I've been reading up lately about a guy that lived in the early 1800s by the name of John Dunn Hunter. Hunter's claim was that he was taken prisoner by the Kickapoo indians in a raid in what is now Kansas when he was around two years old. He grew up in tribes belonging to the Kansas, Cherokee, and Osage indians and grew from prisoner to warrior to explorer. He claims to have traveled west to the Pacific Ocean and back with a band of Osages and to have been a part of the first trading expeditions up the Missouri Rover with Manuel Lisa as a scout. At age 19 he somehow learned English and then got an education. He then traveled East and was received by Thomas Jefferson and many other scientific men of that age. He got letters of introduction from those men and went to London where he was feted by British high society and even the King of England. In London, he wrote and published a book of his life as a captive called "Memoirs of a Captivity Among the Indians of North America", which is one of the books I have been reading, published 1824. He left England and traveled to Scotland where he again was received by society people and then returned to the United States where he got involved in talks with Mexico to create a Cherokee Nation in North Texas (then part of Mexico) and got involved in the Fredonian Rebellion in 1827. This was the first attempt to make Texas a free republic. The Cherokees found him guilty of treason and had him executed.
His story is almost to far fetched to be true but he is mentioned by Manuel Lisa in his journals and many indian people in the Oklahoma-Missouri- Kansas area knew him or of him. It was one of the great debates of the day in europe and in america about his authenticity after he was dead. Either way, he is an interesting character in our history and his memoirs make for some pretty interesting reading. Especially his trip west, which would have occurred after Lewis and Clark's trek across the country. (1805?)
Almost all of the reading I've done on this guy is available for free on the good old innerwebs and was written many many years ago. Cool shit.
http://www.merrycoz.org/voices/hunter/HUNTER04.HTM
BKB
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Originally Posted by Captain
