USA > Massachusetts > Our western border : its life, combats, adventures, forays, massacres, captivities, scouts, red chiefs, pioneer women, one hundred years ago, containing the cream of all the rare old border chronicles > Part 68
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Now or never was the time! Hammond worked his way quietly to where lay an axe. The boy stood near where the guns were stacked. Bennett gained a spear unperceived, and cautiously approaching the nodding guard, drove it through his body, throwing him over into the
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fire. Hammond, with his axe, dashed in the skull of the savage who had told him of Boyd's torture. A third blow buried the axe in the neck of another wretch who was attempting to rise.
Bennett, leaving the spear in the body of his first victim, seized a tomahawk and dealt murderous blows. The boy snapped three guns at the enemy, one after the other. Not one would go off. A stout Indian now rushed upon him, but the brave lad, clubbing a musket, buried the lock deep in the head of his opponent. Five of the seven Indians were actually now dead. The other two fled, one desperately wounded by the boy. Bennett flung his hatchet at the other, which struck him in the back, without, however, impeding his course. Ben- nett was an old hunter, and now led his gallant party over the ridges, carefully avoiding all Indian trails. They waded through the deep snow, swam several streams, only stopping to pick some wintergreen here and there, where the snow was drifted off, and reached their homes in three days.
The Indian who had been wounded by young Bennett, died in the woods. His companion, whom the elder Bennett had hit, while in flight, with his hatchet, was found lying insensible by a party of his tribe. Several years after a treaty was negotiated with the Indians ; Hammond, who was present, saw an old savage with a crooked back walking about, whose face seemed familiar to him. He inquired the cause of his stooping. " A Yankee tomahawked me at Wyoming," was the sullen reply. It was Bennett's old target.
FRANCES SLOCUM, THE LOST SISTER.
Three or four months after the massacre, many of the settlers re- turned and commenced rebuilding their ruined homes, but savage in- cursions and murders continued. Near the present town of Wilkes- barre lived a family by the name of Slocum. While the males were ab- sent one day in the fields, the house was surrounded by yelling Indians. There were in it a mother, a daughter about nine years of age, a son aged thirteen, a daughter aged five and a little boy aged two and a half. A young man and a boy by the name of Kingsley were present, grinding a knife. The first thing the Indians did was to shoot down the young man and scalp him with the knife he had in his hand. The nine year old sister took the little boy, two and a half years old, and ran out of the back door to go to the fort. The Indians chased her just enough
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FRANCES SLOCUM, THE LOST SISTER.
to give her a desperate fright, and laughed heartily at the way she ran and dragged along her chubby little brother.
They then took the Kingsley boy and young Slocum, aged thirteen, and little Frances, aged five, and prepared to depart, but finding young ' Slocum lame, at the earnest entreaties of the mother, they left him. The mother's heart was crushed, and for years she could not speak of the scene without blinding tears. She saw a savage throw her little girl over his shoulder, and as her hair fell over her little face, with one hand she brushed it aside and the other she held out imploringly to her mother. The Indian then turned into the bushes, and that was the last scene that dwelt in the mother's memory. About a month after the redskins came again, murdered the aged grandfather and wounded the lame boy. The last child was born a few months after these tragedies.
The hopes, fears and yearnings of the stricken mother concerning the little toddling Frances can never be described. As the boys grew up and became men, they were very anxious to know the fate of their little fair-haired sister. They wrote letters, sent inquiries, made journeys through all the West and into the Canadas, if peradventure they might learn anything respecting her fate. Four of these long journeys were made in vain. A silence, deep as that of the deepest forest through which they wandered, hung over her fate, and that for sixty years.
