into a beauty. The Indians were especially fond of her, bringing her young fawns, wood ducks, and beavers, along with baskets of wild strawberries and scarlet plums. For eleven years, the family enjoyed this peaceful existence.
Then Maria bore a son, named William after his father. It was shortly after this birth that the horrors began. Seven years before the French and Indian War would reach its climax at Fort William Henry in 1757, the Indians allied with the French began committing terrible depredations on the English frontiers. Mr.
K. D. , alarmed for the safety of his brothers who lived near Fort Edward, invited them to stay with him during the conflict. No sooner had they arrived than word came of further incursions: villages burned, inhabitants scalped without regard for age or sex.
Terror seized Maria, and she began preparing to flee. As she and her husband packed their belongings the following evening, they were confronted by several Indians from the nearby village of Schagtakook. These were men who had always seemed well-disposed toward the English. An elderly Indian stepped forward and promised the family protection, presenting Maria with a belt interwoven with silk and beads.
He declared they would sink the hatchet into the heads of her enemies and guard the woods with a wall of fire. Maria, hopeful but uncertain, thanked him and offered wine, though she gently voiced her fear that necessity might force them to abandon their promise. The Indian replied with some acrimony, insisting he was a true man who shot his arrow up to the great captain every new moon, and that he would trample down the briers around her dwelling so she would not hurt her feet. Her husband was less trusting.
He had hidden himself when the Indians first appeared, suspicious of their sincerity. When he heard their promises, he warned Maria not to be too confident, reminding her how little dependence could be placed on such assurances. Yet he agreed they should not appear suspicious, and so they delayed their planned journey to Albany. The next morning, Mr.
K. D. and his brother Peter set out for a hunting match, despite Peter’s unease. They wandered for hours through pathless grass and groves of pine, and Peter spoke of an unusual horror chilling his blood, a presentiment of death.
They finally spotted a fat deer on the riverbank, and Peter shot it cleanly. The success was their undoing. Two Indians, drawn by the gunfire, rushed upon them with loud yells and discharged their rifles. Peter took two balls in the chest and sank down, dying.
Mr. K. D. stood frozen for a moment, but when he saw one Indian advancing to scalp his brother, he shot him through the head.
He then wrestled with the second, felled him with the butt of his gun, and, leaving both for dead, threw his brother’s body across his horse and rode for home. Maria, hearing the horse’s hooves, rushed to the door with joyful impatience and met her husband, pale and bloody. At first glance, she understood everything and cried out that they were betrayed and her brother-in-law killed. He knelt beside her and begged her to be comforted, promising to procure carriages immediately and take the family to safety before morning.
He ordered the corpse placed in a remote chamber and a horse saddled for himself, intending to ride to the village of Schagtakook to hire wagons and a guard. Maria pleaded with him not to go, arguing that he was spent with sorrow and fatigue and had already escaped one danger. She begged him to let one of his brothers go instead. But he refused, saying he could not propose a danger to them from which he shrank himself.
Before he left, she made him embrace their children. His daughter Anna, listening at the door, rushed in and knelt before him, begging him not to leave, saying that if anything happened to him, her mother would die of grief. Her father held her and promised to return within an hour and have them safe on the plains of Albany. Maria, holding their infant son, was overcome with a gloom that seemed supernatural to her husband.
Yet he conquered his hesitation, and after a solemn parting, he left his house, never to see it again. Inside, the family barred the doors and gathered in the hall. They were debating how to accommodate Peter’s widow, who was far advanced in pregnancy, when the trampling of feet and a composite yell of voices announced the Indians’ arrival. The servants fled from the distant kitchen, saving themselves.
Little Billy clung to his mother’s breast, and Anna clasped her trembling knees. The Indians demanded entrance, and when they threatened to break down the door, the brother-in-law, despairing of any escape, advanced to open it. His wife shrieked and begged him not to sacrifice himself, but he unbarred the door and instantly received a fatal bullet in his chest. The Indians rushed in, mangled the corpse, and scalped him with barbarous triumph.
One hideously painted warrior strode up to the pregnant widow, who fainted in her chair, and cleft her forehead with his tomahawk. She tumbled lifeless to the ground, and the Indian, not satisfied, gashed her body and tore her unborn child from her womb, dashing it against the stone wall. Then one of the Indians advanced toward Maria, who was circling her children with her white arms and sending hopeless petitions to heaven. She expected the fatal stroke, but instead the Indian spoke.
She recognized him as the old friend who had given her the belt of friendship. He assured her she would not be killed and would live and dance with them around the fire in Canada. But he said she had a small encumbrance that would impede their progress, and he seized her laughing infant son by the wrist, trying to tear him from her arms. Maria fought desperately, screaming for mercy, but the Indian wrenched the breathless child away and dashed his little forehead against the stones, casting his bleeding body aside.
In the unutterable anguish of her soul, Maria fell prostrate and roared out her sorrows, cursing the barbarians and mourning her murdered child. Her daughter Anna, clinging to her, begged her mother to plead with the Indians for mercy, insisting they could not be rocks and stones. Their endearments were interrupted when the Indians, having plundered the house, commanded Maria to follow them. She refused, saying she would never leave her murdered child.
Anna, terrified by the hostile appearance of the enemy, fled back into the house and concealed herself in a closet. But the Indians had set the house on fire. Mrs. K.
D. , pursuing her daughter, was cut off by flames. She screamed for Anna to escape the fire, but received no answer. The Indians then obliged Maria and her surviving brother Henry to quit the burning house, and as they staggered away, the flaming structure collapsed behind them with a dreadful crash.
Maria turned to the blaze and cried that her children were entombed in the ruins. Her brother followed like a person in a troubled dream, horror having frozen the avenues of his soul. They wandered through swamps, forded the streams of Tomhanic and the river of Hassac, and passed through deserted settlements where the yells of solitary dogs pierced the darkness. At last they halted, and Maria, overcome by sorrow and fatigue, sank helpless at the foot of a tree.
The six Indians kindled a fire and prepared a meal of parched maize enriched with bear’s fat. They did not disturb Maria as she slept, but invited Henry to eat. He dared not refuse, and afterward they all slept, with two sentinels left to guard against surprise. The story of Maria K.
D. was published in book form in 1797, fourteen years after Ann Eliza Bleecker died in 1783. While the author set the events during the French and Indian War, the actual attack on the K. D.
family appears to have occurred in 1711, during Queen Anne’s War, an earlier conflict with the French and their Indian allies that was largely limited to New York and New England. Whether Bleecker was told the date incorrectly or consciously merged two separate events, the essential horror of the story remained true: a family torn apart, children murdered before their mother’s eyes, and a woman dragged into captivity. The siege of Fort William Henry in 1757 would become famous, and the fate of Maria K. D.
would be told as part of that larger history. What became of Maria after she was dragged off into that long, terrible journey to Canada would be revealed in the continuation of her story.
