I Am Regina Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright Page

  Foreword

  CHAPTER One

  CHAPTER Two

  CHAPTER Three

  CHAPTER Four

  CHAPTER Five

  CHAPTER Six

  CHAPTER Seven

  CHAPTER Eight

  CHAPTER Nine

  CHAPTER Ten

  CHAPTER Eleven

  CHAPTER Twelve

  CHAPTER Thirteen

  CHAPTER Fourteen

  CHAPTER Fifteen

  CHAPTER Sixteen

  CHAPTER Seventeen

  CHAPTER Eighteen

  CHAPTER Nineteen

  CHAPTER Twenty

  CHAPTER Twenty-one

  CHAPTER Twenty-two

  CHAPTER Twenty-three

  CHAPTER Twenty-four

  CHAPTER Twenty-five

  CHAPTER Twenty-six

  Afterword

  Selected Bibliography

  Captive!

  Father and my brother Christian are dead. Both the cabin Father built and the log barn he and Christian raised to house the cows and oxen are in flames. Smoke tears my eyes. Corn stalks whip against my face as Two Feathers drags me, sobbing, through the field. Ahead of me, the tall one prods Barbara with his rifle, herding her toward Penn’s Creek. Our mouths are gagged. Our hands are tied behind our backs. I don’t know why we have been saved.

  “I Am Regina is an enthralling and profoundly stirring story, historical fiction for young people at its very finest.”

  —Elizabeth George Speare, Newbery Award—winning author of The Witch of Blackbird Pond

  “A dramatic first-person, present-tense narrative [based] on historical accounts of a German-American girl who was an Indian captive for the nine years of the French and Indian War.... It’s a tribute to Keehn’s skill that she makes Regina’s ultimate sympathy for her captors entirely believable.... A profoundly moving evocation of a terrible experience mitigated by faith, courage, and humanity, told with simplicity, compassion, and admirable restraint.”

  —Kirkus Reviews, pointer review

  “A first-rate, gripping and haunting story.”

  —Children’s Literature

  An NCSS-CBC Notable Children’sTrade Book in the Field of Social Studies

  An IRA Young Adult Choice

  A New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age

  OTHER PUFFIN BOOKS YOU MAY ENJOY

  The Cabin Faced West Jean Fritz

  Dawn Rider Jan Hudson

  The First Horse I See Sally M. Keehn

  A Lantern in Her Hand Bess Streeter Aldrich

  Moki Grace Jackson Penney

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  For their help and encouragement, I would like to thank: my friends and colleagues of the Haycock Writers’ Workshop; Judith Gorog; Patricia Gauch; Tracy Gates; my mother, Mary Miller; my husband, David; and my daughters, Alison and Molly.

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers,

  345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England

  Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia

  Penguin Books Canada Ltd, to Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2

  Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England

  First published in the United States of America by Philomel Books,

  a division of the Putnam & Grosset Group, 1991

  Published by Puffin Books, a division of Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers, 2002

  Copyright © Sally M. Keehn, 1991

  All rights reserved

  THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE PHILOMEL EDITION AS FOLLOWS:

  Keehn, Sally M.

  I am Regina / Sally M. Keehn.

  p. cm.

  Summary: In 1755, as the French and Indian War begins, ten-year-old Regina

  is kidnapped by Indians in central Pennsylvania, and she must struggle

  to hold onto memories of her earlier life as she grows up under the

  name of Tskinnak and starts to become Indian herself.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-07695-8

  (1. Indians of North America—Pennsylvania—Captivities—Fiction.

  2. United States—History—French and Indian War, 1755-1763—Fiction.) I. Title.

  PZ7.K2257Im 1991 [Fic]—dc20 90-20098 CIP AC

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  Foreword

  Although the following narrative is fictionalized, it is based on a true story. It happened to Regina Leininger and is dedicated to her memory.

  The story begins in 1755 on a small farm near present-day Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania....

  CHAPTER One

  The rows of corn stretch out before me like long lines of soldiers. For the past week, Mother, Barbara and I have been harvesting the ripened ears. Now there are just gleanings left to gather.

  It is getting on to sunset. The October wind rustles through the dried stalks and I am afraid. Rumors say Indians have been attacking settlements to the north of us. Will they attack here?

  The corn must be gathered. I move from stalk to stalk, watching the surrounding woods from the comer of my eye. Watching for movements that don’t belong to trees and wild creatures. Indian movements.

  “Aren’t you finished yet?”

  The words startle me and I jump.

  It is my sister, Barbara, standing now before me. She balances a corn-filled basket on her hip.

  “Don’t creep up on me like that,” I tell her.

  She laughs. “Did you think I was an Indian?”

  “It’s not funny.”

  “You’re like a rabbit, Regina, jumping at every sound.”

  I ignore her, break a ripened ear from its stalk and tear off the husk.

  “Stop worrying about the Indians. Father says they’ll never come over the Allegheny Mountains.” Barbara is twelve, only thirteen months older than me. She thinks she knows everything.

