USA > Texas > Border fights & fighters; stories of the pioneers between the Alleghenies and the Mississippi and in the Texan republic > Part 3
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Brady, Chief of the Rangers
cabin of a settler named Gray. The Indians had just visited the cabin, the walls and chimney of which were still blazing from the torch which they had applied.
There was not a living person to be seen. They were carefully reconnoitring the place when the keen ears of the captain detected the sound of a horse approaching. Fearful lest the Indians who had committed the depreda- tion might not have departed, Brady and his men scat- tered and concealed themselves. The horseman proved to be Gray, the master of the cabin, who had been away some distance on that morning.
Brady and his companions, as was the usual custom on such expeditions, were dressed to resemble Indians and had painted their faces further to disguise themselves. The captain knew if he showed himself to Gray in that guise the settler would probably shoot him before he could explain, so he waited concealed until Gray passed him, leaped upon the horse, seized the settler in his arms and whispered, " Don't struggle. I'm Sam Brady."
When the man became quiet he told him of the catas- trophe at his cabin. Summoning Bevington and Biggs the whole party cautiously made their way to the ruined home. Gray's state of mind may well be imagined, for he had left in the cabin that morning his wife, her sister, and five children. A careful search of the ruins satisfied them that there were no charred remains among the ashes. They were confident, therefore, that the Indians had taken the women and children away with them.
The experienced woodsmen soon picked up the trail, which they cautiously but rapidly followed. The Ind- ians, who seemed to be in some force, made not the slightest effort at concealment. Brady's men had wanted
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to return to Fort McIntosh and get assistance before they pursued. The captain of the rangers pointed out that to do that would cause them to lose so much time that they could not hope to overtake the Indians, so the four men resolved to press on and do the best they could. They swore to follow Brady's leadership and he promised not to desert Gray, who would have gone on alone if the others had failed him.
Brady's knowledge of the country enabled him to foresee the path the Indians would probably take and by making short cuts, toward evening the party caught a glimpse of the Indians they were pursuing, trailing over a mountain a mile away. They counted thirteen Indians, eight of them on horseback, together with the two women and five children. Bringing his woodcraft again into play, Brady concluded that the Indians would stop for the night in a deeply secluded dell in a ravine in the mountains where there was a famous spring. The configuration of the ground made it possible to light a fire there without betraying the whereabouts of the fire- builders to the surrounding country.
He therefore led his party up a little creek, which thereafter was known as Brady's Run, until about seven o'clock they reached a spur of the mountain from which they could look down upon the spring. Sure enough, there were the Indians. There, too, were the weary, dejected women, and the children too exhausted and too frightened to cry. Utterly unsuspicious of observation the savages made camp, built a fire and prepared their evening meal.
For three mortal hours the four woodsmen lay con- cealed watching the camp. Finally the Indians disposed themselves in a semicircle, surrounding the women and
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children, with the fire in the centre. The muskets, rifles, and tomahawks were piled at the foot of a tree some fifteen feet from the right point of the circle. One by one the Indians sank into slumber, as did the poor dejected prisoners.
Brady had long since made his plan. There was only one way to kill those Indians, and that was without waking them. If they had fired on them they might have killed four, yet the odds would have been still more than two to one, besides which the rangers could hardly have fired without killing some of the women and chil- dren. He decided that the Indians should be knifed while they slept.
Appointing Gray to take the right of the semicircle, Bevington the left, choosing the centre himself, and di- recting Biggs to secure the guns and tomahawks, the three men approached to within three hundred yards of the sleeping camp and then crept on their knees toward the Indians. They were forced to leave their guns be- hind them and trust only to scalping-knife and toma- hawk. It was a frightful risk, but their only chance.
With snake-like caution and in absolute silence they crawled over the ground. When within fifty feet of the camp a dead twig cracked and broke under Biggs' hand. The sound woke an Indian, who lifted himself on his hands and stared sleepily over the fire. The four men were as still as death. Hearing nothing further the Indian sank back again. They waited fifteen minutes for him to get sound asleep and once more began their stealthy and terrible advance. They so timed their manœuvres that they reached the line simultaneously.