Readers will now pass over fifty-eight years from the time of this cap- tivity, and suppose themselves far in the wilderness, in the farthest part of Indiana. A very respectable agent of the United States is traveling there, and weary and belated, with a tired horse, he stops at an Indian wigwam for the night. He can speak the Indian language. The family are rich, for Indians have horses and skins in abundance. In the course of the evening he notices that the hair of the woman is light, and her skin, under her dress, is also white. She told him she was a white child, but had been carried away when a very small girl. She could only re- member that her name was Slocum, that she lived in a little house on the banks of the Susquehanna, and how many there were in her father's family and the order of their ages. But the name of the town she could not remember. On reaching his home, the agent mentioned the story to his mother ; she urged and pressed him to write and print the account. Accordingly he wrote and sent it to Lancaster, Pa., request- ing that it might be published. By some unaccountable blunder, it lay in the office two years before it was printed. But in 1838 it was pub- lished. In a few days it fell into the hands of Mr. Slocum, of Wilkes- barre, who was the little two and a half years old boy, when Frances was taken. In a few days he was off to seek his sister, taking with him his oldest sister, (the one who aided him to escape,) writing a brother
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who lived in Ohio, and who was born after the captivity, to meet him and go with him.
After traveling more than three hundred miles through the wilder- ness, they reached the Indian country, the home of the Miami Indian. Nine miles from the nearest white, they found the little wigwam. "I shall know my sister," said the civilized sister, because she lost the nail of her first finger. You, brother, hammered it off in the blacksmith shop when she was four years old." They go into the cabin and find an Indian woman having the appearance of seventy-five. She is painted and jeweled off, and dressed like the Indians in all respects. Nothing but her hair and color of skin, would indicate her origin. They get an interpreter and begin to converse. She tells them where she was born, her name, &c., with the order of her father's family. "How came your nail gone?" said the oldest sister. "My oldest brother pounded it off when I was a little child, in the shop?" In a word, they were satisfied that this was Frances, their long-lost sister! They asked her what her Christian name was. She could not remember. Was it Fran- ces ? She smiled and said "yes." It was the first time she had heard it pronounced for sixty years! Here, then, they were met-two brothers and two sisters! They were all satisfied they were brothers and sisters. But what a contrast! The brothers were walking the cabin unable to speak; the oldest sister was weeping, but the poor Indian sat motionless and passionless-as indifferent as a spectator. There was no throbbing, no fine chords in her bosom to be touched.
When Mr. Slocum was giving this history, one said to him, "But could she not speak English!" "Not a word." "Did she know her age?" "No-had no idea of it." "But was she entirely ignorant?" "Sir, she didn't know when Sunday comes!" Her whole history might be told in a word. She lived with the Delawares, who carried her off, till grown up, and then married a Delaware. He either died or run away, and she then married a Miami Indian, a chief. She had two daughters, both of whom married and lived in the glory of an Indian cabin. Not one of the family could speak a word of English. They had horses in abundance, and when the Indian sister wanted to accom- pany her new relatives, she whipped out, bridled her horse, and then, a la Turk, mounted astride and was off. At night she threw a blanket down upon the floor, and at once was asleep.
The brothers and sister tried to persuade their lost sister to return with them, and, if she desired it, bring her children. They would transplant her again on the banks of the Susquehanna, and of their wealth make her home happy. But no. They had always been kind to her, and she had promised her late husband, on his deatn-bed, that
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THE REVENGE OF COLONEL JOHN MOREDOCK.
she would never leave the Indians. And there they left her and hers, wild and darkened heathens, though they sprang from a pious race.
THE REVENGE OF COLONEL JOHN MOREDOCK.
Towards the end of the last century there lived at Vincennes, Indiana, a woman who had passed her whole life on the troubled border. She had been widowed several times by the savages, and on the death of her last husband, Moredock by name, determined to move still further west to better the chances for her growing sons. Joining a company who were proceeding to Illinois by way of the Mississippi, they pro- ceeded in pirogues safely and pleasantly down the Ohio, and thence up the Mississippi, until they reached Grand Tower, almost within sight of their destination. Here, supposing themselves entirely safe from dan- ger, the men carelessly leaped on shore to cordell the boats up against the swift current which rushed like a mill race around the base of a cliff. The women and children, about twenty in number, thoughtlessly fol- lowed.
While the whole party were thus joyfully strolling along between the cliff and the swift river, all at once, "like thunder from a clear sky," was heard the horrid, blood-curdling yell of savage onset, and a vol- ley from rifles above them stretched half a dozen of their number on the ground, while, almost at the same moment, a mob of the painted demons appeared at each end of this fatal death-trap.
