Mary Draper was 18 when she married 21-year-old William Ingles in 1750. They lived near their parents in Draper's Meadows, a settlement of 10 people, in Augusta County, Va. On July 30, 1755, the Shawnee attacked, capturing or killing many of the residents. One of the captives, Mary was eventually taken to Big Bone Lick in present-day Boone County, Ky, where she was set to making salt.

Around October 19, Mary decided to escape, along with another woman. They probably headed for Landing Creek, the closest access to the Ohio River and the first of the 145 waterways they would have to cross on their way to the Kanawha River, 250 miles up the Ohio.

They probably reached the Kanawha, their halfway point, around November 7. From there, it was 95 miles and 46 streams to the Falls of Kanawha, and then up the New River for another 85-90 miles of the most rugged terrain of the route. Surviving incredible hardships, they arrived home near December 1st, after a 43 day journey.

Mary Ingles in her old age was a lively and energetic lady. Stories are told of her independence and determination. She still worked with her spinning wheel when she was over eighty years old. Once it needed repair, and she could not get her son John to attend to it, she ordered her servants to saddle her favorite horse, Bonny, carried the wheel eight miles to a craftsman, and brought it home by herself. Another story recounted how she stepped on a large black snake in her vegetable garden, which instantly coiled itself around her leg. She held its head in place with her foot, and called for her cook to bring a butcher knife by which she freed herself. This is how her descendants remembered her, and the kind of stories they liked to tell about her. Her children and grandchildren remembered the stories she told many times of her own life, but the one they heard most often was that of her escape from the Shawnee at Big Bone Lick.

Sonnontio, or Sonhioto, known also as Lower Town, was usually called Lower Shawnee Town by the English traders. It is the site of many ancient earthworks, which occur on both sides of the Ohio River. The town was built about 1738, and was part of a large network of Shawnee villages in the Ohio valley. The village had a mixed population, mostly Shawnee and Delaware. A trader reported about 1750 that there were 300 men, that is, warriors, which indicates that the population of the town may have been as much as 1,500 people. There were about 100 houses north of the river, and forty on the Kentucky side. The council house was a great birch-bark lodge about 90 Feet long with a covering of bark. The French had a trading post in the area as early as 1740.

It has often been claimed that Mary Ingles was the first white woman in the Ohio Valley, but this is not the case. In 1744 twelve year old Catherine Gougar (1732-1801) was a captive among the Shawnee. She was captured in Berks County, Pennsylvania, and lived among them on the Scioto for five years, near present-day Chillicothe. Dr. Frank Warner writes of her: "Just eleven years before Mary Ingles was led captive to our Ohio soil, Catherine Gouger was living upon the fertile banks of the Scioto." It is likely that there were many white women in the area before Mary Ingles. The earliest white woman living captive in the Ohio Valley that can be documented is Mary Harris, captured at Deerfield, Massachusetts, at the age of twelve, in 1704. When she was about eighteen she married an Indian and had several sons. There may have been other white women in the town when Mary arrived.

• Draper's Meadows, 1755
• The Shawnee and the Americans
• Shawnee Raid and Capture
• Mary Ingles at Sonnontio
• Big Bone Lick
• The Escape and Journey Home
• Food for the Journey
• "The Ohio was their only Guide"
• The Significance of Mary's Life
• Note
• Acknowledgements
• About the Author

James K. Duvall was born in Lexington, Kentucky. He graduated from Clay County High School in Manchester, Kentucky, in 1976, and earned his B. A. in Bible and Ancient Languages at the Lexington Baptist College in 1980. He graduated from the Austin Peay State University with a M. A. in History. His thesis, Principia Historia; or, R. G. Collingwood and the Logic of History, was accepted, and the degree granted, in 1988. He has done doctoral work at the Hebrew Union College, in Cincinnati, completing all course work for the degree in Ancient Near Eastern Studies; instead of writing a dissertation he took an M. A. in Bible and Cognate Studies, graduating in 2000. He and his wife, Nicole, and their seven children, live in a cabin on Big Bone Creek, near the Ohio River, in Boone County, Kentucky.