Joseph arrived at age 4 in Marietta at Point Harmar in November 1788. Indians kidnapped him in 1791. The family had moved downriver to the stockade at Belleville in Virginia. Joseph was helping his father drive hogs from a lot when Indians appeared. One grabbed him around the waist. Indians intended to kidnap his father, too, but James Kelly was too strong. He overpowered three of the Indians trying to take him. He was shot dead and scalped. They carried a terrified Joseph off through the woods. Among his captors was a white man with a freckled face, red hair, and a big smile – an unlikely member of a war party, Joseph thought. Could this have been the infamous Simon Girty? Years later, Joseph thought it was.

They crossed the Ohio River on a crude raft and headed north. One night around a fire the white man ordered Joseph to light a pipe “for his majesty.” Joseph obeyed once but when asked again resisted, angrily blurting “you can jolly light it yourself.” Momentarily speechless, the livid white man began beating him with a branch. Luckily a warrior intervened, took Joseph away, and applied stripped tree bark to soothe his welts. By his rebellious spirit, Joseph was gaining respect from his captors. Still he endured abusive treatment. Was this outright hostility to him as a white boy or a type of initiation to becoming a tribe member? Once on the trip north they tied him to a cow because he wasn’t keeping up. The cow didn’t like it any more than Joseph did. It lurched back and forth, veering into brush. The Indians laughed at the spectacle; Joseph fumed.

The journey settled into a routine. He was well fed. The party found some milk cows; Joseph drank all the milk he could. At last the party arrived a Shawnee village near the Auglaize River. He stood in trepidation as a tribal council was held to determine his fate. While there, he saw the scalp of his father hanging from a pole. Finally, a warrior named Mishalena and his squaw Patepsa adopted him. They had lost five sons from fighting with whites.

He grew to love his adopted father. He was allowed to play with the other boys. At first, they were adversaries. Soon he bested them all in running, strength, Indian skills, and tests of endurance. They grew to love and respect him. He earned the name Lah-lah-que, meaning swift runner. His adopted mother kept him busy working with squaws in the fields, packing wood, pounding hominy, hulling corn. Joseph Kelly had displayed much resilience for an 8-year-old kid, eh? Gradually, memories of his past life and family dimmed. His native English faded. Years passed.

Suddenly, a crisis was brewing. The tribe was on the alert as the soldier they called “Mad Anthony” Wayne and his army approached. Indians were defeated at the Battle of Fallen Timbers and sought peace. Troops burned villages and crops. There would be a prisoner exchange. Joseph realized to his chagrin he would have to leave his Shawnee family and way of life. His mother Anne had implored Return Jonathan Meigs, then an Indian Commissioner, to bring her son home. Finally, in the spring of 1796, Joseph returned to Marietta. There was joy in the city. But Joseph was forced to endure another painful life transition to a way of life the now 11-year-old barely knew.

Years later in 1811, some of his Shawnee friends visited their old friend Lah-lah-que at Marietta. Joseph enjoyed the reunion. To celebrate old times, they staged a race with Joseph from Picketed Point to Campus Martius. Joseph, “running like the wind,” was again the winner.