during her occasional visits to that city
with her people on business. Indeed, she was always held in great esteem
by the white people, invited to their houses, and entertained with
marked civility."

It would seem, then, that in 1744 Catherine Montour had already passed
middle age, and indeed we know from the account of Lord Cornbury that
she was born some time before the close of the seventeenth century. It
would therefore seem most probable that Queen Esther was the daughter of
the Catherine Montour who was a Huron by birth and a Seneca by adoption;
but this matters little in the search for the deductions to be made from
the story of Queen Esther and the unfortunate Wyoming Valley. Accepting
as accurate only that part of her history which deals with the massacre,
we know that Esther was a war chief of the Senecas and that she had
absolute control over them. We also find that the Catherine Montour of
Stone's account, whether or not she was identical with Queen Esther, was
of such influence with her tribe that she was selected by them as a
delegate to an important convention. This, then, furnishes us with a
specific instance of the power of women among the Indians.

An incident in this same massacre of Wyoming is illustrative of a
somewhat curious fact with regard to Indian life, the adaptability of
their captives to the life of the woods. There was captured by the
Indians a little girl named Frances Slocum, about five years old. For
long all trace of her was lost; but in 1835, more than fifty years after
the massacre, an old woman known as Maconaqua, living in a Miami village
in Indiana, was by accident identified as the lost Frances Slocum. To
all appearance she was an Indian; and she was really so in costume,
habits, and even in manner of thought. When the events of her childhood
were recalled to her memory, she herself was able to give evidence which
rendered her identification unquestionably complete. But when pressed to
return to civilization and her relatives, she absolutely declined. "I
cannot go," she said; "I have always lived with the Indians; I am used
to them; I wish to live and die with them. My husband and my boys are
buried here, and I cannot leave them. I have a house and land, two
daughters, a son-in-law, and grandchildren. I was a sapling when they
took me. It is all gone past. I should not be happy with my white
relatives. I am glad to see them; but I cannot go."

So she was left with her red bro