HUNTER, John Dunn. Memoirs of a Captivity Among the Indians of North America, from Childhood to the Age of Nineteen.
London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1823. First UK edition, published in the same year as the first American edition.
One of the most controversial captivity narratives of the early American West. Hunter claimed to have been taken as a young child, passing successively among the Kickapoo, Pawnee, Kansa and Osage before returning to Euro-American society as a young man. His account records Indigenous customs, hunting, warfare, religion, medicine and daily life west of the Mississippi.
The authenticity of Hunter’s story was fiercely disputed almost immediately. Critics branded him an impostor, while later scholarship, particularly Richard Drinnon’s White Savage, argued that significant parts of his narrative were credible. The debate remains central to the book’s fascination.
Hunter later became involved with Cherokee leaders in Texas and the Fredonian Rebellion, an early attempt to challenge Mexican authority. After the movement collapsed, he and Richard Fields were captured and executed in 1827.
With engraved portrait frontispiece of Hunter, drawn on stone by C. R. Leslie. Octavo, 447 pages.
Finely bound in later half calf over marbled boards, with raised bands, blind decoration, black and red morocco spine labels, and marbled endpapers.