Three knives quietly rose and fell. Frontier knowl- edge of anatomy was sufficient to enable them to strike
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accurately, and three Indians died. Again they struck. And yet again.
The third Indian that Gray struck was not instantly killed. He partially rose, whereupon Gray finished him with his tomahawk. The body of the Indian fell across the legs of the man next him. He opened his mouth to cry out, but before he could make a sound Brady's ready knife struck him in the heart. There were now only three Indians left alive.
The women and children were awakened at the same time and the woods rang with their frightened screams. As they saw the supposed Indians, bloody knife in hand, looking horribly in the flickering light of the fire, the women and children fled to the woods. Gray pursued them calling their names.
The three remaining Indians, now wide awake, at- tempted to rise. Brady's terrible knife accounted for one, his tomahawk did for the other, and Biggs, who had at last reached the rifles, shot the last one dead. Brady had killed six, Bevington and Gray each three, and Biggs one. That war party was annihilated.
The women and children were soon found. The horses, arms, and other plunder of the Indians were se- cured, every one of the savages was scalped, and the party returned in safety to Fort McIntosh. The place bears the name of Bloody Spring to this day.
It was the constant practice of frontiersmen to scalp the Indians whenever they could. It is impossible for us to enter into the spirit prevalent at that time, but it is evident that the settlers thought no more of killing an Indian than they would of killing a rattlesnake, or a pan- ther; and indeed the horrors they witnessed and which every one of them had felt, either in his own person,
" That war party was annihilated."
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or in the persons of those near and dear to them-as Brady's father and brother-had rendered them abso- lutely ruthless so far as Indians were concerned. Be- sides, the scalp of an Indian had a commercial value. In the Colonial Records of Pennsylvania, under date of Monday, February 19, 1781, Philadelphia, in the Minutes of the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania, of which Joseph Reed was President, I find the following:
" An order was drawn in favor of Colonel Archibald Lochry Lieutenant of the County of Westmoreland, for the sum of 12 lbs, Ios. state money, equal to 2500 dol- lars, Continental money, to be by him paid to Captain Samuel Brady, as a reward for an Indian scalp, agreeable to a late proclamation of this board." (Italics mine.)
This interesting document is signed by his Excellency Joseph Reed. He, with his associates, therefore, is particeps criminis in the scalp-taking business! It was a government affair.
IV. Brady's Famous Leap
On another occasion Brady led a party of rangers into what is now Ohio, in pursuit of some of the Sandusky Indians. He ambushed them at a small lake in Portage County, which was known thereafter as Brady's Lake. The ambush was successful in that the party they were pursuing were most of them killed, but unfortunately a second and larger war party of Indians unexpectedly appeared on the scene in the middle of the action. Brady was captured after a desperate fight. Most of his men were killed and scalped and but few escaped.
Rejoicing at the importance of their capture, the Indians deferred his torture until they could take him to 3
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the Sandusky Towns which were the head-quarters for all the Indians in that part of the country. They re- solved to make his burning a memorable one and kept him in confinement until they could communicate with the surrounding tribes.
The day of his punishment finally arrived. He was bound to a stake and the fires were kindled around him. They were in no hurry to kill him and the fires were kept rather low while different bodies of Indians arrived on the scene. In the confusion attendant upon these arrivals the watch upon Brady was somewhat relaxed. He was a man of great physical strength. He cautiously strained at the withes with which he was bound and finally succeeded in loosing them. According to some accounts the heat of the fire enabled him to break them.
Although he was badly scorched, for he had been stripped of his clothing when he was tied to the stake, he leaped across the barrier of flame, seized, according to one account, an Indian squaw, the wife of the princi- pal chief, according to another, her child, pitched her into the fire, and in the alarm caused by his bold action, broke away.
He had kept himself in as good physical condition as possible, taking what exercise he could though confined, and he dashed madly for his life through the woods with several hundred Indians upon his heels. He actually made good his escape. He had no arms, no clothing, nothing to eat. The Indians pursued him with implaca- ble persistence. Yet, sustained by his dauntless resolu- tion, he managed to keep ahead of them. For over a hundred miles he plunged through the woods, subsisting upon roots, berries or whatever he could get, until
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finally he came to the Cuyahoga River, near what is now Kent in Portage County.
