USA > Pennsylvania > Mifflin County > History of Mifflin County : its physical peculiarities, soil, climate, &c. ; including an early sketch of the state of Pennsylvania Volume I > Part 4
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should travel, and having marked out the direction I intended to take the next morning, I collected some leaves, made a bed and laid myself down and slept, though my feet being full of thorns began to be extremely painful, and I had nothing still to eat for myself or child. The next morning, Friday, the 25th of May, abont the break of day, I was aroused from my slumbers by a flock of birds before mentioned, which still continned with me, and having them to guide me through the wilderness.
"As soon as it was sufficiently light for me to find my way, I started on the fourth day's trial of hunger and fatigue. There was nothing very material occurred this day while I was traveling, and I made the best of my way, according to my knowledge, towards the Allegheny River.
"In the evening, about the going down of the sun, a moderate rain came on, and I began to prepare my bed, by collecting some leaves together, as I had done the night before, but could not collect a sufficient quantity without resting my little boy on the ground, but as soon as I put him out of my arms he began to cry.
" Fearful of the consequences of his noise in this situation, I took him in my arms, put him to the breast, and he became quiet. I then stood and listened, and distinctly heard the footsteps of a man coming after me, in the same direction I had come. The ground over which I had traveled was good, and the mould was light. I had, therefore, left my footmarks, and thus exposed myself to a second capture. Alarmed at my perilous situation, I looked around for a place of safety, and providentially discovered a large tree which had fallen-into the top of which I crept with my child in my arms, and there hid myself securely under the limbs. The darkness of night greatly assisted me and prevented me from de- tection. The footsteps I had heard were those of a savage. He had heard the cry of my child and came to the very spot where the child had cried, and here he halted, put down his gun, and he was at this time so near that I heard the wiping stick of his gun click against it distinctly. My getting under the tree and shelter- ing myself from the rain and pressing my boy to my bosom, got him warm and most providentially he fell asleep, and lay very still during the time of my danger at that time. I was still and quiet, and the savage was listening if by possibility he might hear the cry he had heard again.
"My own heart was the only thing I feared, it beat so loud that I was apprehensive it would betray me.
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"It is almost impossible to conceive or to believe the wouderful effect my situation produced upon my system. After the savage had stood and listened with nearly the stillness of death, for two hours, the sound of a bell and a cry like that of a night owl, sig- nals that were given to him from his savage companions, induced him to answer, and after he had given a most horrid yell, which was calculated to harrow up my soul, he started and went to join them. After the retreat of the savage to his companions I deemed it un- safe to remain in my present situation until morning, lest they should conclude upon a second search, and being favored with the light of day, find me and either tomahawk or scalp me, or other- wise bear me back to captivity again, which was worse than death. But by this time nature was almost exhausted, and I found some difficulty to move from my situation that night, yet compelled by necessity and by a love of self-preservation, I threw my coat around my child and then placed the end of it between my teeth, and with one arm and my teeth I carried my child, and with the other groped my way between the trees, and traveled on, I suppose a mile or two, and there sat down at the root of a tree till morning. The night was cold and wet, and thus terminated the four days and nights of difficulties, trials, hunger and danger.
" On the fifth day, Saturday, May 25, wet and exhausted, hungry and wretched, I started from my resting place in the morning as soon as I could see my way, and on that morning struck the head waters of Pine Creek, which falls into the Allegheny four miles above Pittsburgh, though I knew not what waters they were, but I crossed them and on the opposite bank I found a path and discov- ered in it two moccasin tracks, fresh indented, and the men who made them were before me and traveling in the same direction that I was traveling. This alarmed me, but as they were before and traveling in the same direction as I was, I concluded I could see them as soon as they could see me, and therefore I pressed on in that patlı about three miles, where I came to the forks where an- other branch empties into the creek, and where was a hunter's camp and where the two men, whose tracks I had before discovered and followed, had been and kindled a fire and breakfasted and left the fire burning.
