Settlers, Soldiers, and Scalps

Barbara Leininger and Marie LeRoy were teenage girls living along Penns Creek in central Pennsylvania in 1755 when an Indian war party captured them and carried them off to western Pennsylvania. This occurred early in the French & Indian War. For several years, the teenagers lived as Delaware Indians. Sometimes they had little to eat, and " ... we were forced to live on acorns, roots, grass and bark," they said later.

After three years, they escaped from their captors and fled on foot across...