The scene of confusion which followed beggars all description. The brave and experienced borderers saw the desperate strait they were in, and for an instant stood appalled. But only for an instant ! for in the next the pluck and wondrous courage of the iron-nerved and lion- hearted pioneers appeared, and with a shout of defiance they rushed to the encounter, giving yell for yell, blow for blow. It was a desperate but a hopeless conflict. They were, being half armed, huddled to- gether like a flock of sheep, and encumbered with terror-stricken women and children-all cut down but one single survivor -- John, the brave son of the widow Moredock.
He had fought like a tiger-cat until all hope was lost, and then, aided by the confusion and the cloud of smoke which hung over the murder- ous spot like a dense funeral pall, leaped into a cleft of the cliff that had caught his roving eye, and for the moment was safe. From this " coign of vantage" he had the unspeakable misery of witnessing a
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scene so horrid and terrible as to burn itself forever in his memory; turn his warm, young heart to stone, and engender that terrible thirst for revenge which was the ruling passion of all his after life, even after he had become a man of mark and held offices of trust in his adopted State.
Crouching there among the rocks and beholding the inhuman and barbarous savages mutilating the remains of mother, brothers and sis- ters, he took a solemn oath to devote his future life to a terrible revenge against the race, and to stay not his blood-red hand until every single fiend of that accursed band should give blood for blood.
How long he remained in that rocky cleft he could never tell. But while the savages were rifling the boats and securing their gory trophies, his heart hardened, his nerves became like steel, and after the Indians' departure, he stept stealthily down from his hiding place a man : stern, desperate and pitiless. Having ascertained that all his company were stone dead, and having buried the remains of his relatives, the lonely and desolate youth struck across the prairie to the nearest settlement on the Kaskaskia river, where he arrived next morning and told his fearful tale.
He found many sympathizers among the hardy, reckless borderers, and having announced his determination to avenge the massacre, he became at once the leader of a band of unquailing scouts, who never knew fear and never turned the back to foe. Staunch and tireless as a pack of bloodhounds, this select band of avengers ranged from the Des Moines to the Ohio. Now they were on the track of the murderers, and were almost in sight of them. Once they came up with the objects of their anxious quest on the banks of the Missouri, a hundred miles from the frontier, but as Moredock wished to utterly wipe out the devil- ish crew, instead of merely striking a partial blow, he refrained be- cause the peculiar location of his foes' camp allowed of escape. His revenge was only postponed ; the thirst for blood was inextinguishable.
Fortune at last favored Moredock. A short time afterwards he tracked the whole gang to the Mississippi, and found that they had all crossed to and encamped on an island. His resolve was soon fixed and declared to his fellows. He had taken the desperate determination of shutting up his own band on that narrow sand bar, cutting off all re- treat, and there fighting it out to the death. Slowly and stealthily, therefore, the canoes were paddled to the island. Not a sound was heard. The flames of the camp fire had burned low, serving only to mark the position of the doomed gang.
Now all the canoes, their own as well as those of the Indians, were set adrift, and then, with bated breath and with rifle in hand and toma-
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THE REVENGE OF COLONEL JOHN MOREDOCK.
hawk clenched tightly, the scouts, led by Moredock, with gleaming eye and compressed lips, glided silently nearer and nearer, making no more noise than would their own shadows. Were there none to warn the poor victims of the terrible fate approaching ? None whatever. Two or three of the startled savages caught the rustle of a leaf, a breaking of a twig, and their glittering eyes roved around the walls of encircling darkness, and their acute, practiced ears were stretched forward in an attitude of intense watchfulness.
Now is the long delayed moment. A low cluck from the mouth of Moredock gives the signal, and half a dozen savages received in their bodies the unerring leaden messengers. But savages may be surprised, but do not easily become panic-stricken. They are ever on the look- out for just such surprises, and when one comes they know well what to do. One moment and they are on their feet; the next they turned sullenly to meet the unknown foe, which now, with hideous uproar and long bounds, leaped in upon them.
The conflict was long, fierce and obstinate, but the savages had been taken at a fearful disadvantage, and were compelled to retreat and fight their way to their boats. A cry of despairful rage went up as they found all means of escape removed, and grimly and sullenly they stood at bay, fighting with desperate courage until all were killed but three, who plunged boldly into the stream, and, aided by the darkness, suc- ceeded in making good their escape.
