WJIILJLIIAM
: 'IP IF' •
WOMAN
ON THE
AMERICAN FRONTIER.
3- Valuable ami Jmttetic Ip
HEROISM, ADVENTURES, PRIVATIONS, CAPTIVITIES,
TRIALS, AND NOBLE LIVES AND DEATHS OF THE
"PIONEER MOTHERS OF THE REPUBLIC."
BY WILLIAM W. "FOWLER. I? &
•"
ILLUSTRATED WITH NUMEROUS ENGRAVINGS.
HARTFORD : S. S. SCRANTON & CO.
1878.
COPYRIGHTED.
S. S. SCRANTON & COMPANY. 1876.
122. 36* fetescrcit
PEEFAOE.
The history of our race is the record mainly of men's achiev- ments, in war, in statecraft and diplomacy. If mention is made of woman it is of queens and intriguing beauties who ruled and schemed for power and riches, and often worked mischief and ruin by their wiles.
The story of woman's work in great migrations has been told only in lines and passages where it ought instead to fill volumes. Here and there incidents and anecdotes scattered through a thousand tomes give us glimpses of the wife, the mother, or the daughter as a heroine or as an angel of kindness and goodness, but most of her story is a blank which never will be filled up. And yet it is precisely in her position as a pioneer and colonizer that her influence is the most potent and her life story most inter- esting.
The glory of a nation consists in its migrations and the colonies it plants as well as in its wars of conquest. The warrior who wins a battle deserves a laurel no more rightfully than the pioneer who leads his race into the wilderness and builds there a new empire.
The movement which has carried our people from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean and in the short space of two centuries and a half has founded the greatest republic which the world ever saw, has already taken its place in history as one of the grandest achiev- ments of humanity since the world began. It is a moral as well as a physical triumph, and forms an epoch in the advance of civili- zation. In this grand achievement, in this triumph of physical and moral endurance, woman must be allowed her share of the honor.
It would be a truism, if we were to say that our Republic would not have been founded without her aid. "We need not enlarge on the necessary position which she fills in human society every where. We are to speak of her now as a soldier and laborer, a heroine and
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£ PREFACE.
comforter in a peculiar set of dangers and difficulties such as are met with in our American wilderness. The crossing of a stormy ocean, the reclamation of the soil from nature, the fighting with savage men are mere generalities wherein some vague idea may be gained of true pioneer life. But it is only by following woman in her wanderings and standing beside her in the forest or in the cabin and by marking in detail the thousand trials and perils which surround her in such a position that we can obtain the true picture of the heroine in so many unmentioned battles.
The recorded sum total of an observation like this would be a noble history of human effort. It would show us the latent causes from which have come extraordinary effects. It would teach us how much this republic owes to its pioneer mothers, and would fill us with gratitude and self -congratulation — gratitude for their ines- timable services to our country and to mankind, self-congratula- tion in that we are the lawful inheritors of their work, and as Americans are partakers in their glory.
In the preparation of this work particular pains have been taken to avoid what was trite and hackneyed, and at the same time pre- serve historic truth and accuracy. Use has been made to a limited extent of the ancient border books, selecting the most note-wor- thy incidents which never grow old because they illustrate a hero- ism, that like "renown and grace cannot die." Thanks are due to Mrs. Ellet, from whose interesting book entitled " Women of the Revolution," a few passages have been culled. The stories of Mrs. VanAlstine, of Mrs. Slocum, Mrs. McCalla, and Dicey Langs- ton, and of Deborah Samson, are condensed from her accounts of those heroines.
A large portion of the work is, however, composed of incidents which will be new to the reader. The eye-witnesses of scenes which have been lately enacted upon the border have furnished the writer with materials for many of the most thrilling stories of frontier life, and which it has been his aim to spread before the reader in this work.
ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE.
A VIRGINIA MATRON ENCOURAGING THE PATRIOTISM OF HER
SONS AT THE DEATH-BED OF THEIR FATHER, - 26
LOST IN A SNOW STORM,
THE HUNTRESS OF THE LAKES SURPRISED BY INDIANS,
A HEROIC EXPLOIT IN SUPPLYING WITH POWDER A BLOCK-HOUSE BESIEGED BY INDIANS,
DARING EXPLOIT OF Miss VAN ALSTINE, - - 117
FOOD AND CLOTHING SUPPLIED TO THE REVOLUTIONARY ARMY BY PATRIOTIC WOMEN, -
PERILOUS CROSSING OF THE ALLEGHANY RIVER, - - 153
WAGON TRAIN ON THE PRAIRIE,
STRATAGEM OF MRS. DAVIESS IN CAPTURING A KENTUCKY ROB- BER, - f 202
Two KENTUCKY GIRLS CAPTURED BY INDIANS,
PARTED FOR EVER, -
AN EQUESTRIAN FEAT,
TREED BY A BEAR, -
RESCUING A HUSBAND FROM WOLVES,
DEFEAT OF GUERILLAS,
MASTERING BANDITS,
CfOE'TENTS.
CHAPTER I.
WOMAN AS A PIONEER, --17
America's Unnamed Heroines. Maids and Matrons of the "Mayflower." Woman's Work in Early Days. Devotion and Self-sacrifice. Strange Story of Mrs. Hendee. Face to Face with the Indians. A Mother's Love Triumphant. Woman among the Savages. The Massacre of Wyoming. Sufferings of a Forsaken Household. The Patriot Matron and her Children. The Acme of Heroism. Adventures of an English Traveler. Woman in the Rocky Mountains. A Story of a Lonely Life. Nocturnal Visitors and their Reception. Life in the Far West. Mrs. Manning's Home in Montana. Female Emigrants on the Plains. A True Heroine.
CHAPTER II.
WOMAN'S WORK IN FLOODS AND STORMS, 34
The Frontier two Centuries ago. The Pioneer Army. The Pilgrim " Mothers." Story of Margaret Winthrop. Danger in the Wilderness. . A Reckless Husband and a Watchful Wife. Lost in a Snow-storm. The Beacon-fire at Midnight. Saved by a Woman. Mrs. Noble's Terrible Story. Alone with Famine and Death. A Legend of the Connecticut. What befel the Nash Family. Three Heroic Women. In Flo<fe and Storm. A Tale of the Prairies. ' A Western Settler and her Fate. Battling with an Unseen Enemy. Emerging from the Valley of the Shadow. Heartbroken and Alone.
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CONTENTS.
CHAPTER in.
EARLY PIONEERS.— WOMAN'S ADVENTURES AND HEROISM, - 56 In the Maine Wilderness. Voyaging up the Kennebec. The Huntress of the Lakes. Extraordinary Story of Mrs. Trevor. Two Hundred Miles from Civilization. Sleeping in a Birch-bark Canoe. A Fight with Five Savages. A Victorious Heroine. The Trail of a Lost Husband. Only just in Time. A Narrow Escape. Voyaging in an Ice-boat. Snow-bound in a Cave. Fighting for Food. Grappling with a Forest Monster. Mrs. Storey, the Forester. Alida Johnson's Thrilling Narrative. Caught in a Death-trap. A Desperate Measure and its Result. The Connecticut Settlers. Their Courage and Heroism.
CHAPTER IV.
ON THE INDIAN TRAIL, ------- -79
A Block-house Attacked. Wild Pictures of Indian Warfare. Exploits of Mrs. Howe. A Pioneer Woman's Record. Holding the Fort alone. Treacherous " Lo." Witnessing a Husband's Tortures. The Beautiful Victim. Forced to Carry a Mother's Scalp. The Fate of the Glendennings. A Feast and a Massacre. Led into Captivity. Elizabeth Lane's Adventures. In Ambush.
Siege of Bryant's Station. Outwitting the Savages. Mrs. Porter's Combat vfyth the Indiana. Ghastly Trophies of her Prowess. "Long Knife Squaw." Smoking out Redskins. The Widows of Innis Station. A Daring Achievement. The Amazon of the Stockade.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER V.
CAPTIVE Scours. — HEROINES OP THE MOHAWK VALLEY, - - 98 The Poetry of Border Life. Mrs. Mack in her Forest Fort. The Ambush in the Cornfield. The Night-watch at the Port-hole. A Shot in the Dark. The Hiding Place of her Little Ones. A Sad Discovery. An Avenger on the Track. Massy Herbeson's Strange Story. On the Trail.
Miss Washburn and the Scouts. An Extraordinary Rencontre. A Wild Fight with the Savages. Mysterious Aid.
Passing through an Indian Village. Hairbreadth Escapes. Courageous Conduct of Mrs. Van Alstine. Settlements on the Mohawk. Circumventing a Robber Band. How she Saved him. The Pioneer Woman at Home.
CHAPTER VI.
PATRIOT WOMEN OF THE REVOLUTION, -'--•-- 121 Times that Tried Men's Souls. The Women of Wyoming. Silas Deane's Sister. Mrs. Corbin, the Cannoneer. A Heroine on the Gun-deck. The Schoharie Girl.
Women of the Mohawk Wars. Concerning a Curious Siege. The Patriot Daughter and the Bloody Scouts. What she Dared him to do. Brave Deeds of Mary Ledyard. Ministering Angels. Heroism of " Mother Bailey." Petticoats and Cartridges. A Thrilling Incident of Valley Forge. Ready-witted Ladies. Miss Geiger, the Courier. How Miss Darrah Saved the Army. Adventures of McCalla's Wife. Love and Constancy. A Clergyman's Story of his Mother.
10 CONTENTS.
CHAPTER VH.
GOING WEST. — PERILS BY THE WAY, ----.. 150 After the Revolution. Starting for the Mississippi. Curious Methods of Migration. A Modern Exodus. Incidents on the Route. Wonderful Story of Mrs. Jameson. Forsaking all for Love. A Woman with One Idea. That Fatal Stream. Alone in the Wilderness. A Glimpse of the Enemy. Strength of a Mother's Love. Saved from a Rattlesnake. Individual Enterprise. Migrating in a Flat-boat. A Night of Peril on the Ohio River. Terrifying Sounds and Sights. A Fiery Scene of Savage Orgies. Coolness and Daring of a Mother. An Extraordinary Line of Mothers and Daugh- ters. A Pioneer Pedigree and its Heroines.
CHAPTER VHI.
HOME LIFE IN THE BACKWOODS, ---... 173 The Nomads of the West. Romance of a Pioneer's March. How the Cabin was Built. Where Mrs. Graves Concealed her Babes. Husband and Wife at Home. Rather Rough Furniture. Forest Fortresses. Fighting for her Children. Firing the Alarm Gun. Mrs. Fulsom and the Ambushed Savage. Domestic Life on the Border. From a Wedding to a Funeral. Among the Beasts and Savages. Little Ones in the Wilds. Woman takes Care of Herself. Ann Bush's Sorrows. The Bright Side of the Picture. Western Hospitality. A Traveler's Story. "Evangeline" on the Frontier. An Eden of the Wilderness and its Eve.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER IX.
SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN, - - - - - - -195
Diary of a Heroine.
The Border Maid, Wife, Mother, and Widow. Strange Vicissitudes in the Life of Mrs. W. Adopted by an Indian Tribe. Shrewd Plan of Escape. The Hiding-place in the Glen. Surprised and Surrounded, but Safe. Successful Issue of her Enterprise. Mrs. Marliss and her Strategy. Combing the Wool over a Savage's Eyes. Marking the Trail. A Captive's Cunning Devices. A Pursuit and a Rescue. Extraordinary Presence of Mind. A Robber captured by a Woman. A Brave, Good Girl. Helping " the Lord's People." A Home of Love in the Wilderness. A Singular Courtship. The Benevolent Matron and her Errand. Story of the Pioneer Quakeress..
CHAPTER X.
A ROMANCE OF THE BORDER, 217
The Honeymoon in the Mountains. United in Life and in Death. A Devoted Lover. Capture of Two Young Ladies. Discovery and Rescue. The Captain and the Maid at the Mill. The Chase Family in Trouble. The Romance of a Young Girl's Life. Danger in the Wind. Hunter and Lover. Treacherous Savages. Old Chase Knocked Over. The Fight on the Plains. An Unexpected Meeting. Heroism of La Bonte. The Guard of Love. The Marriage of Mary. Miss Rouse and her Lover. A Bridal and a Massacre. Brought back to Life but not to Joy. A Fruitless Search for a Lost Bride. Mrs. Philbrick's Singular Experience.