He had intended to cross the river at Standing Rock, a noted ford, but found that the Indians had intercepted him. The river at the point where he struck it, flowed between steep rocky banks rising some twenty-five feet from the water's edge. It was a deep roaring torrent. At the narrowest point, at that time, it was between twenty-five and thirty feet across to the opposite bank, which was not quite so precipitous as that upon which he stood, being rough and somewhat broken.
Having cut him off from the ford, the Indians be- lieved that they could take him without fail in the cul de sac formed by the river. There was no other ford for miles up and down. Running back into the woods tow- ard the approaching Indians whose shouts he could hear to get a start, Brady desperately jumped from the bank. He cleared the river and struck the bank on the other side a few feet below the edge and scrambled up it just as the first pursuer appeared.
" Brady," said the man, "make damn good jump. Indian no try."
The Indians, however, shot at Brady and wounded him in the leg before the captain could escape. Without waiting he resumed his flight, but his wounded leg so hampered him that the Indians who had crossed the ford were again hard upon his heels. In this extremity he plunged into the water at Brady's Lake, where he had been captured, stooped beneath the surface, and concealed himself among the lilies, breathing through a hollow reed. The Indians followed his bloody trail to the lake, around which they searched for some time and seeing no sign of his exit concluded that he had plunged in
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and was drowned. He afterward succeeded in getting safely back to the fort.
V. An Expedition with Wetzel and Other Adventures
The year 1782 was a remarkable one for savage Indian outbreaks. It was known in local border history as " The Bloody year," or " The Bloody '82." Rumors of a grand alliance between the western tribes to descend upon the settlements and finally wipe them out, reached Washington, and the general requested Colonel Brod- head ·to send reliable persons to spy on the Indians and if possible find out what they were about to do. The choice, as usual, fell upon Brady. He asked but for one companion, who was the famous Lewis Wetzel.
Brady and Wetzel were familiar with the Indian tongue. They could speak Shawnese or Delaware like the natives themselves. Contrary to the family habit Brady was a swarthy man, with long black hair and bright blue Irish eyes, taking after his mother in that.
The two men disguised themselves as Indians, de- liberately repaired to the grand council at Sandusky, representing themselves to be a deputation from a distant sept of Shawnees, which was desirous of joining in the projected conspiracy. They moved freely about among the Indians at first entirely unsuspected. They partici- pated in the council and obtained a complete knowledge of the plans and purposes of the Indians.
One veteran chief, however, finally became suspicious. Perhaps he detected the white man through the guttural syllables, or the white faces under the war paint. The two men whose every nerve had been pressed into ser-
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vice and whom nothing escaped, caught the suspicious glances of the old man. Consequently when he sprang to his feet and seizing a tomahawk started toward them, it was the work of a second for Brady to shoot him dead.
Concealment being no longer possible, Wetzel shot a prominent chief, the men clubbed their rifles, beat down opposition, sprang away from the council fires, dashed through the lines, seized two of the best horses-Ken- tucky stock which had been captured in a raid-and rode for their lives. They were pursued, of course, by a great body of Indians, and had many hairbreadth escapes.
Wetzel's horse finally gave out and thereafter the two men, one riding the other running, pressed madly on. Finally the second horse, fairly ridden to death, gave way, but reaching a village of some friendly Delawares, they got another horse and dashed on. Several times they doubled on their trail and shot down the nearest pursuers, checking them temporarily.
Finally they reached the Ohio. It was bank full, a roaring torrent. It was early in March, and the weather was bitterly cold. They forced their horse into the water, Brady on its back, Wetzel, who was the better swimmer, holding its tail and swimming as best he could. They had a terrible struggle but reached the other bank at last. The water froze on their bodies. Wetzel was entirely exhausted and almost perished with the cold. Brady killed the horse, disembowelled it and thrust his companion's body into the animal, hoping that the ani- mal heat remaining in it might keep Wetzel alive while he built a fire, which he recklessly proceeded to do.
