In his first-person account published in 1811, he states that he was living at the time outside Robinson's Fort,[5] "twenty miles above Carlisle," near present-day Southwest Madison Township, Pennsylvania.
Pisquetomen told him to stay with the women, where he was guarded with several other white captives, including Simon Girty, Marie Le Roy and Barbara Leininger.
[9]: 28–31 After the attack, he was forced to witness the torture of a woman who had attempted to escape with Armstrong's men,[10]: 402 and observed that one of the Indians was wearing his mother's scalp, "which hung as a trophy from his belt."
[11]: 56–58 Gibson says that, by this time, he was "acquainted with their manners and customs, had learned their language, and was become a tolerable good hunter, was admitted to their dances, to their sacrifices, and religious ceremonies.
In the fall of 1757 the two stole a horse, intending to cross the Ohio River, but Wright regretted the decision, afraid of being tortured if the Indians caught them.
Gibson then apologized, telling Pisquetomen that he and Wright had been planning to build a plough, with which they hoped to cultivate cornfields.
Gibson volunteered to join the war party, thinking that it might offer him a chance to escape, but Pisquetomen would not permit him to go.
[Note 1] In spite of fears and accusations that Gibson was planning to escape, he was sent alone, on foot, to deliver a message from Shingas to Kuskusky, a 36-mile journey.
Pisquetomen had warned them that if they allowed Gibson to escape, "he would make them pay him a thousand bucks, or return him another prisoner equally good.
[4]: 148 In October 1758, after French and Indian forces were defeated in an attack on the British outpost of Fort Ligonier, Pisquetomen and Gibson moved to Muskingum.
There Gibson met Marie Le Roy and Barbara Leininger, two girls about 15 years of age, from Switzerland and Germany respectively, who had been captured during the Penn's Creek Massacre on 16 October 1755, and whom he had known at Kittanning and at Kuskusky.
They may have been exploiting the Lenape practice of requiring sick persons to live outside the community, as a form of quarantine to prevent the spread of contagious disease, or traditions related to the seclusion of girls at puberty, when Lenape custom required them to stay isolated in a menstruation hut.
[4]: 150 The next day (16 March 1759),[1]: 417 Gibson went to the girls' camp, where he also met David Brackenridge, and at sunset the four of them set out, passing close to the spot where Pisquetomen had been digging peanuts.
While crossing a river on a hastily constructed raft, Gibson lost his rifle[3]: 184 as well as his flint and steel, leaving them to spend the last four nights of their journey sleeping in the snow with no fire.
[4]: 153 Gibson was sent to live with his uncle William McClelland and his sister Mary in Tyrone Township, Perry County, Pennsylvania.
[4]: 141 Gibson dictated his story to Archibald Loudoun, a childhood friend,[2]: 558 who published it in 1811 in A Selection of Some of the Most Interesting Narratives, of Outrages, Committed by the Indians, in Their Wars with the White People.