12
UONTENI'S.
CHAPTER XL
PATHETIC SCENES OF PIONEER LIFE, ----,- 239 Grief in the Pioneer's Home. Graves in the Wilderness. The Returned Captive and the Nursery Song. The Lost Child of Wyoming. Little Frances and her Indian Captors. Parted For Ever. Discovery of the Lost One. An Affecting Interview. Striking Story of the Kansas War. The Prairie on Fire. Mother and Children Alone. Homeless and Helpless. Solitude, Famine, and Cold. Three Fearful Days. The Burning Cabin. A Gathering Storm. Affecting Scenes.
A Dream of Home and Happiness. Return of Father and Son. A Love Stronger than Death. The Last Embrace. A Desolate Household.
CHAPTER XII.
THE HEROINES OF THE SOUTH WEST, - - - - - -261
Texas and the South West. Across the " Staked Plain." Mrs. Dray ton and Mrs. Benham. A Perilous Journey. Sunstrokes and Reptiles. Death From Thirst. Mexican Bandits.
A Night Gallop to the Rendezvous. Escape of our Heroines. A Ride for Life. Saving Husband and Children. Surrounded by Brigands on the Pecos. Heroism of Mrs. Benham. The Treacherous Envoy. The Gold Hunters of Arizona. Mrs. D. and her Dearly Bought Treasure. Battling for Life in the California Desert. The Last Survivor of a Perilous Journey. Mrs. L., the Widow of the Colorado. Among the Camanches. A Prodigious Equestrian Feat.
CONTENTS. 13
CHAPTER XIII
WOMAN'S EXPERIENCE ON THE NORTHERN BORDER, - - 287
March of the " Grand Army." Peculiar Perils of the Northern Border. Mrs. Dalton's Record. A Dangerous Expedition. Her Husband's Fate. A Trance of Grief. Between Frost and Fire. A Choice of Deaths. Rescued from the Flames. One Sunny Hour. The Storm-Fiend. Terrific Spectacle. In the Whirlwind's Track. The Only Refuge. Locked in a Dungeon. A Fight for Deliverance. Arrival of Friends. Another Peril. Walled in by Flames. Passing Through a Fiery Lane. Closing Days of Mrs. Dalton. A Story of Minnesota. What the Hunters Saw. A Mother's Deathless Love.
CHAPTER XIV.
ENCOUNTERS WITH WILD BEASTS — COURAGE AND DARING, - 310 Personal Combat with a Bear. The Huntress of the Northwest. An Intrepid Wife and her Assailant. Combat with an Enraged Moose. A Bloody Circus in the Snow. Trapping Wolves — a Georgia Girl's Pluck. A Kentucky Girl's Adventure. A Wild Pack in Pursuit The Snapping of a Black Wolf's Jaws. Female Strategy and its Success. A Cabin Full of Wolves. Comical Denouement. A Young Lady Treed by a Bear. Some of Mrs. Dagget's Exploits. Up the Platte, and After the Grizzlies. Catching a Bear with a Lasso. What a Brave Woman Can Do. Facing Death in the Desert. A Woman's Home in Wyoming. A Night with a Mountain Lion.
14 CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XV.
ACROSS THE CONTINENT. — ON THE PLAINS, - 339
Voyaging in a Prairie Schooner. A Cavalry Officer's Story. The Homeless Wanderer of the Plains. Mrs. N. Battling alone with Death. A Fatherless and Childless Home. The Plagues of Egypt. Murrain, Grasshoppers, and Famine. Following a Forlorn Hope. A Bridal Tour and its Ending. On the Borders of the Great Desert. An Extraordinary Experience. Women Living in Caves. A Waterspout and its Consequences. Drowning in a Drought. Fleeing from Death.
A Woman's Partnership in a Herd of Buffaloes. The Huntress of the Foot-hills. A Charge by Ten Thousand Bison. Hiding in a Sink-hole.
A Terrible Danger and a Miraculous Escape. A Prairie Home and its Mistress.
CHAPTER XVI.
WOMAN AS A MISSIONARY TO THE INDIANS, - 358
The Heroine and Martyr among the Heathen. Mrs. Eliot and her Tawny Proteges. Five Thousand Praying Indians. Mrs. Kirkland among the Oneidas. Prayer-meetings in Wigwams. The Psalm-singing Squaws. A Revolutionary Matron and her Story. A Pioneer Sunday-school and its Teacher. The Last of the Mohegans and their Benefactors. Heroism of the Moravian Sisters. The Guardians of the Pennsylvania Frontier. A Gathering Storm. Prayer-meetings and Massacres. Surrounded by Flame and Carnage. An Unexpected Assault. The Fate of the Defenders. A Fiery Martyrdom. Last Scene in a Noble Life. Closing Days of Gnadenhutten. Massacre of Indian Converts. The Death Hymn and Parting Prayer.
CHAPTER XVH.
WOMAN AS A MISSIONARY TO THE INDIANS, (CONTINUED,) - - 377 Missionary Wives Crossing the Rocky Mountains. Buried Alive in the Snow. Shooting the Rapids in a Birch Canoe. Sucked Down by a Whirlpool.
CONTENTS. 15
A Fearful Situation and its Issue. A Brace of Heroines and their Expedition. Women Doubling Cape Horn. A Parting Hymn and Long Farewell. A Missionary Wife's Experience in Oregon. All Alone with the Wolves. A Woman's Instinct in the Hour of Danger. Dr. White's Dilemma and its Solution. A Clean Pair of Heels and a Convenient Tree. A Perilous Voyage and its Consequences. A Heartrending Catastrophe. A Mother's Lost Treasure. A Savage Coterie and the White Stranger. Mrs. Whitman and Mrs. Spalding. A Murderous Suspicion. The Benefactress and the Martyr.
CHAPTER XVIII.
WOMAN IN THE ARMY, - - 396
The Daughter of the Regiment. A Loving Wife and a True Patriot. Mrs. Warner in the Canadian Campaign. The Disguised Couriers. Deborah Samson in Buff and Blue. A Woman in Love with a Woman. A Wound in Front and what it Led to. Mrs. Coolidge's Campaign in New Mexico. Bearing Dispatches Across the Plains. A Fight with Guerillas. A Race for Life. Two against Five.
Frontier Women in our Last Great War. Their Exploits and Devotion. Miss Wellman as Soldier and Nurse. The Secret Revealed. A Noble Life. A Devoted Wife. Life in a Confederate Fort. The Little Soldier and her Story. A Sister's Love. The Last Sacrifice.
CHAPTER XIX.
ACROSS THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS, --.... 431
A Woman's Adventures on the Platte River. On a False Trail, and What it Led To. Over a Precipice, and Down a Thousand Feet. All Alone on the Face of the Mountain. Mrs. Hinman's Extraordinary Situation. Swinging Between Heaven and Earth. What a Loving Wife Will Do. Living or Dying Beside her Husband. A Night on the Edge of a Precipice. Out of the Jaws of Death.
16 CONTENTS.
The Two Fugitive Women of the Chapparel. A Secret Too Dreadful to be Told. The Specters of the Mountain Camp. Maternal Sacrifice and Filial Love. The Cannibals of the Canon. The Insane Hunter and his Victims. A Woman's Only Alternative. Female Endurance vs. Male Courage. Mrs. Donner's Sublime Devotion. Dying at her Post of Duty.
CHAPTER XX.
THE COMFORTER AND THE GUARDIAN, - .... 469 The Ruined Home and its Heroine. The Angel of the Sierra Nevada. Mrs. Maurice and the Dying Miners. The Music of a Woman's Word. The Young Gold Hunter and his Nurse. Starving Camp in Idaho. The Song in the Ears of the Dying. The Seven Miners and their Golden Gift. A Graveyard of Pioneer Women. Mrs. R. and her Wounded Husband. The Guardian Mother of the Island. The Female Navigator and the Pirate. A Life-boat Manned by a Girl. A Night of Peril.
A Den of Murderers and an Unsullied Maiden. The Freezing Soldiers of Montana. A Despairing Cry and its Echo. The Storm-Angel's Visit.
CHAPTER XXI.
WOMAN AS AN EDUCATOR ON THE FRONTIER, - ... 501 A Mother of Soldiers and Statesmen. A Home-school on the Border. The Prairie Mother and her Four Children. A Garden for Human Plants and Flowers. The First Lesson of the Boy and Girl on the Frontier. The Wife's School in the Heart of the Rocky Mountains. A Leaf from the Life of Washington. The Hero-Mothers of the Republic. A Patriot Woman and a Martyr. A Mother's Influence on the Life of Andrew Jackson. Woman's Discernment of a Boy's Genius. West, the Painter, and Webster, the Statesman. The Place where our Great Men Learned A. B. C. Miss M. and her Labors in Illinois. A Martyrdom in the Cause of Education. Woman as an Educator of Human Society. Incident in the Life of a Millionaire. What a Mother's Portrait Did. A Woman's Visit to "Pandemonium Camp." An Anjjel of Civilization.
CHAPTER I.
WOMAN AS A PIONEER.
VERY battle has its unnamed heroes. The com- -J — ^ mon soldier enters the stormed fortress and, falling in the breach which his valor has made, sleeps in a nameless grave. The subaltern whose surname is scarcely heard beyond the roll-call on parade, bears the colors of his company where the fight is hottest. And the corporal who heads his file in the final charge, is forgotten in the " earthquake shout" of the victory which he has helped to win. The victory may be due as much, or more, to the patriot courage of him who is content to do his duty in the rank and file, as to the dashing colonel who heads the regiment, or even to the general who plans the campaign : and yet unobserved, unknown, and unrewarded the former passes into oblivion while the leader's name is on every tongue, and perhaps goes down in history as that of one who deserved well of his country.
Our comparison is a familiar one. There are other battles and armies besides those where thousands of disciplined men move over the ground to the sounds of the drum and fife. Life itself is a battle, and no grander army has ever been set in motion since the world began than that which for more than two cen- turies and a half has been moving across our continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific, fighting its way through countless hardships and dangers, bearing the 2 (17)
lg WOMAN AS A PIONEER.
banner of civilization, and building a new republic in the wilderness.
In this army WOMAN HAS BEEN TOO OFTEN THE UNNAMED HEROINE.
Let us not forget her now. Her patience, her cour- age, her fortitude, her tact, her presence of mind in trying hours ; these are the shining virtues which we have to record. Woman as a pioneer standing be- side her rougher, stronger companion — man ; first on the voyage across a stormy ocean, from England to America ; then at Plymouth, and Jamestown, and all the settlements first planted by Europeans on our coast ; then through the trackless wilderness, onward across the continent, till every river has been forded, and every chain of mountains has been scaled, the Peaceful Ocean has been reached, and fifty thousand cities, towns, and hamlets all over the land have been formed from those aggregations of household life where woman's work has been wrought out to its fullness.
Among all the characteristics of woman there is none more marked than the self-devotion which she displays in what she believes is a righteous cause, or where for her loved ones she sacrifices herself. In India we see her wrapped in flames and burned to ashes with the corpse of her husband. Under the Moslem her highest condition is a life-long incarcera- tion. She patiently places her shoulders under the burden which the aboriginal lord of the American forest lays upon them. Calmly and in silence she submits to the onerous, duties imposed upon her by social and religious laws. Throughout the whole heathen world she remained, in the words of an
CHRISTIANITY AND WOMAN. ^9
elegant French writer, "anonymous, indifferent to herself, and leaving no trace of her passage upon earth."
The benign spirit of Christianity has lifted woman from the position she held under other religious sys- tems and elevated her to a higher sphere. She is brought forward as a teacher ; she displays a martyr's courage in the presence of pestilence, or ascends the deck of the mission-ship to take her part in " perils among the heathen." She endures the hardships and faces the dangers of colonial life with a new sense of her responsibility as a wife and mother. In all these capacities, whether teaching, ministering to the sick, or carrying the Gospel to the heathen, she shows the same self-devotion as in "the brave days of old;" it is this quality which peculiarly fits her to be the pioneer's companion in the new world, and by her works in that capacity she must be judged.
