| This is «The Story of My Captivity by Savages,» or «How I Learned to Fight»
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| By Eliza Elizabeth Cook, age 13
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| Writ in my own hand on this, the 23rd day of August, 1829
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| «Fine Day for a Flaying,» or «The Brutal Massacre of All I Held Dear.»
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| Chapter one
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| The valley that runs down the trail over the west bank of the glorious state of
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| Natchez-Pierce was the site of my own hideous undoing. |
| My whole family was lain
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| waste, no care taken by the natives that even baby Coolidge was to be spared an
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| ounce of pain
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| How I came to be spared, by the grace of God, I shall never know
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| I had been smashed in the head with a boulder over fourteen times by a young
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| Indian brave. |
| When I awoke, with eyes still stinging from the smouldering
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| decimation, my large blue eyes looked up into the burning sun of the late
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| summer sky. |
| No sooner had I stirred when four horsemen approached my wilted
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| carcasse. |
| In their stilted English, they told me in great detail how they had
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| massacred mine own Ma and Pa, how my elder brother Ham had given no resistance
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| to his own flogging, and how easy it had been to make my sickly sister,
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| Sarah Susanna, wail and sob like a sea creature. |
| (Boo hoo!)
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| I clenched my long, graceful fingers into tight fists at my sides,
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| and turning my head away, laughed quietly to myself. |
| (Ha ha ha!
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| ) If these human animals believed that they had captured a nubile and willing
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| young white slave girl, they were sorely mistaken
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| I felt about my waist for a weapon. |
| Oftentimes, I kept sewing tools hanging
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| from ribbons pinned to my dress. |
| «Looking for this?» |
| the handsomest warrior
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| asked, holding my sterling pinking shears up between two red fingers as he
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| looked down from his steed at my writhing confusion
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| Brushing a strand of pale yellow hair from my brow, I pretended to reach for a
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| stray silken slipper that I had spied nearby, but swiftly darted up and in
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| between the flanks of the wild mustangs that stood majestically before me!
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| The silent commander had only to reach down to capture me by the hair.
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| Yanking hard, he pulled me upright, and twisted my fair face up to meet his
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| cold, cold gaze. |
| I shall never forget my realization upon that moment that my
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| freedom had thus been robbed. |
| And that although my pleasing mortal shell was
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| intact, I, Eliza Elizabeth Jane Cook, was to become a handmaiden to a number of
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| verile, half-naked nomads, and that this ordeal would continue fourteen years |