No less than twenty-seven of the gang at the Grand Tower massacre were now still in death. Only three had escaped from the island slaughter, but while these lived John Moredock could not rest. His re- venge was not entirely glutted till the last had paid blood for blood, but all this might require long time and weary wanderings. They must, therefore, perish by his own hand. Dismissing his faithful band, and having learned from one of the wounded savages the nearest probable resorts of those who had escaped, he commenced to track them along. Tireless and unswerving as the sleuth-hound, he followed his prey across rivers, over hills and around prairies. Had the wretches known that the avenger of blood was on their trail they would have put oceans between them and their deadly foe.
Relentlessly and without intermission did Moredock pursue his pur- pose. His passion, however, was as quiet as it was deep and absorb- ing. Few even of his acquaintance knew the motive for his long and ceaseless journeyings to and fro, from Green Bay to the Ohio, and often ยท far across the Mississippi.
At length, after two years of restless wandering, he quietly arrived at Kaskaskia and settled down to a quiet life. His terrible task had been
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accomplished. The scalp of the very last of his family's ruthless mur- derers hung at his girdle.
But, alas ! John Moredock could not rest. His absorbing passion had taken utter and entire possession of his being. Revenge had be- come the ruling mania of his life. Although he no longer devoted all his time and energies to Indian tracking and killing, his hatred for the whole red race never once relaxed. A redskin was to him what a red flag was to a bull. He married, had children, held many public offices in Illinois ; was promoted to a Colonelcy, and died at the age of sixty; but he never spared the life of a redskin when in his power, or re- frained from inflicting an injury on one when he could.
And yet this man was known to his own color as a mild, gentle, peaceable person, fond of domestic quiet and averse to strife. There were many like him on the western border, and from precisely the same cause.
THRILLING ADVENTURE OF AUDUBON, THE NATURALIST.
On my return from the Upper Mississippi, I found myself obliged to cross one of the wide prairies, which in that portion of the United States vary the appearance of the country. The weather was fine ; all around me was as fresh and blooming as if it had just issued from the bosom of nature. My knapsack, my gun and my dog were all I had for baggage and company. But, although well moccasined, I moved slowly along, attracted by the brilliancy of the flowers and the gambols of the fawns around their dams, to all appearance as thoughtless of danger as I felt myself.
My march was of long duration. I saw the sun sink beneath the horizon long before I could perceive any appearance of woodland, and nothing in the shape of man had I met with that day. The track which I followed was only an old Indian trace; and as darkness overshadowed the prairie, I felt some desire to reach at least a copse, in which I might lie down to rest. The nighthawks were skimming over and around me, attracted by the buzzing wings of the beetles, which form their food, and the distant howling of wolves gave me some hope that I should soon arrive at the skirts of some woodland. I did so, and at almost the same instant, a fire-light attracting my eye, I moved towards it, full of confidence that it proceeded from the camp of some wandering In- lians. I was mistaken. I discovered from its glare, that it was from
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the hearth of a small log cabin, and that a tall figure passed and repassed between it and me, as if busily engaged in household arrangements.
I reached the spot, and, presenting myself at the door, asked the tall figure, which proved to be a woman, if I might take shelter under her roof during the night. Her voice was gruff, and her attire negligently thrown about her. She answered in the affirmative. I walked in, took a wooden stool and quietly seated myself by the fire. The next object that attracted my notice was a finely formed young Indian, resting his head between his hands, with his elbows on his knees. A long bow rested against the log wall near him, while a quantity of arrows and two or three raccoon skins lay at his feet. He moved not; he appa- rently breathed not. Accustomed to the habits of Indians, and know- ing that they pay but little attention to the movements of civilized strangers, I addressed him in French, a language not unfrequently par- tially known to the people in that neighborhood. He raised his head, pointed to one of his eyes with his finger, and gave me a significant glance with the other. His face was covered with blood. The fact was, that an hour before this, as he was in the act of discharging an arrow at a raccoon in the top of a tree, the arrow had split upon the cord, and sprung back with such violence into his right eye as to destroy it forever.