If all true greatness should be estimated by the good it performs, it is peculiarly desirable that wo- man's claims to distinction should thus be estimated and awarded. In America her presence has been ac- knowledged, and her aid faithfully rendered from the beginning. In the era of colonial life ; in the cruel wars with the aborigines ; in the struggle of the Rev- olution ; in the western march of the army of explor- ation and settlement, a grateful people must now recognize her services.
There is a beautiful tradition, that the first foot which pressed the snow-clad rock of Plymouth was that of Mary Chilton, a fair young maiden, and that the last survivor of those heroic pioneers was Mary Allerton, who lived to see the planting of twelve out
20 WOMAN AS A PIONEER.
of the thirteen colonies, which formed the nucleus of these United States.
In the Mayflower, nineteen wives accompanied their husbands to a waste land and uninhabited, save by the wily and vengeful savage. On the unfloored hut, she who had been nurtured amid the rich carpets and curtains of the mother-land, rocked her new-born babe, and complained not. She, who in the home of her youth had arranged the gorgeous shades of embroid- ery, or, perchance, had compounded the rich venison pasty, as her share in the housekeeping, now pounded the coarse Indian corn for her children's bread, and bade them ask God's blessing, ere they took their scanty portion. When the snows sifted through the miserable roof-tree upon her little ones, she gathered them closer to her bosom ; she taught them the Bible, and the catechism, and the holy hymn, though the war-whoop of the Indian rang through the wild. Amid the untold hardships of colonial life she infused new strength into her husband by her firmness, and solaced his weary hours by her love. She was to him,
" an undergoing spirit, to bear up
Against whate'er ensued."
The names of these nineteen pioneer-matrons should be engraved in letters of gold on the pillars of Amer- ican history.
The Wives of the Pilgrims.
gtttgflxt*.
MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS OF THE MAYFLOWER. 21
Pulling Pttf. - Jttttw.
. ^ujsauw* mit*. ' ptf. 1<U»
Nor should the names of the daughters of these heroic women be forgotten, who, with their mothers and fathers shared the perils of that winter's voyage, and bore, with their parents, the toils, and hardships, and changes of the infant colony.
The Daughters of the Pilgrim Mothers.
(glteafcetH tover. $arafc
gtememfctr
The voyage of the Mayflower} the landing upon a desolate coast in the dead of winter ; the building of those ten small houses, with oiled paper for windows ; the suffering of that first winter and spring, in which woman bore her whole share ; these were the first steps in the grand movement which has carried the Anglo-Saxon race across the American continent. The next steps were the penetration of the wilderness westward from the sea, by the emigrant pioneers and their wives. Fighting their way through dense forests, building cabins, block-houses, and churches in the clearings which they had made ; warred against by cruel savages ; woman was ever present to guard, to comfort, to work. The annals of colonial history teem with her deeds of love and heroism, and what are those recorded instances to those which had no chroni- cler ? She loaded the flint-lock in the block-house
24 WOMAN AS A PIONEER.
her agonies of suspense ; so she hastened on. She traversed the fields which, but a few hours before,
" Were trampled by the hurrying crowd,"
where —
" fiery hearts and armed hands,
Encountered in the battle cloud,"
and where unarmed hands were now resting on cold and motionless hearts. After a search of between one and two hours, she found her child on the bank of the river, sporting with a little band of playmates. Clasp- ing her treasure in her arms, she hurried back and reached the fort in safety.
During the struggles of the Revolution, the priva- tions sustained, and the efforts made, by women, were neither few nor of short duration. Many of them are delineated in the present volume. Yet innumeni- ble instances of faithful toil, and patient endurance, must have been covered with oblivion. In how many a lone home, from which the father was long sundered by a soldier's destiny, did the mother labor to perform to their little ones both his duties and her own, having no witness of the extent of her heavy burdens and sleepless anxieties, save the Hearer of prayer.
A good and hoary-headed man, who had passed the limits of fourscore, once said to me, " My father was in the army during the whole eight years of the Rev- olutionary War, at first as a common soldier, afterwards as an officer. My mother had the sole charge of us four little ones. Our house was a poor one, and far from neighbors. I have a keen remembrance of the terrible cold of some of those winters. The snow lay so deep and long, that it was difficult to cut or draw
REVOLUTIONARY HEROINES AT HOME. 25
fuel from the woods, or to get our corn to the mill, when we had any. My mother was the possessor of a coffee-mill. In that she ground wheat, and made coarse bread, which we ate, and were thankful. It was not always we could be allowed as much, even of this, as our keen appetites craved. Many is the time that we have gone to bed, with only a drink of water for our supper, in which a little molasses had been mingled. We patiently received it, for we knew our mother did as well for us as she could ; and we hoped to have something better in the morning. She was never heard to repine ; and young as we were, we tried to make her loving spirit and heavenly trust, our example.
" When my father was permitted to come home, his stay was short, and he had not much to leave us, for the pay of those who achieved our liberties was slight, and irregularly given. Yet when he went, my mother ever bade him farewell with a cheerful face, and told him not to be anxious about his children, for she would watch over them night and day, and God would take care of the families of those who went forth to defend the righteous cause of their country. Sometimes we wondered that she did not mention the cold weather, or our short meals, or her hard work, that we little ones might be clothed, and fed, and taught. But she would not weaken his hands, or sadden his heart, for she said a soldier's life was harder than all. We saw that she never complained, but always kept in her heart a sweet hope, like a well of water. Every night ere we slept, and every morning when we arose, we lifted our little hands for God's blessing on our absent father, and our endangered country.
26 WOMAN AS A PIONEER.
" How deeply the prayers from such solitary homes and faithful hearts were mingled with the infant lib- erties of our dear native land, we may not know until we enter where we see no more ' through a glass darkly, but face to face.'
" Incidents repeatedly occurred during this contest of eight years, between the feeble colonies and the strong mother-land, of a courage that ancient Sparta would have applauded.
" In a thinly settled part of Virginia, the quiet of the Sabbath eve was once broken by the loud, hurried roll of the drum. Volunteers were invoked to go forth and prevent the British troops, under the pitiless Tarleton, from forcing their way through an important mountain pass. In an old fort resided a family, all of whose elder sons were absent with our army, which at the north opposed the foe. The father lay enfeebled and sick. By his bedside the mother called their three sons, of the ages of thirteen, fifteen, and seven- teen.
"'Go forth, children,' said she, "to the defence of your native clime. Go, each and all of you ; I spare not my youngest, my fair-haired boy, the light of my declining years.
"'Go forth, my sons ! Repel the foot of the invad- er, or see my face no more.' "
In order to get a proper estimate of the greatness of the part which woman has acted in the mighty onward-moving drama of civilization on this continent, we must remember too her peculiar physical constitu- tion. Her highly strung nervous organization and her softness of fiber make labor more severe and suffering keener. It is an instinct with her to tremble at dan-
AN ADMIRABLE CONTRAST. 27
ger; her training from girlhood unfits her to cope with the difficulties of outdoor life. " Men," says the poet, "must work, and women must weep." But the pioneer women must both work and weep. The toils and hardships of frontier life write early wrinkles upon her brow and bow her delicate frame with care. We do not expect to subject our little ones to the toils or dangers that belong to adults. Labor is pain to the soft fibers and unknit limbs of childhood, and to the impressible minds of the young, danger conveys a thousand fears not felt by the firmer natures of older persons. Hence it is that all mankind admire youth- ful heroism. The story of Casabianca on the deck of the burning ship, or of the little wounded drummer, borne on the shoulders of a musketeer and still beat- ing the rappel — while the bullets are flying around him — thrill the heart of man because these were great and heroic deeds performed by striplings. It is the bravery and firmness of the weak that challenges the highest admiration. This is woman's case : and \vhen we see her matching her strength and courage against those of man in the same cause, with equal results, what can we do but applaud ?
A European traveler lately visited the Territory of Montana — abandoning the beaten trail, in company only with an Indian guide, for he was a bold and fear- less explorer. He struck across the mountains, travel- ing for two days without seeing the sign of a human being. Just at dusk, on the evening of the second day, he drew rein on the summit of one of those lofty hills which form the spurs of the Rocky Mountains. The solitude was awful. As far as the eye could see stretched an unbroken succession of mountain
28 WOMAN AS A PIONEER.
peaks, bare of forest — a wilderness of rocks with stunted trees at their base, and deep ravines where no streams were running. In all this desolate scene there was no sign of a living thing. While they were teth- ering their horses and preparing for the night, the sharp eyes of the Indian guide caught sight of a gleam of light at the bottom of a deep gorge beneath them.
Descending the declivity, they reached a cabin rudely built of dead wood, which seemed to have been brought down by the spring rains from the hill-sides to the west. Knocking at the door, it was opened by a woman, holding in her arms a child of six months. The woman appeared to be fifty years of age, but she was in reality only thirty. Casting a searching look upon the traveler and his companion, she asked them to enter.
The cabin was divided intd two apartments, a kitchen, which also served for a store-room, dining- room, and sitting-room ; the other was the chamber, or rather bunk-room, where the family slept. Five children came tumbling out from this latter apartment as the traveler entered, and greeted him with a stare of childlike curiosity. The woman asked them to be seated on blocks of wood, which served for chairs, and soon threw off her reserve and told them her story, while they awaited the return of her husband from the nearest village, some thirty miles distant, whither he had gone the day before to dispose of the gold-dust which he had " panned out " from a gulch near by. He was a miner. Four years before he had come with his family from the East, and pushing on in advance of the main movement of emigration in the territory, had discovered a rich gold placer in this
A PIONEER-WIFE'S STORY. 29
lonely gorge. While he had been working in this placer, his wife had with her own hands turned up the soil in the valley below and raised all the corn and potatoes required for the support of the family ; she had done the housework, and had made all the clothes for the family. Once when her husband was • sick, she had ridden thirty miles for medicine. It was a dreary ride, she said, for the road, or rather trail, was very rough, and her husband was in a burn- ing fever. She left him in charge of her oldest child, a girl of eleven years, but she was a bright, helpful little creature, able to wait upon the sick man and feed the other children during the two days' absence of her mother.
Next summer they were to build a house lower down the valley and would be joined by three other families of their kindred from the East. "Have you never been attacked by the Indians?" inquired the traveler.
" Only three times," she replied. " Once three prowling red-skins came to the door, in the night, and asked for food. My husband handed them a loaf of bread through the window, but they refused to go away and lurked in the bushes all night ; they were stragglers from a war-party, and wanted more scalps. I saw them in the moonlight, armed with rifles and tomahawks, and frightfully painted. They kindled a fire a hundred yards below our cabin and stayed there all night, as if they were watching for us to come out, but early in the morning they disappeared, and we saw them no more.
"Another time, a large war-party of Indians en- camped a mile below us, and a dozen of them came
3Q WOMAN AS A PIONEER.
up and surrounded the house. Then we thought we were lost : they amused themselves aiming at marks in the logs, or at the chimney and windows ; we could hear their bullets rattle against the rafters, and you can see the holes they made in the doors. One big brave took a large stone and was about to dash it against the door, when my husband pointed his rifle at him through the window, and he turned and ran away. We should have all been killed and scalped if a company of soldiers had not come up the valley that day with an exploring party and driven the red-skins away.
" One afternoon as my husband was at work in the diggings, two red-skins came up to him and wounded him with arrows, but he caught up his rifle and soon made an end of them.
"When we first came there was no end of bears and wolves, and we could hear them howling all night long. Winter nights the wolves would come and drum on the door with their paws and whine as if they wanted to eat up the children. Husband shot ten and I shot six, and after that we were troubled no more with them.
"We have no schools here, as you see," continued she ; " but I have taught my three oldest children to read since we came here, and every Sunday we have family prayers. Husband reads a verse in the Bible, and then I and the children read a verse in turn, till we finish a whole chapter. Then I make the children, all but baby, repeat a verse over and over till they have it by heart; the Scripture ^promises do comfort us all, even the littlest one who can only lisp them.