"I here became more alarmed, and concluded to leave the path. I then ascended a hill and crossed a ridge toward Squaw Run, and came upon a trail or path. Here I stopped and meditated what to do, and while I was thus musing I saw three deer coming toward
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me at full speed. They turned around to look at their pursuers. I looked, too, with all attention, and saw the flash of a gun, and then heard the report as soon as the gun fired. I saw some dogs start after them, and began to look about for a shelter, and imme- diately saw a large log and hid myself behind it, but most provi- dentially I did not go clear to the log ; had I done so I might have lost my life by the bites of rattlesnakes, for as I put my hand on the ground to raise myself up, to see what had become of the hunt- ers, and who they were, I saw a large heap of rattlesnakes, and the top one was coiled up and very near my face and quite ready to bite me. This compelled me to leave this situation, whatever might be the consequences.
" In consequence of this occurrence I again left my course, bear- ing to the left, and came upon the head-waters of Squaw Run, and kept down the run the remainder of the day. During the day it rained, and I was in a very deplorable condition. So cold and shivering were my limbs that frequently, in opposition to all my struggles, I gave an involuntary groan. I suffered intensely this day from hunger, though my jaws were so far recovered from the injuries they sustained from the blows of the Indians, that when- ever I could I procured some grape vines and chewed them for a little sustenance. In the evening I came within a mile of the Alle- gheny River, though I was ignorant of it at the time, and there, at the root of a trce, through a most tremendous night's rain, I took my fifth night's lodging, and in order to shelter my infant from the storm as much as possible, I placed him in my lap and placed my head against a tree, and thus left the rain fall upon me.
"On the sixth day, that was Sabbath morning, after my captivity, I found myself unable for awhile to raise me from the ground, and when I had once more, by hard struggling, got upon my feet and started upon the sixth day's encounter, nature was so nearly ex- hausted, and my spirits so completely depressed, that my progress was amazingly slow and discouraging. In this almost helpless con- dition, I had not gone far, and I came upon a path that the cattle had been traveling, and I took the path under the impression that it would lead me to the abode of some white people, and by trav- eling about a mile, I came to an uninhabited cabin, and thought I was in a river bottom, I knew not where I was, nor yet on what river bank I had come. Here I was seized with feelings of dis- pair and under these feelings I went to the uninhabited cabin, and concluded I would enter and lie down and die, as death would
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have been to me an angel of mercy in such a sitnation, and would remove me from all misery.
" Such were my feelings at this interesting moment, and had it not been for the recollection of my sufferings, and what my infant would endure, who would snffer for sometime after I was dead, I should have carried out my determination. Here, too, I heard the sound of a cow-bell, which imparted a gleam of hope to my des- ponding mind. I followed the sound of the bell till I came opposite the fort, which was at the point of Six Mile Island.
"When I came there I saw three men on the opposite side of the river. My feelings at seeing these were better felt than could be described. I called to the men, but they seemed unwilling to risk the danger of coming after me, and reqested to know who I was. I replied that I was one who had been taken prisoner by the In- dians on the Allegheny River that Tuesday morning, and had made my escape from them.
" They requested me to walk up the bank of the river for awhile to see if the Indians were making a decoy of me or not. But I replied to them that my feet were so sore I could not walk. Then one of them, James Closier, got into a canoe to fetch me over, and the other two stood on the bank with their rifles cocked ready to fire on the Indians provided they were using me as a decoy. When Mr. Closier came near the shore and saw my haggard and dejected situation he exclaimed: "Who in the name of God are you?" This man was one of my nearest neighbors before I was taken, yet in six days I was so much altered that he did not know me either by voice or countenance.
"When I landed on the inhabited side of the river, the people from the fort came running out to the boat to see me, they took the child from me, and now I felt safe from danger I felt myself unable to move, or to assist myself in any degree, whereupon the people carried me out of the boat to the house of Mr. Cortus. Here, when I felt I was se- cure from the ravages and cruelties of the barbarians for the first time since my captivity, my feelings returned with all their poignancy.