Feeling hungry, I inquired what sort of fare I might expect. Such a thing as a bed was not to be seen, but many large untanned bear and buffalo hides lay piled in a corner. I drew a fine timepiece from my breast, and told the woman that it was late, and that I was fatigued. She had espied my watch, the richness of which seemed to operate upon her feelings with electric quickness. She told me that there was plenty of venison and jerked buffalo meat, and that on removing the ashes I should find a cake. But my watch had struck her fancy, and her curi- osity had to be gratified by an immediate sight of it. I took off the gold chain that secured it from around my neck and handed it to her. She was all ecstacy, spoke of its beauty, asked me its value, and put the chain round her brawny neck, saying how happy the possession of such a watch would make her. Thoughtless, and as I fancied myself in so retired a spot, secure, I paid little attention to her talk or her move- ments. I helped my dog to a good supper of venison, and was not long in satisfying the demands of my own appetite. The Indian rose from his seat as if in extreme suffering. He passed and repassed me several times, and once pinched me on the side so violently that the pain nearly brought forth an exclamation of anger. I looked at him; his eye met mine; but his look was so forbidding that it struck a chill into the more nervous part of my system. He again seated himselt,
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drew his butcher knife from its greasy scabbard, examined its edge as I would do that of a razor suspected dull, replaced it, and taking his tomahawk from his back, filled the pipe of it with tobacco, and sent me expressive glances whenever our hostess chanced to have her back towards us.
Never until that moment had my senses been wakened to the danger which I now suspected to be about me. I returned glance for glance to my companion, and rested well assured that whatever enemies I might have, he was not of their number. I asked the woman for my watch, wound it up, and, under pretence of wishing to see how the weather might probably be on the morning, took up my gun and walked out of the cabin. I slipped a ball into each barrel, scraped the edges of my flints, renewed the priming, and returning to the hut, gave a favorable account of my observations. I took a few bear skins, made a pallet of them, and calling my faithful dog to my side, lay down with my gun close to my body, and in a few minutes, to all appearance, was fast asleep.
A short time had elapsed when some voices were heard, and from the corners of my eyes I saw two athletic young men making their en- trance, bearing a dead stag upon a pole. They disposed of their bur- den, and asking for whiskey, helped themselves freely to it. Observing me and the wounded Indian; they asked who I was, and why the devil that rascal (meaning the Indian, who, they knew, understood not a word of English) was in the house. The mother-for so she proved to be- bade them speak less loudly, made mention of my watch, and took them to a corner, where a conversation ensued, the purport of which it required little shrewdness in me to guess. I felt that he perceived dan- ger in my situation. The Indian exchanged a last glance with me.
The young men had eaten and drunk themselves into such a condi- tion, that I already looked upon them as hors de combat ; and the fre- quent visits of the whiskey bottle to the ugly mouth of their dam, I. hoped, would soon reduce her to a like state. Judge of my astonish- ment, when I saw this incarnate fiend take a large carving knife and go to the grindstone to whet its edge. I saw her pour the water on the turning machine, and watched her working away with the dangerous instrument, until the sweat covered every part of my body, in despite of my determination to defend myself to the last. Her task finished, she walked to her reeling sons and said, " There, that'll soon settle him ! Boys, kill you-and then for the watch."
I turned, cocked my gun locks silently, touched my faithful compan- ion, and lay ready to start up and shoot the first who might attempt my life. The moment was fast approaching, and that night might have
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been my last in this world, had not Providence made preparations for my rescue. All was ready. The infernal hag was advancing slowly, probably contemplating the best way of dispatching me, while her sons should be engaged with the Indian. I was several times on the eve of rising and shooting her on the spot, but she was not to be punished thus. The door suddenly opened, and there entered two stout travelers, each with a long rifle on his shoulder. I bounced up on my feet, and making them most heartily welcome, told them how well it was for me that they should arrive at that moment. The tale was told in a minute. The drunken sons were secured, and the woman, in spite of her defence and vociferations, shared the same fate. The Indian fairly danced for joy, and gave us to understand that as he could not sleep for pain, he would watch over us. You may suppose that we slept much less than we talked. The two strangers gave me an account of their once hav- ing been in a somewhat similar situation. Day came, fair and rosy, and with it the punishment of our captives.
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