" Sometimes on Sunday morning I take all the chil-
SUNDAY AND SOLITUDE IN THE MOUNTAINS. 3^
dren to the top of that hill yonder and look at the sun as it comes up over the mountains, and I think of the old folks at home and all our friends in the East. The hardest thing to bear is the solitude. We are awful lonesome. Once, for eighteen months, I never saw the face of a white person except those of my husband and children. It makes me laugh and cry too when I see a strange face. But I am too busy to think much about it daytimes. I must wash, and boil, and bake, or look after the cows which wan- der off in search of pasture; or go into the valley and hoe the corn and potatoes, or cut the wood ; for husband makes his ten or fifteen dollars a day panning out dust up the mountain, and I know that whenever I want him I have only to blow the horn and he will come down to me. So I tend to business here and let him get gold. In five or six years we shall have a nice house farther down and shall want for nothing. We shall have a saw-mill next spring started on the run below, and folks are going to join us from the States."
The woman who told this story of dangers and hardships amid the Rocky Mountains was of a slight, frail figure. She had evidently been once possessed of more than ordinary attractions; but the cares of maternity and the toils of frontier life had bowed her delicate frame and engraved premature wrinkles upon her face : she was old before her time, but her spirit was as dauntless and her will to do and dare for her loved ones was as firm as that of any of the heroines whom history has made so famous. She had been reared in luxury in one of the towns of central New
32 WOMAN AS A PIONEER.
York, and till she was eighteen years old had never known what toil and trouble were.
Her husband was a true type of the American explorer and possessed in his wife a fit companion; and when he determined to push his fortune among the Western wilds she accompanied him cheerfully ; already they had accumulated five thousand dollars, which was safely deposited in the bank ; they were rearing a band of sturdy little pioneers; they had planted an outpost in a region teeming with mineral wealth, and around them is now growing up a thriv- ing village of which this heroic couple are soon to be the patriarchs. All honor to the names of Mr. and Mrs. James Manning, the pioneers of Montana.
The traveler and his guide, declining the hospitality which this brave matron tendered them, soon returned to their camp on the hill-top ; but the Englishman made notes of the pioneer woman's story, and pon- dered over it, for he saw in it an epitome of frontier life.
If a tourist were to pass to-day beyond the Missis- sippi River, and journey over the wagon-roads which lead Westward towards the Rocky Mountains, he would see moving towards the setting sun innumer- able caravans of emigrants' canvas-covered wagons, bound for the frontier. In each of these wagons is a man, one or two women with children, agricultural tools, and household gear. At night the horses or oxen are tethered or turned loose on the prairie ; a fire is kindled with buffalo chips, or such fuel as can be had, and supper is prepared. A bed of prairie* grass suffices for the man, while the women and chil- dren rest in the covered wagon. When the morning
WOMAN'S MISSION. 33
dawns they resume their Westward journey. "Weeks, months, sometimes, roll by before the wagon reaches its destination ; but it reaches it at last. Then begin the struggle, and pains, the labors, and dangers of bor- der life, in all of which woman bears her part. While the primeval forest falls before the stroke of the man- pioneer, his companion does the duty of both man and woman at home. The hearthstone is laid, and the rude cabin rises. The virgin soil is vexed by the ploughshare driven by the man ; the garden and house, the dairy and barns are tended by the woman, who clasps her babe while she milks, and fodders, and weeds. Danger comes when the man is away; the woman must meet it alone. Famine comes, and the woman must eke out the slender store, scrimping and pinching for the little ones; sickness comes, and the woman must nurse and watch alone, and without the sympathy of any of her sex. Fifty miles from a doctor or a friend, except her weary and perhaps morose husband, she must keep strong under labor, and be patient under suffering, till death. And thus the household, the hamlet, the village, the town, the city, the state, rise out of her "homely toils, and destiny obscure." Truly she is one of the founders of the Republic.
CHAPTER II.
THE FRONTIER-LINE— WOMAN'S WORK IN FLOODS AND STORMS.
ri THE American Frontier has for more than two -J- centuries been a vague and variable term. In 1620-21 it was a line of forest which bounded the infant colony at Plymouth, a few scattered settlements on the James River, in Virginia, and the stockade on Manhattan Island, where Holland had established a trading-post destined to become one day the great commercial city of the continent.
Seventy years later, in 1690, the frontier-line had become greatly extended. In New England it was the forest which still hemmed in the coast and river settlements : far to the north stretched the wilderness covering that tract of country which now comprises the states of Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont. In New York the frontier was just beyond the posts on the Hudson River; and in Virginia life outside of the oldest settlements was strictly "life on the border." The James, the Rappahannock, and the Potomac Riv- ers made the Virginia frontier a series of long lines approaching to a parallel. But the European settle- ments were still sparse, as compared with the area of uninhabited country. The villages, hamlets, and single homesteads were like little islands in a wild green waste ; mere specks in a vast expanse of wilderness. Every line beyond musket shot was a frontier-line.
(34)
THE FIRST SETTLEMENTS. 35
Every settlement, small or large, was surrounded by a dark circle, outside of which lurked starvation, fear, and danger. The sea and the great rivers were peril- ous avenues of escape for those who dwelt thereby, but the interior settlements were almost completely isolated and girt around as if with a wall built by hostile forces to forbid access or egress.
The grand exodus of European emigrants from their native land to these shores, had vastly diminished by the year 1690, but the westward movement from the sea and the rivers in America still went forward with scarcely diminished impetus : and as the pioneers advanced and established their outposts farther and farther to the west, woman was, as she had been from the landing, their companion on the march, their ally in the presence of danger, and their efficient co- worker in establishing homes in the wilderness.
The heroic enterprises recorded in the history of man have generally been remarkable in proportion to their apparent original weakness. This is true in an eminent degree of the settlement of European colo- nies on the western continent. The sway which woman's influence exercised in these colonial enter- prises is all the more wonderful when we contemplate them from this point of view. Three feeble bands of men and women; — the first at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1609-1612; the second at Plymouth, in 1620; the third on the Island of Manhattan, in 1624 ; — these were the dim nuclei from which radiated those long lines of light which stretch to-day across a continent and strike the Pacific ocean. This is a simile bor- rowed from astronomy. To adopt the language of the naturalist, those three little colonies were the puny
36 WOMAN'S WORK IN FLOODS AND STORMS.
germs which, bore within themselves a vital force vastly more potent and wonderful than that which dwells in the heart of the gourd seed, and the acorn whose nascent swelling energies will lift huge boulders and split the living rock asunder : vastly more potent be- cause it was not the blind motions of* nature merely, but a force at once physical, moral, and intellectual.
These feeble bands of men and women took foot- hold and held themselves firmly like a hard-pressed garrison waiting for re-enforcements. Re-enforcements came, and then they went out from their works, and setting their faces westward moved slowly forward. The vanguard were men with pikes and musketoons and axes; the rearguard were women who kept watch and ward over the household treasures. Sometimes in trying hours the rearguard ranged itself and fought in the front ranks, falling back to its old position when the crisis was past.
In order to appreciate the actual value of woman as a component part of that mighty impulse which set in motion, and still impels the pioneers of our coun- try, we must remember that she is really the cohesive power which cements society together ; that \vhen the outward pressure is greatest, the cohesive power is strongest ; that in times of sore trial woman's native traits of character are intensified ; that she has greater tact, quicker perceptions, more enduring patience, and greater capacity for suffering than man ; that motherly, and wifely, and sisterly love are strongest and bright- est when trials, labors, and dangers impend over the loved ones.
We must bear in mind too, that woman and man were possessed of the same convictions and impulses
RELIGIOUS FAITH OF NEW ENGLAND PIONEERS. 37
in their heroic enterprise — the sense of duty, the spirit of liberty, the desire to worship God after their own ideas of truth, the desire to possess, though in a wil- derness, homes where no one could intrude or call them vassals ; and deep down below all this, the in- stincts, the gifts, and motive power of the most ener- getic race the world has ever seen — the Anglo-Saxon; thus we come to see how in each band of pioneers and in each household were centered that solid and con- stant moving force which made each man a hero and each woman -a heroine in the struggle with hostile na- ture, with savage man more cruel than the storm or the wild beasts, with solitude which makes a desert in the soul ; with famine, with pestilence, that " wasteth at noon-day," — a struggle which has finally been victo- rious over all antagonisms, and has made us what we are in this centennial year of our existence as an in- dependent republic.
Another powerful influence exercised by woman as a pioneer was the influence of religion. The whole nature certainly of the Puritan woman was transfused with a deep, glowing, unwavering religious faith. We picture those wives, mothers, and daughters of the New England pioneers as the saints described by the poet,
" Their eyes are homes of silent prayer."
How the prayers of these good and honorable wo- men were answered events have proved.
Hardly had the Plymouth Colony landed before they were called upon to battle with their first foes — the cold, the wind, and the storms on the bleak New Eng- land coast. Famine came next, and finally pestilence. The blast from the sea shook their frail cabins j the
\L 3g WOMAN'S WORK IN FLOODS AND STORMS.
frost sealed the earth, and the snow drifted on the pil- low of the sick and dying. Five kernels of corn a day were doled out to such as were in health, by those appointed to this duty. Woman's heart was full then, but it kept strong though it swelled to bursting.
Within five months from the landing on the Rock, forty-six men, women, and children, or nearly one-half of the Mayflower's passengers had perished of disease and hardships, and the survivors saw the vessel that brought them sail away to the land of their birth. To the surviving women of that devoted Pilgrim band this departure of the Mayfloiver must have added a new pang to the grief that was already rending their hearts after the loss of so many dear ones during that fearful winter. As the vessel dropped down Plymouth harbor, they watched it with tearful eyes, and when they could see it no more, they turned calmly back to their heroic labors.
Mrs. Bradford, Rose Standish, and their companions were the original .types of women on our American frontier. Nobly, too, were they seconded by the mat- rons and daughters in the other infant colonies. Who can read the letters of Margaret Winthrop, of the Massachusetts Colony, without recognizing the loving, devoted woman sharing with her noble husband the toils and privations of the wilderness, in order that God's promise might be justified and an empire built on this Western Continent.
In her we have a noble type of the Puritan woman of the seventeenth century, representing, as she did, a numerous class of her sex in the same condition. Reared in luxury, and surrounded by the allurements of the superior social circle in which she moved in her
MARGARET WINTUROP. 39
native England, she nevertheless preferred a life of self-denial with her husband on the bleak shores where the Puritans were struggling for existence. She had fully prepared her mind for the heroic undertaking. She did not overlook the trials, discouragements, and difficulties of the course she was about to take. For years she had been habituated to look forward to it as one of the eventualities of her life. She was now beyond the age of romance, and cherished no golden dreams of earthly happiness to be realized in that far- off western clime.
Two traits are most prominent in her letters: her religious faith, and her love for and trust in her hus- band. She placed a high estimate on the wisdom, the energy, and the talents of her husband, and felt that he could best serve God and man by helping to lay broad and deep the foundations of a new State, and to secure the present and future prosperity, both temporal and spiritual, of the colony. With admiration and esteem she blended the ardent but balanced fondness of the loving wife and the sedate matron. In no less degree do her letters show the power and attractiveness of genuine religion. The sanctity of conjugal affection tallies with and is hallowed by the Spirit of Grace. The sense of duty is harmoniously mingled with the impulses of the heart. That religion was the domi- nant principle of thought and action with Margaret Winthrop, no one can doubt who reflects how se- verely it was tested in the trying enterprise of her life. A sincere, deep, and healthful piety formed in her a spring of energy to great and noble actions.
There are glimpses in the correspondence between her and her husband of a kind of prophetic vision,
40 WOMAN'S WORK IN FLOODS AND STORMS.
that the planting of that colony was the laying of one of the foundation-stones of a great empire. May we not suppose that by the contemplation of such a vision she was buoyed up and soothed amid the many trials and privations, perils and uncertainties that surround- ed her in that rugged colonial life.
The influence of Puritanism to inspire with uncon- querable principle, to infuse public spirit, to purify the character from frivolity and feebleness, to lift the soul to an all-enduring heroism and to exalt it to a lofty standard of Christian excellence, is grandly illustrated by the life of Margaret Winthrop, one of the pioneer- matrons of the Massachusetts colony.
