I Am Regina

I Am Regina (1991), a historical novel by British author Sally Keehn, tells the real-life story of Regina Leninger, a ten-year-old girl who was kidnapped by Delaware Indians in colonial Pennsylvania at the start of the French and Indian War in 1755.

The historical context for I Am Regina involves the Penn's Creek massacre of 1755. Although the Delaware Indians were peaceful and predominantly harmless to European settlers for decades leading up to the French and Indian War, the French army encouraged various tribes to perpetrate bloody raids against non-French settlement camps. This was the catalyst for the Penn's Creek raid and other raids of its kind. The Indians were also emboldened by a key defeat of General Edward Braddock's army at Fort Duquesne in July of that year. This victory started a chain reaction of raids that began at Buffalo Valley and lasted for months until October, when the tribe, decked in war paint, arrived at Penn's Creek. There, they massacred more than twenty people belonging to different families and kidnapping at least two children, including Regina Leninger. Only one man from the settlement escaped with his life to reach local authorities before being caught. Scholars say Indian tribes were able to attack settlers with virtual impunity because Philadelphia's Provincial Government refused to intervene on behalf of the victims.

Regina is taken, along with her sister, Barbara, after witnessing her father and brother massacred at the hands of the Indians. Soon after this, Barbara and Regina are separated, but Regina makes a new friend in a fellow captive she calls Sarah. After some harsh traveling, Regina and Sarah are taken by Tiger Claw, who considers them his property, to his village where they meet Tiger Claw's cruel mother, Wolefin. In order to assimilate the girls into their new tribe, Tiger Claw renames them, prohibiting them from speaking in their native tongue. Regina is named Tskinnak, which means "blackbird," and Sarah is named Quetit, "little girl." They are trained as farmers, but soon they learn they have to scavenge to feed themselves, improvising their own survival after Tiger Claw reveals himself unreliable when it comes to bringing food and provisions back to the village.

Throughout the ordeal, Regina tries as hard as she can to remember her own life. When she is alone, out of earshot of Tiger Claw and other Indians, she repeatedly intones, "I am Regina," so that she doesn't forget who she is. Before long, however, holding onto these memories becomes too difficult. The mantra "I am Regina" is replaced with "I am Tskinnak." Tskinnak admits to Quetit that after all this time she remembers nothing of her mother.

In time, Tskinnak finds a new mother figure in the form of her older friend, Nonschetto. Before long, she begins to fear attacks from white settlers, having fully immersed herself in the new culture, though being a part of the new culture comes with fresh challenges. For example, after nearly a decade passes and Tskinnak comes of age as an adult, Tiger Claw begins to covet her as his sexual mate. Complicating matters further is the fact that Wolefin desperately wishes that the two marry.

Before this can happen, Tskinnak is miraculously reunited with her birth mother. Nevertheless, even though Tiger Claw and Wolefin mistreated her in many ways (including kidnapping her), at this point in the novel, she has spent half her life in the company of the Indians. Therefore, she is torn about joining her mother. In the end, however, she decides to go back to her people. The book ends there, rather than explaining the transition back to European culture, which would likely be as difficult as the transition into the Delaware Indian tribe.

I Am Regina is, ultimately, a young adult-oriented historical fiction that sheds light on Indian-European relations in the pre-Revolutionary War era.