As soon as the fire was kindled he took Wetzel out of the body of the horse and brought him to the fire where he chafed his limbs until the circulation was re-
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stored. The Indians gave over the pursuit at the Ohio, and the two men escaped.
The plans of the Indians being discovered by this daring exploit, the settlements prepared for them, the conspiracy fell to pieces, and the projected incursion came to naught.
Words fail to tell of the many incidents in which this dashing young pioneer bore a prominent part. The enterprise for which he was commended by Washington was similar to the one just described. He went alone to the Sandusky Towns in 1780 and made a map of the region, located the towns, crept near enough to the principal village to learn the plans of the Indians, capt- ured two squaws, mounted them on captured horses and made good his escape.
Near the Ohio one of the squaws escaped. With the other, ranging through the forest, he came across an Indian on horseback with a woman on the pommel of the saddle and two children running alongside. Recog- nizing the woman as the wife of a frontiersman named Stupes, Brady, by a wonderful exhibition of marksman- ship, shot the Indian dead without injuring the woman.
" Why," said Jenny Stupes, as she saw the painted figure of the captain, for he was still in his disguise, dashing toward her scalping-knife in hand, "did you shoot your brother? "
" Don't you know me, Jenny? I am Sam Brady," said the captain, grasping the terrified woman by the hand.
Taking Jenny and her children and still retaining his prisoner, he rapidly retreated toward the settlements. The Indian he had shot had been separated from a small band which happened to have retained Jenny Stupes'
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Brady, Chief of the Rangers
little dog. By the aid of the animal, which naturally ran after its mistress, the fugitives were trailed. At the time he shot the Indian Brady had but three loads for his rifle. He could not afford to expend one of them on the dog yet it had to be killed or it would betray its mistress. They sat down and waited until the dog came running up to them, when he was speedily despatched with a tomahawk, and Brady succeeded in bringing the party safely to Fort Pitt.
He was several times captured. On one occasion he rolled to a fire in the night, burnt his bonds, brained one of the Indians with a stake and got away.
At another time, after a long scouting expedition, he suddenly came upon two Indians near a huge tree. One was standing on the shoulders of the other cutting bark for a canoe. Brady had but one load for his rifle. Quickly deciding what to do he shot the lower Indian through the heart, whereupon the other one came tum- bling heavily to the ground. He was partially stunned. Brady ran toward him knife in hand but the Indian stag- gered to his feet and fled, by which the captain came in possession of two guns and a supply of ammunition and was enabled to proceed on his expedition.
Whenever there was danger or loss his services were at command. Not only did he serve his country in sev- eral of the battles in which he commanded his company both in the east against the British, and in several expe- ditions against the Indians in the west, but he did more to guard the helpless settlers, rescue captured women and children, and to discover and thwart the Indian plans than any man in Pennsylvania. The women and chil- dren loved him and the men swore by him, for he was the protector of the frontier.
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From these gruesome tales it must not be imagined that he was only a blood-thirsty and reckless borderer. On the contrary, like most of his family, he was a devout Presbyterian, and a marvellous student of the Bible. His grandnephews and nieces tell how he used to arrive at the cabin in which they lived, after some expedition, and when the evening meal was over and the lesson of Scripture with which these simple people prepared for rest, was read, Captain Sam Brady would suggest that they read it " varse about; " and they relate that when his turn came he generally recited his verse without the aid of the book, such was his mastery of the Bible! To his family and friends he was as kind and gentle as a woman. A family tradition says that he was the model for Cooper's famous Leatherstocking.
His brother, General Hugh, says that James Brady, who was killed by the Indians, was six feet one inch in height and that there was scarcely an inch difference in height among all the brethren. Sam was a man of great personal strength and activity. His favorite resting-place when at home was on the floor by the open fireplace. There he would lie and tell stories to the children who adored him. There he slept rolled in his blanket.
He was a singular mixture of the Puritan and Cavalier. He could pray like an old Covenanter and fight with all the dash and spirit of Prince Rupert. Pennsylvania owes him a debt of gratitude which should never be for- gotten.