" When I was dragged from my bed and from my home a prisoner to the savages. When the inhuman butchers dashed the brains out of one of my dear children on the door sill, and afterwards scalped him before my eyes. When they tomahawked and scalped and stabbed another of them before me on the island, and when with still more barbarons feelings they afterwards made a hoop and stretched his scalp upon it, nor yet when I endured hunger, cold and nearly
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nakedness, and at the same time my infant sucking my very blood to support it, I never wept. No, it was too much for nature. A tear would have been too much of a luxury. And it is more than prob- able that tears at these seasons of distress would have been fatal in their consequences, for savages despise a tear.
"But now that my danger was removed, and I was delivered from the pangs of the barbarians, the tears flowed freely and imparted a happiness beyond what'I ever experienced before or ever expect to in this world. When I was taken into the house, having been so long from fire, and having endured so much from hunger for a long period, the heat of the fire and the smell of the victuals which the kindness of the people immediately induced them to provide for me, caused me to faint. Some of the people tried to restore me, and some of them to put clothes on me. But the kindess of these friends would in all probability have killed me if it would not have been for the providential arrival from down the river of Major Me- Cully who then commanded the line along the river. When he came in and saw the provisions they were making for me, he became greatly alarmed and immediately ordered me out of the house from the great heat and smell, and prohibited me taking anything but the whey of buttermilk and that in very small quantities, which he administered with his own hands. Through this judicious man- agement of my almost lost situation, I was mercifully restored to my senses, and very gradually to my health and strength.
"Two females, Sarah Carter and Mary Ann Crozier, then began to take the thorns out of my feet and legs, and Mr. Felix Negly- who now lives at the mouth of Bull Creek, twenty miles above Pittsburgh-stood by and counted the thorns as the women took them out, and there were one hundred and fifty drawn out ; though not all extracted at one time, for the next evening at Pittsburgh there were many more taken out. The flesh was mangled dread- fully, and the skin and flesh were hanging in pieces on my legs. The wounds were not healed for a considerable time. Some of the thorns went thoroughly through my feet and came out on the top. For two weeks I was unable to put my feet on the ground to walk. Besides which the rain to which I was exposed by night, and the heat of the sun to which my almost naked body was exposed by day, together with my carrying my child so long in my arms, with- out any relief, or shelter from the heat of the day or the storms at night, caused nearly all the skin of my body to come off, so that my body was raw nearly all over."
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" The two men's tracks which I had followed down to the run, were two spies, James Amberson and John Thompson, who arrived at the Station very soon after me. The news of my arrival at the Station spread with great rapidity. The two spies took the intelli- gence that evening as far as Coe's Station, and the next morning to Reed's Station, to my husband. It also reached Pittsburgh the evening and the next morning a young man who was employed by the magistrates at Pittsburgh, came to me to go immediately to town to give in my deposition, that it might be published to the American people. Being unable to walk or ride on horse-back, some of the men carried me into a canoe on the river, and took me down in this manner, and when I arrived in Pittsburgh, I was taken from the canoe in the arms of the men to the office of John Wilkin, the father of Wm. Wilkin, judge of the United States Court, and the deposition which I gave them was published throughout the Union, in the different cut newspapers of the day. As the intelli- gence spread, the town of Pittsburgh, and the country round for twenty miles was in a state of commotion."
"About sun-set the same evening my husband came to see me in . Pittsburgh, and I was taken back to Coe's Station on' Tuesday morning. In the evening I gave an account of the murder of my boy on the island. The next morning there was a scont went out, and found it by my direction and buried it, after being murdered nine days."
Fortunately for the human race and for the frontier settlers, that few are ever called on to endure the mental and physical suf- ferings that this lady endured. We quote her narrative because it shows the power of the mind and will on the body, and illustrates what the extreme of physical torture. While many endured priva- tions and capture, hunger and cold, we have met no more extreme case of physical endurance than here related.
