Item #2299185 A Narrative of the Life of Mary Jemison: De-He-Wa-Mis, The White Woman of the Genesee, with Geographical and Explanatory Notes. James E. Seaver, Wm. Pryor Letchworth, Everett.

A Narrative of the Life of Mary Jemison: De-He-Wa-Mis, The White Woman of the Genesee, with Geographical and Explanatory Notes.

New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons / The Knickerbocker Press, 1913. Seventh Edition. Hard Cover. Good / No Jacket. Item #2299185

Seventh edition. Binding repaired, ink name and address on front endpaper, 2 inch split to front joint, front free endpaper absent, portion of rear free endpaper missing, a few spots on boards.

305, [3] pp. 8vo. The famous biography of Mary Jemison, with additional content collected and edited by Wm. Pryor Letchworth. The original edition was published in 1824 (Howes S-263: 'One of the most authentic and interesting of captivity narratives, told by one who spent a long life among the Senecas and was the first white woman to descend the Ohio.'), and quickly republished in London in 1826 (Sabin 78678, Church 1334: 'This well written narrative, purporting to be only the biography of a captive among the Senecas, is really the best resume we have of incidents in the history and common life of the Seneca Indians. Its truthfulness is vouched for by such veracious testimony as that of Eli Parker, an educated chief of that nation, though its authenticity can scarcely have greater corroboration than the fact that Mr. Seaver received almost the whole mass of incidents narrated in his book, directly from the lips of the aged captive herself. - FIELD. Forty years had passed since the close of the revolutionary war, and almost seventy years had seen Mrs. Jemison with the Indians, when Daniel W. Banister, Esq., at the instance of several gentlemen, and prompted by his own ambition to add something to the accumulating fund of useful knowledge, resolved, in the autumn of 1823, to embrace that time, while she was capable of recollecting and reciting the scenes through which she had passed to collect from herself, and to publish to the world, an accurate account of her life. - Introduction, p. viii. At this time Mrs. Jemison was about eighty years of age, and was living in the neighborhood of Genesee River, about four miles from Castile, New York, to which place she went on foot to meet the author and his publisher and tell the story of her life.').

Price: $125.00