Captured by a Patrol
“It would be idle to attempt to fight against such fearful odds; so they stood still while their hands were tied behind them, and then, obeying the orders of the foreman of the band, they climbed into the wagon.”
—Kate Pickard, The Kidnapped and the Ransomed
Concklin had explored the escape route before contacting the Still family, and although he was able to secure various hideouts, he also discovered that southern Illinois and Indiana were “infested with men thirsting for the rewards offered to those who are willing to cast aside their humanity, and do the work of bloodhounds–hunting the outcast, and seeking and dragging back the fugitive” (285). Moreover, the family’s travels along major highways subjected them to innumerable watching eyes and inquiring tongues. Ally, bystander, and enemy were indiscernible in the daily traffic that the family passed on the road. In fact, when one of the Still boys caught and returned an escaped horse, its owner returned the kindness by joining a pursuing patrol, riding the very animal that had been returned to him.
After a cold rainy day, the Stills were warming themselves by the hearth at a friendly station when a patrol of seven locals, armed with “bowie-knives and pistols,” approached on horseback and cornered the family (297). Far from a sanctioned police unit, the men conducted a haphazard interrogation while swilling liquor for “courage.” Plainly, their aggression was founded on scant suspicion, and they required the liquid incentive to propel their scheme forward. Nevertheless, they had the advantage of numbers and weapons, and they further tipped the balance of power in their favor by binding the family in ropes and bearing them by wagon to the Vincennes jail.
The Stills’ capture reveals the special role of mobility in the work of liberation and enslavement. Concklin managed to obtain two horses to serve their party of five, but it could never travel faster than its slowest member. Unsure whether the Stills were indeed fugitives, the patrollers bind the family turn them into fugitives. When patrollers bind the family, they refuse mobility as a way of asserting a social classification, not the reverse. Refusing movement to the Stills was a prelude to defining them as fugitives.