The narrations which we set forth in this book must of course be largely concerning families and individuals. The outposts of the advancing army of settlement were most exposed to the dangers and hardships of frontier life. Every town or village, as soon as it was settled, became a garrison against attack and a mutual Benefit-Aid-Society, leagued together against every enemy that threatened the infant settlement ; it was also a place of refuge for the bolder pioneers who had pushed farther out into the forest.
But as time rolled on many of these more adventur- ous settlers found themselves isolated from the villages and stockades. Every hostile influence they had to meet alone and unaided. Cold and storm, fire and flood, hunger and sickness, savage man and savage beast, these were the foes with which they had to con- tend. The battle was going on all the time while the pioneer and his wife were subjugating the forest, breaking the soil, and gaining shelter and food for themselves and their children.
MRS. SHUTE'S ADVENTURE. 4}
It is easy to see what were the added pains, priva- tions, and hardships of such a situation to the mind and heart of woman, craving, as she does, companion- ship and sympathy from her own sex. It is a consol- ing reflection to us who are reaping the fruits of her self-sacrifice that the very multiplicity of her toils and' cares gave her less time for brooding over her hard and lonely lot, and that she found in her religious faith and hope a constant fountain of comfort and joy.
One of the greatest hardships endured by the first settlers in New England was the rigorous and change- able climate, which bore most severely, of course, on the weaker sex. This makes the fortitude of Mrs. Shute all the more admirable. Her story is only 0119 of innumerable instances in early colonial life where wives were the preservers of their husbands.
In the spring of 1676, James Shute, with his wife and two small children, set out from Dorchester for the purpose of settling themselves on a tract of land in the southern part of what is now New Hampshire, but which then was an unbroken forest. The tract where they purposed making their home was a meadow on a small affluent of the Connecticut.
Taking their household goods and farming tools in an ox-cart drawn by four oxen and driving two cows before them, they reached their destination after a toilsome journey of ten days. The summer was spent in building their cabin, and outhouses, planting and tending the crop of Indian corn which was to be their winter's food, and in cutting the coarse meadow-grass for hay.
Late in October they found themselves destitute of many articles which even in those days of primitive
42 WOMAN'S WORK IN FLOODS AND STORMS.
housewifery and husbandry, were considered of prime necessity. Accordingly, the husband started on foot for a small trading-post on the Connecticut River, about ten miles distant, at which point he expected to find some trading shallop or skiff to take him to Spring- field, thirty-eight miles further south. The weather was fine and at nightfall Shute had reached the river, and before sunrise the next morning was floating down the stream on an Indian trader's skiff.
Within two days he made his purchases, and hiring a skiff rowed slowly up the river against the sluggish current on his return. In twelve hours he reached the trading-post. It was now late in the evening. The sky had been lowering all day, and by dusk it be- gan to snow. Disregarding the admonitions of the traders, he left his goods under their care and struck out boldly through the forest over the trail by which he came, trusting to be able to find his way, as the moon had risen, and the clouds seemed to be breaking. The trail lay along the stream on which his farm was situated, and four hours at an easy gait would, he thought, bring him home.
The snow when he started from the river was already nearly a foot deep, and before he had proceeded a mile on his way the storm redoubled in violence, and the snow fell faster and faster. At midnight he had only made five miles, and the snow was two feet deep. After trying in vain to kindle a fire by the aid of flint and steel, he prayed fervently to God, and resuming his journey struggled slowly on through the storm. It had been agreed between his wife and himself that on the evening of this day on which he told her he should return, he would kindle a fire on a knoll about
A DEVOTED WIFE. 43
two miles from his cabin as a beacon to assure his wife of his safety and announce his approach.
Suddenly he saw a glare in the sky.
During his absence his wife had tended the cattle, milked the cows, cut the firewood, and fed the chil- dren. When night came she barricaded the door, and saying a prayer, folded her little ones in her arms and lay down to rest. Three suns had risen and set since she saw her husband with gun on his shoulder disap- pear through the clearing into the dense undergrowth which fringed the bank of the stream, and when the appointed evening came, she seated herself at the nar- row window, or, more properly, opening in the logs of which the cabin was built, and watched for the bea- con which her husband was to kindle. She looked through the falling snow but could see no light. Lit- tle drifts sifted through the chinks in the roof upon the bed where her children lay asleep ; the night grew darker, and now and then the howling of the wolves could be heard from the woods to the north.
Seven o'clock struck — eight — nine — by the old Dutch clock which ticked in the corner. Then her woman's instinct told her that her husband must have started and been overtaken by the storm. If she could reach the knoll and kindle the fire it would light him on his way. She quickly collected a small bun- dle of dry wood in her apron and taking flint, steel, and tinder, started for the knoll. In an hour, after a toilsome march, floundering through the snow, she reached the spot. A large pile of dry wood had al- ready been collected by her husband and was ready for lighting, and in a few moments the heroic woman was warming her shivering limbs before a fire which
44 WOMAN'S WORK IN FLOODS AND STORMS.
blazed far up through the crackling branches and lighted the forest around it.
For more than two hours the devoted woman watched beside the fire, straining her eyes into the gloom and catching every sound. "Wading through the snow she brought branches and logs to replenish the flames. At last her patience was rewarded : she heard a cry, to which she responded. It was the voice of her husband which she heard, shouting. In a few moments he came up staggering through the drifts, and fell exhausted before the fire. The snow soon ceased to fall, and after resting till morning, the res- cued pioneer and his brave wife returned in safety to their cabin.
Mrs. Frank Noble, in 1664, proved herself worthy of her surname. She and her husband, with four small children, had established themselves in a log- cabin eight miles from a settlement in New Hampshire, and now known as the town of Dover.
Their crops having turned out poorly that autumn, they were constrained to put themselves on short allow- ance, owing to the depth of the snow and ftie distance from the settlement. As long as Mr. Noble was well, he was able to procure game and kept their larder tolerably well stocked. But in mid-winter, being naturally of a delicate habit of body, he sickened, and in two weeks, in spite of the nursing and tireless care of his devoted wife, he died. The snow was six feet deep, and only a peck of musty corn and a bushel of potatoes were left as their winter supply. The fuel also was short, and most of the time Mrs. Noble could only keep her- self and her children warm by huddling in the bed- clothes on bundles of straw, in the loft which served
A LUCKY SHOT. 45
them for a sleeping room. Below lay the corpse of Mr. Noble, frozen stiff Famine and death stared them in the face. Two weeks passed and the supply of pro- visions was half gone. The heroic woman had tried to eke out her slender store, but the cries of her chil- dren were so piteous with hunger that while she denied herself, she gave her own portion to her babes, lulled them to sleep, and then sent up her petitions to Him who keeps the widow and the fatherless. She prayed, we may suppose, from her heart, for deliver- ance from her sore straits for food, for warmth, for the spring to come and the snow to melt, so that she might lay away the remains of her husband beneath the sod of the little clearing.
Every morning when she awoke, she looked out from the window of the loft. Nothing was to be seen but the white surface of the snow stretching away into the forest. One day the sun shone down warmly on the snow and melted its surface, and the next morn- ing there was a crust which would bear her weight. She stepped out upon it and looked around her. She would then have walked eight miles to the settlement but she was worn out with anxiety and watching, and was weak from want of food. As she gazed wistfully toward the east, her ears caught the sound of a crash- ing among the boughs of the forest. She looked to- ward the spot from which it came and saw a dark object floundering in the snow. Looking more closely she saw it was a moose, with its horns entangled in the branches of a hemlock and buried to its flanks in the snow.
Hastening back to the cabin she seized her hus- band's gun, and loading it with buckshot, hurried out
46 WOMAN'S WORK IN FLOODS AND STORMS.
and killed the monstrous brute. Skilled in wood- craft, like most pioneer women, she skinned the animal and cutting it up bore the pieces to the cabin. Her first thought then was of her children, and after she had given them a hearty meal of the tender moose-flesh she partook of it herself, and then, re- freshed and strengthened, she took the axe and cut a fresh supply of fuel. During the day a party came out from the settlement and supplied the wants of the stricken household. The body of the dead husband was borne to the settlement and laid in the graveyard beneath the snow.
Nothing daunted by this terrible experience, this heroic woman kept her frontier cabin and, with friendly aid from the settlers, continued to till her farm. In ten years, when her oldest boy had become a man, he and his brothers tilled two hundred acres of meadow land, most of it redeemed from the wilderness by the skill, strength, and industry of their noble mother.
The spring season must have been to the early settlers, particularly to the women, even more trying than the winter. In the latter season, except after extraordinary falls of snow, transit from place to place was made by means of sledges over the snow or on ox-carts over the frozen ground. Traveling could also be done across or up and down rivers on the ice, and as bridges were rare in those days the crossing of rivers on the ice was much to be preferred to fording them in other seasons of the year. Fuel too was more easily obtained in the winter than in the spring, and as roads were generally little more than passage-ways or cow- paths through the meadows or the woods, the depth of the mud was often such as to form a barrier to the
DANGERS AND DISCOMFORTS. 47
locomotion of the heavy vehicles of the period or even to prevent travel on horseback or on foot.
Other dangers and hardships in the spring of the year were the freshets and floods to which the river dwellers were exposed. Woman, be it remembered, is naturally as alien to water as a mountain-fowl, which flies over a stream for fear of wetting its feet. We can imagine the discomfort to which a family of women and children were exposed who lived, for exam- ple, on the banks of the Connecticut in the olden time. In some seasons families were, as they now are, driven to the upper stories of their houses by the overflow of the river. But it should be remembered that the houses of those days were not the firm, well- built structures of modern times. Sometimes the settler found himself and family floating slowly down stream, cabin and all, borne along by the freshet caused by a sudden thaw : as long as his cabin held together, the family had always hopes of grounding as the flood subsided and saving their lives though with much loss of property, besides the discomfort if not positive danger to which they had been exposed.
But sometimes the flood was so sudden and violent that the cabin would be submerged or break to pieces, and float away, drowning some or all of the family. It might be supposed that the married portion of the pioneers would select other sites than on the borders of a large river subject every year to overflow, but the richness of the alluvial soil on the banks of the Connecticut was so tempting that other considerations were overlooked, and to no part of New England was the tide of emigration turned so strongly as to the Connecticut Valley.
48 WOMAN'S WORK IN FLOODS AND STORMS.
In the year 1643, an adventurous family of eight persons embarked on a shallop from Hartford (to which place they had come shortly before from Water- town, Mass.), and sailing or rowing up the river made a landing on a beautiful meadow near the modern town of Hatfield.
The family consisted of Peter Nash and Hannah his wife, David, their son, a youth of seventeen, Deborah and Mehitabel, their two daughters, aged respectively nineteen and fourteen, Mrs. Elizabeth Nash, the mother of Peter, aged sixty-four, and Mr. and Mrs. Jacob Nash. They found the land all ready for ploughing, and after building a spacious cabin and barns, they had nothing to do but to plant and harvest their crops and stock their farm with cattle which they brought from Springfield, driving them up along the river. For four years everything went on prosperously. They harvested large crops, added to their barns, and had a great increase in stock. Although the wolves and wild cats had made an occasional foray in their stock and poultry yard and the spring freshets had made inroads into their finest meadow, their general course had been only one of prosperity.
Their house and barns were built upon a tongue of land where the river made a bend, and were on higher ground than the surrounding meadow, which every spring was submerged by the freshets. Year after year the force of the waters had washed an angle into this tongue of land and threatened some time to break through and leave the houses and barns of the pioneers upon an island. But the inroads of the waters were gradual, and the Nashes flattered them"
THE NASH FAMILY AV PERIL. 49
selves that it would be at least two generations before the river would break through.
Mrs. Peter Nash and her daughter were women of almost masculine courage and firmness. They all handled axe and gun as skilfully as the men of the household; they could row a boat, ride horseback, swim, and drag a seine for shad ; and Mehitabel, the younger daughter, though only fourteen years old, was already a woman of more than ordinary size and strength. These three women accompanied the men on their hunting and fishing excursions and assisted them in hoeing corn, in felling trees, and dragging home fuel and timber.
