The Democracy of Belonging: What Mary Jemison and Cynthia Ann Parker Teach Us About Choice

Peggy O'Neal
Aug 27
4 min read

Illustration, from an 1892 account of missionary activity in upstate New York

Source: Wikipedia

In 1758, fifteen-year-old Mary Jemison was captured during a raid on her Pennsylvania home. Twenty-four years later, when white traders offered to help her return to colonial society, she refused. She had married a Seneca man, raised children, and become a respected voice in her adopted community. When pressed about her decision, she was clear: this was her family now, this was her home.

Seventy years later, Cynthia Ann Parker faced similar choices. Taken by Comanche at age nine, she lived as Naduah for twenty-four years, married Chief Peta Nocona, and bore three children including future chief Quanah Parker. When Texas Rangers "rescued" her in 1860, tearing her from her Comanche family, she spent the remaining eleven years of her life trying to return to them.

Cynthia Ann Parker, or Narua (Was Found), and daughter, Topsannah (Prairie Flower), in 1861

Source: Wikipedia

These stories aren't just historical curiosities—they're windows into what genuine choice looks like, and what social structures must exist to make such choices possible.

The Architecture of Choice

What enabled Mary Jemison and Cynthia Ann Parker to truly choose their families and communities? The answer lies in Indigenous social systems that many of us have never learned about:

Adoption as Full Membership: Many Indigenous nations practiced formal adoption that granted complete social equality. Jemison wasn't a perpetual outsider—she owned property, participated in decision-making, and her voice carried weight in community matters. The Seneca system recognized that belonging wasn't about bloodline but about commitment to the community's wellbeing.

Fluid Kinship Networks: Comanche and many other Indigenous societies understood family as something you build, not just inherit. Children could have multiple parents, clans could adopt entire families, and kinship extended through ceremony and choice as much as birth. This created multiple pathways to belonging.

Consensus-Based Governance: These weren't authoritarian societies where individual choice was subordinated to hierarchy. Many Indigenous nations made decisions through extensive discussion and consensus-building, ensuring that community members—including adopted ones—had genuine voice in their collective future.

Economic Integration: Adopted members weren't second-class citizens economically. Jemison accumulated significant land holdings. Parker's children became leaders. Economic opportunity wasn't gated by ethnic origin but by contribution to community prosperity.

The Democracy of Belonging

What strikes me most about these stories isn't the initial "capture"—it's the repeated, conscious choice to stay. Both women had opportunities to leave. Both chose to remain with the families and communities they had built.

This reveals something profound about democratic life: true belonging requires both the ability to choose and social structures that make that choice meaningful.

Consider what this means for us today. How many of our communities offer genuine adoption—not just tolerance, but full membership with voice, economic opportunity, and social equality? How many of our institutions create multiple pathways to belonging rather than single, rigid hierarchies?

Parker and Jemison found something in Indigenous societies that colonial society couldn't offer: the chance to become family, not just neighbors. The chance to help shape the community, not just live within its predetermined boundaries.

The Tragedy of Forced Return

The real tragedy in these stories isn't cross-cultural adoption—it's the forced separation from chosen families. When Parker was "rescued" against her will, she lost her husband, most of her children, and her role as a respected community member. She became a stranger in a society that claimed her as its own but never truly let her belong.

This speaks to a crucial democratic principle: the right to choose your community must include the right to leave another. Forced loyalty—whether to nation, family, or ideology—is antithetical to democratic life.

Lessons for Today

These historical accounts offer us three essential insights for building more democratic communities:

Choice requires multiple pathways. If there's only one way to belong—by birth, wealth, education, or cultural background—then choice is an illusion. Democratic communities must create various routes to full membership.

Belonging must be substantive, not symbolic. Token inclusion isn't enough. True community membership means having voice in decisions, access to economic opportunity, and the chance to shape the community's future.

Forced loyalty undermines democracy. Communities that won't let people leave, that guilt or punish those who choose different paths, become prisons rather than chosen homes.

Mary Jemison lived to be 90, spending 75 years as a Seneca. Cynthia Ann Parker died heartbroken, separated from her chosen life. The difference wasn't in their original circumstances—it was in which society ultimately respected their right to choose.

In our polarized time, when so many feel trapped between rigid tribal loyalties, these stories remind us that the most powerful communities aren't built on blood or soil or shared grievance. They're built on the simple but revolutionary idea that people should be free to choose who they become family with—and that those choices should be honored, protected, and celebrated.

The question for us is: Are we building communities people choose to join, or communities they're simply born into? Are we creating the social architecture that makes genuine choice possible?

True democracy begins with the recognition that belonging, like citizenship, is most meaningful when it arises from free choice and is sustained by social structures that ensure genuine participation, rather than imposed from above. Mary Jemison and Cynthia Ann Parker understood this. The question is whether we do.