Her narrative being well authenticated there can be no doubt of its correctness and truthfulness. It seems hard to realize that the being exists that could inflict the torture and the suffering she en- dured.
" Man's inhumanity to man, makes countless thousands morn."
The Rights of the Indian.
On what grounds is the rights of the Indian to this country. founded ?
Because he first set foot on this continent. Then an Indian might.
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claim a continent, spend his winter in the torrid zone and his sum- mer in the frigid zone and his spring and autumn in the temper- ate. This would be unreasonable. Then how many Indians can claim this right ? A few tribes ? No, there must be fixed principles on which all law depends, and that law is the great law of nature, and that is to as much as is necessary for our subsistence. Not to subsist by pasturage or hunting, but by agriculture, because on this must human life and civilization depend, because by nature's laws most can there subist at the same time.
But men do by the laws of our common country hold more than their proportionate quantity. But this has nothing to do with the great wheels of the law of nature, which gives the earth in common to man.
"These local laws bind us as citizens, the law of Nations as soci- ety, of the world ; but the law of nature as men. As the law of nature regulates the number of inhabitants on the earth, so is the right of each individual to his share. God gives a man no more when he dies than to lie down upon, and no more in life than to reasonably enjoy. Let the appeal be made to him. Great Spirit, says the Indian, here is a white man that wants some of my land. How much have you? Ten miles square. A tenth of that may serve. What, to hunt upon ? No ; but to plant corn, raise hogs and cattle, and live like a man. But do you not give me all this? I have given to you no more than to any others. There is the earth, and the dividing of a sea or a river makes no partition. It is true I do not permit the inhabitants of Jupiter or of any other of the planets to come down to earth, but have placed a law of nature to binder it, but, on the same planet, I know nothing of what is called the right of natives beyond, at most, their right to take a preference and choose their ground, or to hold that which they al- ready cultivate.
"Will our government, the United States, permit emigrants to settle on lands west of the Ohio, within their boundaries ? Not with- out purchasing? Why? Because they have been at the expense of combating the false claim of the Indians, and ought to be paid for it."
The above is an extract from the Pittsburgh Gazette, March 6, 1790.
From the same paper, in the year 1779, we extract the following, on the
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Establishment of the United States.
" The fall of ancient empires and the rise of new States are the noblest themes that can exercise the ablest writers. Among the many revolutions that have happened in the history of Nations, there is none that can command a greater compass of political in- vestigation and commercial knowledge than that of these United States, which, like so many lights of living splendor, have risen from the shades of antiquated governments, and now bid fair to spread themselves with nndiminished lustre to the latest ages. The right of Great Britain to the soil of North America, founded on the first discovery of the coast, however just in its nature, yet was limited in its extent, by the right of the natives and the right of other Nations.
"The right of the natives has been generally supposed not to limit, but to exclude all others, for the law of nature vests the soil in the first occupants, and these, from the earliest times, had possessed the country. But shall a few tribes, thinly scattered, over an immense continent, retain possession of it, while other parts of the globe are overcharged with inhabitants ? To set this matter in a clear point of view, we shall revert to the origin of that right which all men have in common with each other to the earth, the water and the air, and this we shall find in the extensive "Land grant" to the first pair, and in them equally to all their descendants. This grant is re- corded in the first chapter of the first book of the Sacred Law, "And God blessed them, and God said unto them, be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and the fowl of the air, and over every liv- ing thing that moveth upon the earth."
" The words of this grant convey no right of primogeniture or any other right by which one man may occupy a larger portion of the soil than his neighbor, for rights of this kind are the estab- lishments of civil policy, and can have no place between individuals in a state of nature, or between different Nations who are in a state of nature in relation to each other. The unequal distribution of the soil would disappoint the manifest intentions of the grant which was to people and improve the earth, for it is unfavorable to population that societies or individuals should possess a greater quantity of soil than is necessary to their subsistence.