The winter of 1647-8 was memorable for the amount of snow that fell, and the spring for its late- ness. The sun made some impression on the snow in March, but it was not till early in April that a decided change came in the temperature. One morning the wind shifted to the southwest, the sun was as hot as in June ; before night it came on to rain, and, before the following night, nearly the whole vast body of snow had been dissolved into water which had swelled all the streams to an unprecedented height. The streams poured down into the great river, which rose with fearful rapidity, converting all the alluvial mead- ows into a vast la"ke.
All this took place so suddenly that the Nash family had scarcely a warning till they found themselves in the midst of perils. When the rain ceased, on the evening of the second day, the water had flooded the surrounding meadows and risen high up into the first story of their house. The force of the current had already torn a channel across the tongue of land on 4
50 WOMAN'S WORK IN FLOODS AND STORMS.
which the house stood and had washed away the barns and live-stock. One of their two boats had been floated off but had struck broadside against a clump of bushes and was kept in its place by the force of the current The other boat had been fastened by a short rope to a stout sapling, but this latter boat was ten feet under water, held down by the rope.
The water had now risen to the upper story, and the family were driven to the roof. If the house would stand they might yet be saved. It was firmly built but it shook with the force and weight of the waters. If either of the boats could be secured they might reach dry land by rowing out of the current and over the meadows where the water was stiller. The pars of the submerged boat had been floated away, but in the other boat they could be seen from the roof of the house lying safely on the bottom.
It was decided that Jacob Nash should swim out and row the boat up to the house. He was a strong swimmer, and though the water was icy cold it was thought the swift current would soon enable him to reach the skiff which lay only a few rods below the house. Accordingly, he struck boldly out, and in a moment had reached the boat, when he suddenly threw up his hands and sank, the current whirling him out of sight in an instant, amid the shrieks of his young wife, who was then a nursing mother and hold- ing her babe in her arms as her husband went down. Mrs. Nash, the elder, gazed for a moment speechless at the spot where her son had sunk, and then fell upon her knees, the whole family following her ex- ample, and prayed fervently to Almighty God for deliverance from their awful danger. Then rising
TWO BRAVE AND FEARLESS GIRLS. £}
from her kneeling posture, she bade her other son make one more trial to reach the boat.
Peter Nash and his son Daniel then plunged into the water, reached the boat, and took the oars, but the force of the current was such that they could make, by rowing, but little headway against it. The two daugh- ters then leaped into the flood, and in a few strokes reached and entered the boat. By their united force it was brought up and safely moored to the chimney of the cabin. In two trips the family were conveyed to the hillside. Then the brave girls returned and brought away a boat-load of household gear. Not content with that they rowed to the submerged boat, and diving clown, cut the rope, baled out the water, and in company with their mother, father, and brother, brought away all the moveables in the upper stories of the house. Their courage appeared to have been rewarded in another way, since the house stood through the flood, and in ten days they were assisting to tear down the house and build another on a hill where the floods never came.
As soldiers fall in battle, so in the struggles and hardships of border life, the delicate frame of woman often succumbs, leaving the partner of her toils to mourn her loss and meet the onset of life alone. Such a loss necessarily implies more than when it oc- curs in the comfortable homes of refined life, since it removes at once a loving wife, a companion in soli- tude, and an efficient co-worker in the severe tasks incident to life in frontier settlements. Sometimes the husband's career is broken off when he loses his wife under such circumstances, and he gives up both hope and effort.
52 WOMAN'S WORK IN FLOODS AND STORMS.
About sixty years since, and while the rich prairies of Indiana began to be viewed as the promised land of the adventurous pioneer, among the emigrants who wrere attracted thither by the golden dreams of hap- piness and fortune, was a Mr. H., a young man from an eastern city, who came accompanied by his newly mar- ried wife, a dark-eyed girl of nineteen. Leaving his bride at one of the westernmost frontier-settlements, he pushed on in search of a favorable location for their new home. Near the present town of LaFayette he found a tract which pleased his eye and promised abundant harvests, and after his wife had been brought to view it and expressed her satisfaction and delight at the happy choice he had made, the site was selected and the house was built.
They moved into their prairie home in the first flush of summer. Their cabin was built upon a knoll and faced the south. Sitting at the door at eventide they contemplated a prospect of unrivaled beauty. The sun-bright soil remained still in its primeval greatness and magnificence, unchecked by human hands, cov- ered with flowers, protected and watched by the eye of the sun. The days were glorious ; the sky of the brightest blue, the sun of the purest gold, and the air full of vitality, but calm ; and there, in that brilliant light, stretched itself far, far out into the infinite, as far as the eye could discern, an ocean-like extent, the waves of which were sunflowers, asters, and gentians, nodding and beckoning in the wind, as if inviting mil- lions of beings to the festival set out on the rich table of the earth. Mrs. H. was an impressible wroman with poetic tastes, and a strong admiration for the beautiful in nature ; and as she gazed upon the glorious ex-
STORMS ON THE PRAIRIES. 53
panse her whole face lighted up and glowed with pleasure. Here she thought was the paradise of which she had long dreamed.
As the summer advanced a plenteous harvest prom- ised to reward the labors of her husband. Nature was bounteous and smiling in all her aspects, and the young wife toiled faithfully and patiently to make her rough house a pleasant home for her husband. She had been reared like him amid the luxuries of an eastern city, and her hands had never been trained to work. But the influences of nature around her, and the almost idolatrous love which she cherished for her husband, cheered and sweetened the homely toils of her prairie life.
Eight months sped happily and prosperously away ; the winter had been mild, and open, and spring had come with its temperate breezes, telling of another summer of brightness and beauty.
Soon after the middle of April in that year, com- menced an extraordinary series of storms. They oc- curred daily, and sometimes twice a day, accompanied by the most vivid lightning, and awful peals of thun- der ; the rain poured down in a deluge until it seemed as if another flood was coming to purify the earth. For more than sixty days those terrible scenes re- curred, and blighted the whole face of the country for miles around the lonely cabin. The prairies, satu- rated with moisture, refused any longer to drink up the showers. Every hollow and even the slightest depression became a stagnant pool, and when the rains ceased and the sun came out with the heat of the summer solstice, it engendered pestilence, which rose from the green plain that smiled beneath him, and
54 WOMAN'S WORK IN FLOODS AND STORMS.
stalked resistless among the dwellers throughout that vast expanse.
Of all the widely isolated and remote cabins which sent their smoke curling into the dank morning air of the region thereabouts, there was not one in which disease was not already raging with fearful malignity. Doctors or hired nurses there were none ; each stricken household was forced to battle single-handed with the destroyer who dealt his blows stealthily, suddenly, and alas ! too often, effectually. The news of the dreadful
visitation soon reached the family of Mr. H and
for a period they were in a fearful suspense. They were surrounded by the same malarial influences that had made such havoc among their neighbors, and why should they escape ? They were living directly over a noisome cess-pool ; their cellar was filled with water which could not be drained away, nor would the satu- rated earth drink it up. Centuries of vegetable accu- mulations forming the rich mould in which the cellar was dug, gave out their emanations to the water, and the fiery rays of the sun made the mixture a decoction whose steams were laden with death.
There was no escape unless they abandoned their house, and this they were reluctant to do, hoping that the disease would pass by them. But this was a vain hope ; in a few days Mr. H. was prostrated by the fever. Mrs. H. had preserved her courage and energy till now, but her impressible nature began to yield before the onset of this new danger. Her life had been sunny and care-free from a child ; her new home had till recently been the realization of her dreams of happiness ; but the loss of her husband would destroy at once every fair prospect for the future._ All that a
A BROKEN HEART. 55
loving wife could do as a nurse or watcher or doctress, was done by her, but long before her husband had turned the sharp corner between death and life, Mrs. H. was attacked and both lay helpless, dependent upon the care of their only hired man. Neighbors whose hearts had been made tender and sympathetic by their own bereavements, came from their far-off cabins and for several weeks watched beside their bedside. The attack of the wife commenced with a fever which continued till after the birth of her child. For three days longer she lingered in pain, sinking slowly till the last great change came, and Mr. H., now conva- lescent, saw her eyes closed for ever.
The first time he left the house was to follow the remains of his wife and child to their last resting place, beneath an arbor of boughs which her own hands had tended. "We cannot describe the grief of that bereaved husband. His very appearance was that of one who had emerged from the tomb. Sick- ness had blanched his dark face to a ghastly hue, and drawn great furrows in his cheeks, which were immov- able, and as if chiseled in granite. During his sick- ness he had seen little of her before she was stricken down, for his mind was clouded. When the light of reason dawned he was faintly conscious that she lay near him suffering, first from the fever, and then from woman's greatest pain and trial, but that he was una- ble to soothe and comfort her ; and finally that her last hours were hours of intense agony, which he could not alleviate. He was as one in a trance ; a confused consciousness of his terrible loss slowly took possession of him. When at length his weakened intellect comprehended the truth with all its sad sur-
56 WOMAN'S ADVENTURES AND UEROISM.
*
rounding, a great cloud of desolation settled down over his whole life.
That cloud, sad to say, never lifted. As he stood by the open grave, he lifted the lid, gazed long and intently on that sweet pale face, bent and kissed the marble brow, and as the mother and child were low- ered into the grave, he turned away a broken-hearted man.
CHAPTEE III.
EARLY PIONEERS— WOMAN'S ADVENTURES AND HEROISM.
FOR nearly one hundred years after the settlement of Plymouth, the whole of the territory now known as the State of Maine was, with the exception of a few settlements on the coast and rivers, a howling wilderness. From the sea to Canada extended a vast forest, intersected with rapid streams and dotted with numerous lakes. While the larger number of settlers were disinclined to attempt to penetrate this trackless waste, some few hardy pioneers dared to advance far into the unknown land, tempted by the abundance of fish in the streams and lakes or by the variety of game which was to be found in the forests. It was the land for hunters rather than for tillers of the soil, and most of its early explorers were men who were skillful marksmen, and versed in forest lore. But occasionally women joined these predatory expeditions against the denizens of the woods and waters.
A MIGHTY HUNTRESS.
57
In the history of American settlements too little credit has been given to the hunter. He is often the first to penetrate the wilderness ; he notes the general features of the country as he passes on his swift course ; he ascertains the fertility of the soil and the capabili- ties of different regions; he reconnoiters the Indian tribes, and learns their habits and how they are affect- ed towards the white man. When he returns to the settlements he makes his report concerning the region which he has explored, and by means of the knowl- edge thus obtained the permanent settlers were and are enabled to push forward and establish themselves in the wilderness. In the glory and usefulness of these discoveries woman not unfrequentiy shared. Some of the most interesting narratives are those in which she was the companion and coadjutor of the hunter in his explorations of the trackless mazes of our American forests.
In the year 1672 a small party of hunters arrived at the mouth of the Kennebec in two canoes. The larger one of the canoes was paddled up stream by three men, the other was propelled swiftly forward by a man and a woman. Both were dressed in hunters' costume ; the woman in a close-fitting tunic of deer- skin reaching to the knees, with leggins to match, and the man in hunting-shirt and trowsers of the same material. Edward Pentry, for this was the name of the man, was a stalwart Cornishman who had spent ten years in hunting and exploring the American wil- derness. Mrs. Pentry, his wife, was of French extrac- tion, and had passed most of her life in the settlements in Canada, where she had met her adventurous hus- band on one of his hunting expeditions. She was of
53 WOMAN'S ADVENTURES AND HEROISM.
manly stature and strength, and like her husband, was a splendid shot and skillful fisher. Both were passion- ately fond of forest life, and perfectly fearless of its dangers, whether from savage man or beast.
It was their purpose to explore thoroughly the region watered by the upper Kennebec, and to estab- lish a trading-post which would serve as the headquar- ters of fur-traders, and ultimately open the country for settlement. Their outfit was extremely simple : guns, traps, axes, fishing-gear, powder, and bullets, &c., with an assorted cargo of such trinkets and other arti- cles as the Indians desired in return for peltry.
In three weeks they reached the head-waters of the Kennebec, at Moosehead Lake. There they built a large cabin, divided into two compartments, one of which was occupied by three of the men, the other by Mr. and Mrs. Pentry. All of the party were versed in the Indian dialect of the region, and as Mrs. Pentry could speak French, no trouble was anticipated from the Indians, who in that part of the country were generally friendly to the French.
