William Biggs

Little is securely documented about this writer beyond the basics attached to his surviving work: he is identified in library and archival records as William Biggs (1755–1827), and he is known for Narrative of the Captivity of William Biggs Among the Kickapoo Indians in Illinois in 1788, a firsthand account later reprinted in 1922.

In that narrative, he describes traveling near Cahokia on March 28, 1788, being attacked and captured, and then making a dramatic escape. The plain, direct style gives the story much of its power. For modern listeners, the book offers not just suspense, but a rare window into the fears, movement, and violence of life on the early American frontier.

Because so little biographical information is easy to confirm, Biggs is remembered mainly through this one surviving narrative rather than through a well-documented personal history. Even so, that account has endured as a notable example of American captivity writing.