PART II VIRGINIA, TENNESSEE, THE CAROLINAS I On the Eve of the Revolution
ON THE EVE OF THE REVOLUTION
I. Andrew Lewis and his Borderers
A ROUND the pedestal of Crawford's Equestrian Statue of Washington in Richmond, among those of Jefferson, Patrick Henry, John Marshall, and other worthies, is carved the figure of a huge man dressed in a fringed hunting-shirt and carrying a rifle. It is the effigy of General Andrew Lewis, one of the greatest of the borderers.
Lewis was born in Ireland in 1720. His father was a Huguenot, who came to America after a quarrel when Andrew was a child. The family settled on the western border of Virginia near what is now Staunton, and speedily became prominent. Andrew was the oldest of four brothers, all of whom did good service in the colo- nies and in the Revolution. Three of them were sol- diers, one of whom died in battle, and the last, prevented from active campaigning by physical disabilities, shone as statesman, was an associate of Patrick Henry, after- ward a member of the Virginia Constitutional Conven- tion, and in every way possible did what he could for the cause of liberty.
Andrew was the most conspicuous member of the family. He was one of the little band under Washington that fought off Coulon de Villiers at Fort Necessity in the Great Meadows, at the breaking out of the French
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and Indian War. Lieutenant Lewis was wounded on this occasion. As captain he formed part of Braddock's army in 1756, where, although he was not in the ac- tual battle on the Monongahela, he did good service under Washington in endeavoring to protect the rav- aged border after the overwhelming defeat of the British .*
In 1759 he was major of Washington's regiment under General John Forbes. He participated in Grant's foray against Fort Duquesne, where he was involved in the defeat of that rash officer's foolish enterprise. He was there captured after a desperate hand to hand fight in which he was wounded again. When Grant, seeking a scapegoat, strove to cast upon Lewis the odium of his defeat, the Virginian in a towering rage at the false ac- cusation, spat in his face and knocked him down. Grant did not press the charge thereafter.
Promoted a colonel in 1759 he led an expedition against the Shawnees which, through no fault of his, was without decisive results, and which is known as the " Sandy Creek Voyage," or campaign. He was a com- missioner from Virginia at the celebrated treaty at Fort Stanwix in 1768. Lewis was six feet two in height, and of Herculean proportions and strength otherwise, al- though he carried himself with great activity. "His countenance was stern and forbidding-his deportment distant and reserved; this rendered his person more awful than engaging." So writes a contemporary, who further relates that the Governor of New York, one of his fellow commissioners at Fort Stanwix, wrote of him, " that the earth seemed to tremble at his tread."
* See my book Colonial Fights and Fighters : The Struggle for the Valley of the Ohio.
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On the Eve of the Revolution
In 1774 there was a little war with the Indians at first known as Cresap's War, but latterly as Lord Dun- more's War, the importance of which was so over- shadowed by the Revolution that followed hard upon it that, but for one incident, it would be quite forgotten to-day. Yet the student now sees it was quite essential to the prosecution of the greater war, to the first success of which it contributed in no small degree.
The treaty consequent upon Bouquet's expedition in 1764, was not rigidly observed by the Indians. There was constant trouble on the border, although nothing like what had before obtained. The Indians continued restless and active; there was a continual clashing of arms everywhere and, in this instance decidedly, the sav- ages were mainly the aggressors. That is not saying that the settlers were blameless. Far from it, but the balance of wrong-doing was against the Indians.
To these unsettled conditions the unseemly strife be- tween Virginia and Pennsylvania for the possession of the lands west of the Blue Ridge and Alleghenies largely contributed. In 1774 matters had reached such a state that it was felt that an open war must soon break out. Active hostilities were begun, under great provocation, in the spring by a certain Captain Cresap, who led a party of frontiersmen to the wilderness surveying, etc. Some Indians were fired upon by Cresap's party and killed, and the action, though small, was known as the " Captina Affair."
Some forty miles west of Pittsburg on the Ohio, there lived among the Mingos, or Shawnees, a Cayugan-that is, an Iroquois-warrior, named Tah-gah-jute, who is more commonly known to posterity by the name given him by the settlers, Logan. Among the warring
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