The labors of the men in felling trees and shaping logs for the cabin, as well as in framing the structure, were shared in by Mrs. Pentry, who in addition did all the necessary cooking and other culinary offices. They decided to explore the surrounding country for the purpose of discovering the lay of the land and the haunts of game. No signs of any Indians had yet been seen, and it was thought best that the four men should start, each in a different direction, and having explored the neighboring region return to the cabin at night, Mrs. Pentry meanwhile being left alone — a sit- uation which she did not in the least dread. Accord-
A SUSPICIOUS SIGN,
59
ingly, early in the morning, after eating a hunter's breakfast of salt pork, fried fish, and parched corn, the quartette selected their several routes, and started, taking good care to mark their trail as they went, that they could the more readily find the way back.
It was agreed that they should return by sunset, which would give them twelve good hours for explor- ation, as it was the month of July, and the days were long. After their departure Mrs. P. put things to rights about the house, and barring the door against intruders, whether biped or quadruped, took her gun and fishing-tackle and went out for a little sport in the woods.
The cabin stood on the border of Moosehead Lake. Unloosing the canoes, she embarked in one, and towing the other behind her, rowed across a part of the lake which jutted in shore to the southwest ; she soon reached a dense piece of woods which skirted the lake, and there mooring her canoe, watched for the deer which came down to that place to drink. A fat buck before long made his appearance, and as he bent down his head to quaff the water, a brace of buck-shot planted behind his left foreleg laid him low, and his carcase was speedily deposited in the canoe.
The sun was now well up, and as Mrs. P. had pro- vided for the wants of the party by her lucky shot, and no more deer made their appearance, she lay down in the bottom of the boat, and soon fell fast asleep. Hunters and soldiers should be light sleepers, as was Mrs. Pentry upon this occasion.
How long she slept she never exactly knew, but she was awakened by a splash ; lifting her head above the edge of the boat, she saw nothing but a muddy
(30 WOMAN'S ADVENTURES AND HEROISM.
spot on the water some thirty feet away, near the shore. This was a suspicious sign. Looking more closely, she saw a slight motion beneath the lily-pads, which covered closely, like a broad green carpet, the surface of the lake. Her hand was on her gun, and as she leveled the barrel towards the turbid spot, she saw a head suddenly lifted, and at the same moment a huge Indian sprang from the water and struggled up through the dense undergrowth that lined the edge of the lake.
It was a sudden impulse rather than a thought, which made Mrs. P. level the gun at his broad back and pull the trigger. The Indian leaped into the air, and fell back in the water dead, with half a dozen buck-shot through his heart. At the same moment she felt a strong grasp on her shoulder, and heard a deep guttural " ugh ! " Turning her head she saw the malignant face of another Indian standing waist- deep in the water, with one hand on the boat which he was dragging towards the shore.
A swift side-blow from the gun-barrel, and he tumbled into the water ; before he could recover, the brave woman had snatched the paddle, and sent the canoe spinning out into the lake. Then dropping the paddle and seizing her gun she dashed in a heavy charge of powder, dropped a dozen buck-shot down the muzzle, rammed in some dry grass, primed the pan, and leveled it again at the savage, who having recovered from the blow, was floundering towards the shore, turning and shaking his tomahawk at her, meanwhile, with a ferocious grin. Again the report of her gun awakened the forest echoes, and before the
TRAIL OF A WAR-PARTY. ^
echoes had died away, the savage's corpse was floating on the water.
She dared not immediately approach the shore, fearing that other savages might be lying in ambush ; but after closely scrutinizing the bushes, she saw no signs of others, besides the two whom she had shot. She then cut long strips of raw hide from the dead buck, and towing the bodies of the Indians far out into the lake sunk them with the stones that served to anchor the canoes. Returning to the shore, she took their guns which lay upon the shelving bank, and rapidly paddled the canoe homeward.
It was now high noon. She reached the. cabin, entered, and sat down to rest. She supposed that the savages she had just killed were stragglers from a war-party who had lagged behind their comrades, and attracted by the sound made by her gun when she shot the buck, had come to see what it was. The thought that a larger body might be in the vicinity, and that they would capture and perhaps kill her be- loved husband and his companions, was a torture to her. She sat a few moments to collect her thoughts and resolve what course to pursue.
Her resolution was soon taken. She could not sit longer there, while her husband and friends were ex- posed to danger or death. Again she entered the canoe and paddled across the arm of the lake to the spot where the waters were still stained with the blood of the Indians. Hastily effacing this bloody trace, she moored the canoes and followed the trail of the sava- ges for four mile,s to the northwest. There she found in a ravine the embers of a fire, where, from appear- ances as many as twenty redskins had spent the pre-
62 WOMAN'S ADVENTURES AND HEROISM.
ceding night. Their trail led to the northwest, and by certain signs known to hunters, she inferred that they had started at day-break and were now far on their way northward.
When her four male associates selected their re- spective routes in the morning, her husband had, she now remembered, selected one which led directly in the trail of the Indian war-party, and by good cal- culation he would have been about six miles in their rear. Not being joined by the two savages whose bodies lay at the bottom of the lake, what was more likely than that they would send back a detachment to look after the safety of their missing comrades ?
The first thing to be done was to strike her hus- band's trail and then follow it till she overtook him or met him returning. Swiftly, and yet cautiously, she struck out into the forest in a direction at right angles with the Indian camp. Being clad in trowsers of deer skin and a short tunic and moccasins of the same ma- terial, she made her way through the woods as easily as a man, and fortunately in a few moments discovered a trail which she concluded was that of her husband. Her opinion was soon verified by finding a piece of leather which she recognized as part of his accoutre- ments. For two hours she strode swiftly on through the forest, treading literally in her husband's tracks.
The sun was now three hours above the western horizon ; so taking her seat upon a fallen tree, she waited, expecting to see him soon returning on his trail, when she heard faintly in the distance the report of a gun; a moment after, another and still another report followed in quick succession. Guided by the sound she hurried through the tangled thicket from
SEARCHING FOR HER HUSBAND. §3
which she soon emerged into a grove of tall pine trees, and in the distance saw two Indians with their backs turned toward her and shielding themselves from some one in front by standing behind large trees. Without being seen by them she stole up and sheltered herself in a similar manner, while her eye ranged the forest in search of her husband who she feared was under the lire of the red-skins.
At length she descried the object of their hostility behind the trunk of a fallen tree. It was clearly a white man who crouched there, and he seemed to be wounded. She immediately took aim at the nearest Indian and sent two bullets through his lungs. The other Indian at the same instant had fired at the white man and then sprang forward to finish him with his tomahawk. Mrs. Pentry flew to the rescue and just as the savage lifted his arm to brain his foe, she drove her hunting knife to the haft into his spine.
Her husband lay prostrate before her and senseless with loss of blood from a bullet- wound ih the right shoulder. Staunching the flow of blood with styptics which she gathered among the forest shrubs, she brought water and the wounded man soon revived. After a slow and weary march she brought him back to the cabin, carrying him part of the way upon her shoulders. Under her careful nursing he at length recovered his strength though he always carried the bullet in his shoulder. It appears he had met three Indians who told him they were in search of their two missing companions. One of them afterwards treach- erously shot him from behind through the shoulder, and in return Pentry sent a ball through his heart. Then becoming weak from loss of blood he could only
64 WOlfAX'S ADVENTURES AND HEROISM.
point his gun-barrel at the remaining Indians, and this was his situation when his wife came up and saved his life.
After receiving such an admonition it is natural to suppose the whole party were content to remain near their forest home for a season, extending their ram- bles only far enough to enable them to procure game and fish for their table ; and this was not far, for the lake was alive with fish ; and wild turkeys, deer, and other game could be shot sometimes even from the cabin door.
The party were also deterred by this experience from attempting to drive any trade with the Indians until the following spring, when they expected to be joined by a large party of hunters.
The summer soon passed away, and the cold nights of September and October admonished our hardy pio- neers that they must prepare for a rigorous winter. Mrs. Pentry made winter clothing for the men and for herself out of the skins of animals which they had shot, and snow-shoes from the sinews of deer stretched on a frame composed of strips of hard wood. She also felled trees for fuel and lined the walls of the cabin with deer and bear skins ; she was the most skil- ful mechanic of the party, and having fitted runners of hickory to one of the boats she rigged a sail of soft skins sewed together, and once in November, after the river was frozen, and when the wind blew strongly from the northwest, the whole party undertook to reach the mouth of the river by sailing down in their boat upon the ice. A boat of this kind, when the ice is smooth and the wind strong, will make fifteen miles an hour.
VOYAGING ON THE ICE. 55
They were interrupted frequently in their course by the falls and rapids, making portages necessary ; nev- ertheless in three days and two nights they reached the mouth of the river.
Here they bartered their peltry for powder, bullets, and various other articles most needed by frontiers- men, and catching a southeast wind started on their return. In a few hours they had made seventy miles, and at night, as the sky threatened snow, they pre- pared a shelter in a hollow in the bank of the river. Before morning a snow-storm had covered the river- ice and blocked their passage. For three days, the snow fell continuously. They were therefore forced to abandon all hopes of reaching their cabin at the head- waters of the Kennebec. The hollow or cave in the bank where they were sheltered they covered with saplings and branches cut from the bluff, and banked up the snow round it. Their supply of food was soon exhausted, but by cutting holes in the ice they caught fish for their subsistence.
The depth of the snow prevented them from going far from their place of shelter, and the nights were bit- ter cold. The ice on the river was two feet in thick- ness ; and one day, in cutting through it to fish, their only axe was broken. No worse calamity could have befallen them, since they were now unable to cut fuel or to procure fish. Mr. Pentry, who was still suffering from the effects of his wound, contracted a cold which settled in his lame shoulder, and he was obliged to stay in doors, carefully nursed and tended by his devoted wife. The privations endured by these unfortunates are scarcely to be paralleled. Short of food, ill-sup- plied with clothing, and exposed to the howling sever- 5
6Q WOMAN'S ADVENTURES AND HEROISM.
ity of the climate, the escape of any one of the num- ber appears almost a miracle.
A number of bear-skins, removed from the boat to the cave, served them for bedding. Some days, when there was nothing to eat and no means of making a fire, they passed the whole time huddled up in the skins. Daily they became weaker and less capable of exertion. Wading through the snow up to the waist, they were able now and then to shoot enough small game to barely keep them alive.
After the lapse of a fortnight there came a thaw, succeeded by a cold rain, which froze as it fell. The snow became crusted over, to the depth of two inches, with ice that was strong enough to bear their weight. They extricated their ice-boat and prepared for depar- ture. One of the party had gone out that morning on the crust, hoping to secure some larger game to stock their larder before starting; the rest awaited his return for two hours, and then, fearing some casualty had happened to him, followed his trail for half a mile from the river and found him engaged in a desperate struggle with a large, black she-bear which he had wounded.
The ferocious animal immediately left its prey and rushed at Mrs. Pentry with open mouth, seizing her left arm in its jaws, crunched it, and then, rising on its hind legs, gave her a terrible hug. The rest of the party dared not fire, for fear of hitting the woman. Twice she drove her hunting knife into the beast's vitals and it fell on the crust, breaking through into the snow beneath, where the two rolled over in a death-struggle. The heroic woman at length arose victorious, and the carcase of the bear was dragged
RESCUE FROM PERIL,
67
forth, skinned, and cut up. A fire was speedily kindled, Mrs. Pentry's wounds were dressed, and after refreshing themselves with a hearty meal of bearsteak, the remainder of the meat was packed in the boat.
The party then embarked, and by the aid of a stiff easterly breeze, were enabled, in three days, to reach their cabin on the head- waters of the Kennebec. The explorations made along the Kennebec by Mrs. Pentry and her companions attracted thither an adventurous class of settlers, and ultimately led to the important settlements on the line of that river.
The remainder of Mrs. Pentry's life was spent mainly on the northern frontier. She literally lived and died in the woods, reaching the advanced age of ninety-six years, and seeing three generations of her descendants grow up around her. Possessing the strength and courage of a man, she had also all a woman's kindness, and appears to have been an esti- mable person in all the relations of life — a good wife and mother, a warm friend, and a generous neighbor. In fact, she was a representative woman of the times in which she lived.