  “The Reverend Haines says they might. He heard rumors that the Allegheny Indians are on the warpath. That they have already attacked settlers ten miles north of here. Weren’t you listening to him yesterday?”

  “I was listening. But Regina, those settlers had built their cabins in Indian territory. This land belongs to us.”

  I search the wooded hills that rise to the north and west of our farm. Beyond them, I see the dark outline of the Alleghenies. The Albany Line, which divides our land from the Indians’, runs through these mountains. Will the Indians respect this line?

  Barbara tosses an ear of corn into my basket. “Remember that Sunday in July? After the French and Indians had defeated General Braddock’s army at Bushy Run? The Reverend Haines said then that the French and Indians were planning to swarm down the Susquehanna River and wipe us out. They never came. I believe the good Reverend enjoys spreading rumors. It makes him feel important.”

  “Barbara! You musn’t talk about a man of God like that.”

  “I’ll talk about him as I please.” Barbara’s long skirt swishes against the corn stalks as she turns away from me. I can’t bear her sassiness. Yet ... I wish I had her confidence, her courage. Nothing seems to frighten her.

  I watch Barbara disappear among the corn stalks and I follow one row over, keeping her light brown hair in sight. I feel uneasy. There is nothing here to protect my back.

  Above the rustle of the corn stalks, I hear the sound of Penn’s Creek, its water tumbling over stones. Tomorrow, Mother and John must cross this creek which borders our f
arm. Two oxen will pull the corn-filled wagon down the long path which leads through stands of tall fir trees to Gabriel’s Mill. It is a good two-hour wagon ride. I wish my mother and my brother didn’t have to go.

  Barbara parts the corn stalks and joins me in my row. She takes an armful of corn from her basket and adds it to mine. “There. You have enough now.” She balances her basket against her hip, slips through the split rail fence that protects our corn from livestock, and heads toward our cabin.

  I scurry through the fence and hurry after her. The sun is setting behind the Alleghenies. Soon it will be dark.

  We pass the orchard where the chickens, their feathers fluffed against the wind, roost in the apple trees. They look cold and lonely there. They should roost inside the barn where the cows and oxen sleep. I smell their strong rich scent as Barbara and I unload our corn into the wagon Father has parked beside the open door.

  It is warm inside the barn and our cows make fine company, for they are motherly and kind.

  An owl hoots somewhere in the distance. From the wooded hills? The mountains? Barbara laughs and races across the barnyard to our cabin. I run after her, stumble up the cabin steps and slam the door on the haunting sound.

  Mother has supper waiting on the table. It is the venison stew we have been eating these past three days. I dip my biscuit in the gravy thickened with cabbage. It tastes good and warms me. I sneak a second biscuit from the bread basket. John grins at me from across the table and I grin back at him. John is sixteen, with dark, curly hair and brown eyes. Barbara says Marie LeRoy, who lives on the farm next to ours, is in love with him.

  Barbara and I help Mother clear the table while Father and Christian smoke their pipes. My brother Christian is almost twenty. A man now. He would like to have a farm of his own. But Father needs Christian’s strong, sturdy hands to help him till the soil and reap the harvest. Christian talks seriously with Father now about the smokehouse roof that needs repair. John sits with them, whittling on the wolf’s head he is creating from a piece of oak.

  I scrape the scraps off my pewter plate into Jack’s clay bowl. The black and white dog paws my skirt, eager for his supper.

  “Regina.” Mother hands me another plate to clean.

  “Must you go to the mill tomorrow?” I ask.

  “The corn must be milled before the winter comes.”

  “I know.”

  Mother touches my downturned face. “With the corn meal, I can make johnnycakes for you.” She smiles when I look up at her. My mother has a crooked smile that lights up the right side of her face but not the left—as if the left side held a secret she musn’t tell.

  “Will you buy maple sugar from the miller’s wife?” I ask, guessing at that secret.

  “We’ll see.”

  I like maple sugar as much as johnnycakes. I hope “we’ll see” means “yes.” I scrape the plates while Mother wipes crumbs off the table into her cupped hand. She is small and quick and always moving. Unlike Father, who has a stillness inside him; who often rests his arms on the barnyard fence and watches in silence as the sun goes down. It is at times like these that my father’s stillness worries me. He seems so far away.

  Mother is like a sparrow, fluttering here and there, cleaning up the remnants of our meal. I wish I looked like her instead of like Father, tall and big boned. Most of all, I wish I had her hair. My mother’s hair is soft and light brown, while mine is coarse and black. Barbara says my hair is like an Indian’s. I hate her when she says it. Indians are heathens.

  I feed Jack his supper. He wags his tail in appreciation, then gobbles down his meal. “Good boy,” I say, running my hand along his silky hair. Jack makes me feel safe. He would warn us if an Indian approached.

  Father shakes the embers from his pipe. He stands and takes out the Bible we keep in a wooden box that hangs on the cabin wall above the blanket chest. Father brought the Bible with him from Germany. He taught me to read from it.

  We gather together before the fire. I rest my head on Mother’s lap as Father reads aloud to us. It is the story of the Exodus. when Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt. It reminds me of the story Father tells of our own exodus here from Germany. I was only two, but the story is alive in my memory, he has told it so. often.