" To apply this to the aborigines or native Indians of America, shall these tribes, inferior in number to perhaps one-twentieth of the inhabitants of Europe, possess ten times their territory ? It
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may be said that their manner of life makes a greater quantity of soil necessary. They live by hunting, and though their tribes are thinly scattered over the Continent, yet the whole is no more than sufficient for a hunting ground. Nay, even this extent of territory is precarious, and they frequently experience the severest rage of famine when the wild animals on which they make their food is scarce, or have withdrawn from the forests of the country. But does the law of revelation or of nature leave every man at liberty to use what manner of life he pleases ? This well deserves our considera- tion. The earth spontaneously brings forth every herb and every tree, for the use of man, and we may reasonably presume that without cultivation it would support a larger number of inhabitants than it does at present sustain in a pastoral state.
"In the primitive state of things, it was not necessary to exercise the arts of industry, but when the curse attendant upon the lapse of Adam, the cultivation of it became an occupation and a neces- sity for exercise for human health, so the Lord sent him forth from the Garden of Eden to till the ground.
"This is the beginning of the agricultural history of man, and in the early history of the human race. The few inhabitants might live by pasturage, and for some time posterior to the general deluge, when the flesh of animals was given for the use of man, he might subsist by hunting, but, on the closer settlement of families and nations, this manner of life became an impossible one, and with- out engrossing more territory than could be spared to another, and as all could not subsist in this manner, no one had a right to claim it as an exclusive privilege. The law of nature, where the law of revelation is not known sufficiently, enjoins on every man that he contract his claim of soil to equal bounds, and pursue the manner of life which is most consistent with the general population of the earth and the increase of the happiness of mankind, and it will easily appear that the mode of life by pasturage and hunting requires a more extensive territory than by agriculture, and at the same time, from the very circumstance of thin and scattered settlements in that state, the powers of genius are inactive, and the arts and sciences are unknown, and man continues to be an animal, differ- ing in nothing but in shape from beasts of prey that roam upon the mountains. The life of these therefore is not human, for it is abhorrent from the way of life which God and nature points out as the life of man. "The Lord God sent him forth to till the ground," and common reason has discovered from the goodness and
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benevolence apparent in the whole creation, and from that provision made abundant for every creature, it must be agreeable to the Creator that the earth be stored with inhabitants, and that in order to this end, a way of life be chosen in which individuals or nations may subsist with the least extent of territory. The aborigines of this country can therefore liave but small pretence to a soil they have never cultivated. The most they can with justice claim, is a right to those spots of ground on which their wigwams have been planted, or to so much as may be necessary to produce grain to support them and their families in towns upon the coast, or in the inland country, where they have inhabited.
" The continent of North America may, therefore, on the first dis- covery of the coast by any European civilized nation, be considered as the greater part of it a vacant country, and liable to become the property of those who would take the trouble to possess it. Never- theless, I do not mean to justify the.waging an unnecessary war against the natives, or exterpating them altogether ; but I would justify encroachment on the territory claimed by them, until they are reduced to smaller bounds, and, under the necessity of chang- ing their unpolished and ferocious state of life, for fixed habitations and the art of agriculture.
" The right of Great Britain to the soil of North America, limited by the right of the natives, was also limited by the right of other nations.
" The terms of the grant to Adam and renewed to Noah, equally embraced the whole of their descendants. The earth lay in com- mon, and the occupancy of the soil, was that alone, which gave individuals the right to hold it. We must restrict the right of occupancy to a moderate portion of the soil, because it is incon- sistent with the original condition and express purpose of the grant, that an individual or Nation should possess a more extensive tract of country than is necessary for their subsistence. I have no doubt but that a Nation greatly populous, whose numbers overcharge the soil, have a right to demand territory from a Nation in possession of a soil equally fertile, and less abounding with inhabitants. The right of discovery was unknown in term or idea to the early ages, and it came first into view on the modern improvements in the art of navigation, when several of the sover- eigns and states of Europe fitted out vessels to explore the seas, and make discoveries. The expense and labor of the enterprise would seem to give a right to that continent or island which they
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