  We sailed from Germany on a ship named Patience. Father says patience was needed to endure that long trip across the Atlantic. There were so many of us aboard, we had to be packed as tight as cucumbers in a pickle barrel. Our drinking water was black with worms. Cold biscuits were our daily fare. Either they were hard and stale or filled with red worms and spider’s nests. We ate warm meals only three times a week. There was much sickness and disease. Many people died.

  Mother says she wrapped me in the patchwork quilt I still keep upon the bed I share with Barbara. We call it the quilt of many colors, for Mother made it for us from scraps of cloth she’d sewed together into star designs of yellow, red, white and blue. The quilt warmed me when the cold wind blew off the ocean. Mother says she rocked me in her arms when I was frightened. She told me stories from the Bible and sang to me when fierce storms tossed the ship. Sometimes I wish I were two years old instead of ten. Then Mother could hold and rock me the way she used to.

  Father closes the Bible and I have not been listening. Is it a sin to think of your own life when it is brought to light by God’s Word? Tomorrow, I must read the passages to myself so that God will know I meant Him no disrespect.

  Father bows his head and I bow mine. He thanks God for bringing us safely to this promised land of Pennsylvania. He asks God to watch over us.

  Father walks slowly across the cabin and places the Bible inside its box. Mother says that when Father was young, she thought he was the strongest man in all of Germany. He could fell trees and split logs faster than any man she knew. But time and endless chores have aged him. He looks old and he is often sick. Yet now, as he turns back to us, he looks young. Perhaps it is the warm glow of firelight that softens the lines in his face. Perhaps it is the strength he always seems to gather from reading God’s Word. Each night I pray God will keep my father strong. I would feel lost without him.

  Mother leads us in the hymn singing. Her voice is strong and true.

  Alone, yet not alone am I,

  Though in this solitude so drear.

  I feel my Savior always nigh,

  He comes the weary hours to cheer,

  I am with Him and He with me,

  Even here alone I cannot be.

  I love this hymn. It tells me that no matter how alone I may feel, God is always near. My mother’s arm encircles my shoulders as she sings. And it is then I know that here, within the warmth of my mother’s arm, within her singing of this hymn, no harm will come. In bed, with Barbara snug against my back and a rising wind whispering through the leaves on the nearby apple trees, I fall asleep with this thought to comfort me.

  CHAPTER Two

  I am like a bear. When the weather turns, I’d like to hole up in this warm cave I make from my patchwork quilt and remain in bed until the balm of spring awakens me.

  It is not spring awakening me now.

  “Time to get up!” My sister’s cheeks are flushed with morning air. Her dark eyes shine. She is already dressed and ready for the day.

  Frost laces the little window in the loft I share with her. The rising sun shines through, casting panes of pale light on the rough wood floor. It is too early to get out of bed. I hear Gert and Bessie mooing from the barn. They want to be milked. I wish the cows could milk themselves.

  “Mother wants breakfast early. She and John must be leaving soon.” Barbara leaves me to my slow waking.

  I turn on my side and draw the quilt close around my shoulders, wanting to shut out the chilling air, the thought of Mother’s leaving. I wish I could sleep all day and awaken at sunset when she returns.

  I trace my finger along the knothole in the floorboard by my bed. The knothole is shaped like a queen, with a long, full dress and fancy crown. Mother sa
ys Regina means “queen.” If I were really a queen, I would send my servants to the mill.

  “Regina. Hurry up! We have to milk the cows!” Barbara calls from the room below.

  “I’m coming.”

  My homespun dress and woolen shawl hang from pegs on the cabin wall only four short steps away. But it is chilly in the loft and the four steps feel like twenty.

  I climb down the ladder into the cabin’s main room where Father, John and Christian are already eating breakfast at the table. I wish that I could join them. Mother often says that I am too full of wishes. That my burden is to still myself and be thankful for my lot.

  Barbara joins me at the cabin door. She is carrying the milk pails. I rub my hands together as we walk across the barnyard. I must milk Bessie. She won’t let down her milk to cold hands.

  Fritz and Brownie moo from their stall as we milk their mothers. “You’ll get your share soon enough,” I tell the calves who solemnly stare at us through the slats that keep them from their. mothers. Bessie swings her head around, gazing at me with sad brown eyes. I rest my head against her flank, savoring the warmth.

  Our breakfast is bread which we heat in toasting irons over the fire. The bread is warm and chewy, but the crusts are hard. I feed them to Jack who lies at my feet, resting his chin on my shoes. Although he is partial to John, Jack always keeps me company when I am eating. He knows I will reward him.

  John pokes his head through the cabin door. “The oxen are harnessed. We’re ready.” He winks at me.

  Mother dons her cape. “Regina. Barbara. Mind the fire while I am gone.”

  I run to Mother and hug her. She smells of wood smoke and yeast. “I wish you didn’t have to go.”

  “Why, Regina.” She lifts my chin so that she can look me in the eyes. “Would you have us eat corn the way the cows do?”