The toils of a severer nature, such as properly belong to man, often fall upon woman from the neces- sities of life in remote and isolated settlements ; she is seen plying strange vocations and undertaking tasks that bear hardly on the soft and gentle sex. Some- times a hunter and trapper ; and again a mariner ; now we see her performing the rugged work of a farm, and again a fighter, stoutly defending her home. The fact that habit and necessity accustom her, in frontier life, to those employments which in older and more conventional communities are deemed unfitting
6g WOMAN'S ADVENTURES AND HEROISM.
and ungraceful for woman to engage in, makes it none the less striking and admirable, because in doing so she serves a great and useful purpose ; she is thereby doing her part in forming new communities in the places that are uninhabited and waste.
Vermont was largely settled by the soldiers who had served in the army of the Revolution. The set- tlers, both men and women, were hardy and intrepid, and seem to have been peculiarly adapted to subjugate that rugged region in our New England wilderness. The women were especially noted for the strength and courage with which they shared the labors of the men and encountered the hardships and dangers of frontier life.
When sickness or death visited the men of the family, the mothers, wives, or widows filled their places in the woods, or on the farm, or among the cattle. Often, side by side with the men, women could be seen emulating their husbands in the severe task of felling timber and making a clearing in the forest.
In the words of Daniel P. Thompson, author of 16 The Green Mountain Boys " :—
" The women of the Green Mountains deserve as much credit for their various displays of courage, endurance, and patriotism, in the early settlement of their State, as was ever awarded to their sex for simi- lar exhibitions in any part of the world. In the controversy with New York and New Hampshire, which took the form of war in many instances ; in the predatory Indian incursions, and in the War of the Revolution, they often displayed a capacity for labor and endurance, a spirit and firmness in the hour of danger, a resolution and hardihood in defending
GREEN MOUNTAIN GIRLS. (jg
their families and their threatened land against all enemies, whether domestic or foreign, that would have done honor to the dames of Sparta."
The first man who commenced a settlement in the town of Salisbury, Vermont, on the Otter Creek, was Amos Storey, who, in making an opening in the heart of the wilderness on the right of land to which the first settler was entitled, was killed by the fall of a tree. His widow, who had been left in Connecticut, immediately resolved to push into the wilderness with her ten small children, to take his place and preserve and clear up his farm. This bold resolution she carried out to the letter, in spite of every difficulty, hardship, and danger, which for years constantly beset her in her solitary location in the woods. Acre after acre of the dense and dark forest melted away before her axe, which she handled with the dexterity of the most experienced chopper. The logs and bushes were piled and burnt by her own strong and untir- ing hand ; crops were raised, by which, with the fruits of her fishing and unerring rifle, she supported herself and her hardy brood of children. As a place of refuge from the assaults of Indians or dangerous wild beasts, she dug out 'an underground room, into which, through a small entrance made to open under an overhanging thicket on the bank of the stream, she nightly retreated with her children.
Frequently during the dreary winter nights she was kept awake by the howling of the wolves, and some- times, looking through the chinks in the logs, she could see them loping in circles around the cabin, whining and snuffing the air as if they yearned for human blood. They were gaunt, fierce-looking crea-
70 WOMAN'S ADVENTURES AND HEROISM.
tures, and in the winter-time their hunger made them so bold that they would come up to the door and scratch against it. The barking of her mastiff would soon drive the cowardly beasts away but only a few rods, to the edge of the clearing where, sitting on their haunches, they frequently watched the house all night, galloping away into the woods when day broke.
Here she continued to reside, thus living, thus laboring, unassisted, till, by her own hand and the help which her boys soon began to afford her, she cleared up a valuable farm and placed herself in independent circumstances.
Miss Hannah Fox tells the following thrilling story of an adventure that befel her while engaged in fell- ing trees in her mother's woods in Rhode Island, in the early colonial days.
We Avere making fine progress with our clearing and getting ready to build a house in the spring. My brother and I worked early and late, often going with- out our dinner, when the bread and meat which wre brought with us was frozen so hard that our teeth could make no impression upon it, without taking too much of our time. My brother plied his axe on the largest trees, while I worked at the smaller ones or trimmed the boughs from the trunks of such as had been felled.
The last day of our chopping was colder than ever. The ground was covered by a deep snow which had crusted over hard enough to bear our weight, which was a great convenience in moving from spot to spot in the forest, as well as in walking to and from our cabin, which was a mile away. My brother had gone
A FEMALE FORESTER.
71
to the nearest settlement that day, leaving me to do my work alone,
As a storm was threatening, I toiled as long as I could see, and after twilight felled a sizeable tree which in its descent lodged against another. Not liking to leave the job half finished, I mounted the almost prostrate trunk to cut away a limb and let it down. The bole of the tree was forked about twenty feet from the ground, and one of the divisions of the fork would have to be cut asunder. A few blows of my axe and the tree began to settle, but as I was about to descend, the fork split and the first joints of my left-hand fingers slid into the crack so that for the moment I could not extricate them. The pressure was not severe, and as I believed I could soon relieve myself by cutting away the remaining portion, I felt no alarm. But at the first blow of the axe which I held in my right hand, the trunk changed its position, rolling over and closing the split, with the whole force of its tough oaken fibers crushing my fingers like pipe-stems ; at the same time my body was dislodged from the trunk and I slid slowly down till I hung suspended with the points of my feet just brushing the snow. The air was freezing and every moment grow- ing colder ; no prospect of any relief that night ; the nearest house a mile away ; no friends to feel alarmed at my absence, for my mother would suppose that I was safe with my brother, while the latter would suppose I was by this time at home.
The first thought was of my mother. " It will kill her to know that I died in this death-trap so near home, almost within hearing of her voice ! There must be some escape ! but how ? " My axe had fallen
72 WOMAN'S ADVENTURES AND UEROISM.
below me and my feet could almost touch it. It was impossible to imagine how I could cut myself loose unless I could reach it. My only hope of life rested on that keen blade which lay glittering on the snow.
Within reach of my hand was a dead bush which towered some eight feet above me, and by a great exertion of strength I managed to break it. Holding it between my teeth I stripped it of its twigs, leaving two projecting a few inches at the lower end to form a hook. With this I managed to draw towards me the head of the axe until my fingers touched it, when it slipped from the hook and fell again upon the snow, breaking through the crust and burying itself so that only the upper end of the helve could be seen.
Up to that moment the recollection of my mother and the first excitement engendered by hope had al- most made me unconscious of the excruciating pain in my crushed fingers, and the' sharp thrills that shot through my nerves, as my body swung and twisted in my efforts to reach the axe. But now, as the axe fell beyond my reach, the reaction came, hope fled, and I shuddered with the thought that I must die there alone like some wild thing caught in a snare. I thought of my widowed mother, my brother, the home which we had toiled to make comfortable and happy. I prayed earnestly to God for forgiveness of my sins, and then calmly resigned myself to death, which I now believed to be inevitable. For a time, which I afterwards found to be only five minutes, but which then seemed to me like hours, I hung motionless. The pain had ceased, for the intense cold blunted my sense of feeling. A numbness stole over me, and I seemed to be falling into .a trance, from which I was roused by a sound of bells
A DESPERATE SITUATION. 73
borne to me as if from a great distance. Hope again awoke, and I screamed loud and long; the woods echoed my cries, but no voice replied. The bells grew fainter and fainter, and at last died away. But the sound of my voice had broken the spell which cold and despair were fast throwing over me. A hundred de- vices ran swiftly through my mind, and each device was dismissed as impracticable. The helve of the axe caught my eye, and in an instant by an association of ideas it flashed across me that in the pocket of my dress there was a small knife — another sharp instrument by which I could extricate myself. With some difficulty I contrived to open the blade, and then withdrawing the knife from my pocket and griping it as one who clings to the last hope of life, I strove to cut away the wood that held my fingers in its terrible vise. In vain ! the wood was like iron. The motion of my arm and body brought back the pain which the cold had lulled, and I feared that I should faint.
After a moment's pause I adopted a last expedient. Nerving myself to the dreadful necessity, I disjointed my fingers and fell exhausted to the ground. My life was saved, but my left hand was a bleeding stump. The intensity of the cold stopped the flow of blood. I tore off a piece of my dress, bound up my fingers, and started for home. My complete exhaustion and the bitter cold made that the longest mile I had ever traveled. By nine o'clock that evening I had man- aged to drag myself, more dead than alive, to my mother's door, but it was more than a week before I could again leave the house.
The difficulties encountered by the first emigrant- bands from Massachusetts, on their journey to Con-
74 WOMAN'S ADVENTURES AND HEROISM.
necticut, may be understood best when we consider the face of the country between Massachusetts Bay and Hartford. It was a succession of ridges and deep valleys with swamps and rapid streams, and covered with forests and thickets where bears, wolves, and catamounts prowled. The journey, which occupies now but a few hours, then generally required two weeks to perform. The early settlers, men, women, and children, pursued their toilsome march over this rough country, picking their way through morasses, wading through rivers and streams, and climbing mountains ; driving their cattle, sheep, and swine before them. Some came on horseback ; the older and feebler in ox-carts, but most of them traveled on foot. At night aged and delicate women slept under trees in the forest, with no covering but the foliage and the cope of heaven.
The winter was near at hand, and the nights were already cold and frosty. Many of the women had been delicately reared, and yet were obliged to travel on foot for the whole distance, reaching their desti- nation in a condition of exhaustion that ill prepared them for the hardships of the ensuing winter. Some were nursing mothers, who sheltered themselves and their babes in rude huts where the wind, rain, and snow drove in through yawning fissures which there were no means to close. Others were aged women, who in sore distress sent up their prayers and rolled their quavering hymns to the wintry skies, their only canopy. The story of these hapless families is told in the simple but effective language of the old historian.
"On the 15th of October [1632] about sixty men, women, and children, with their houses, cattle, and
THE SETTLERS OF CONNECTICUT. 75
swine, commenced their journey from Massachusetts, through the wilderness, to Connecticut River. After a tedious and difficult journey through swamps and rivers, over mountains and rough grounds, which were passed with great difficulty and fatigue, they arrived safely at their respective destinations. They were so long on their journey, and so much time and pains were spent in passing the river, and in getting over their cattle, that after all their exertions, winter came upon them before they were prepared. This was an occasion of great distress and damage to the plantation. The same autumn several other parties came from the east — including a large number of women and children — by different routes, and settled on the banks of the Con- necticut river.
" The winter set in this year much sooner than usual, and the weather was stormy and severe. By the 15th of November, the Connecticut river was frozen over, and the snow was so deep, and the season so tempestuous, that a considerable number of the cattle which had been driven on from the Massachusetts, could not be brought across the river. The people had so little time to prepare their huts and houses, and to erect sheds and shelter for their cattle, that the sufferings of man and beast were extreme. Indeed the hardships and distresses of the first planters of Connecticut scarcely admit of a description. To carry much provision or furniture through a pathless wilder- ness was impracticable. Their principal provisions and household furniture were therefore put on several small vessels, which, by reason of delays and the tempestuousness of the season, were cast away. Sev- eral vessels were wrecked on the coast of New Eng-
76 WOMAN'S ADVENTURES AND HEROISM.
land, by the violence of the storms. Two shallops laden with goods from Boston to Connecticut, were cast away in October, on Brown's Island, near the Gurnet's Nose ; and the men with every thing on board were lost. A vessel with six of the Connecti- cut people on board, which sailed from the river for Boston, early in November, was, about the middle of the month, cast away in Manamet Bay. The men and women got on shore, and after wandering ten days in deep snow and a severe season, without meet- ing any human being, arrived, nearly spent with cold and fatigue, at New Plymouth.
" By the last of November, or beginning of Decem- ber, provisions generally failed in the settlements on the river, and famine and death looked the inhabitants sternly in the face. Some of them driven by hunger attempted their way, in that severe season, through the wilderness, from Connecticut to Massachusetts. Of thirteen, in one company, who made this attempt, one in passing the river fell through the ice and was drowned. The other twelve were ten days on their journey, and would all have perished, had it not been for the assistance of the Indians.
" Indeed, such was the distress in general, that by the 3d and 4th of December, a considerable part of the new settlers were obliged to abandon their habita- tions. Seventy persons, men, women, and children, were compelled, in the extremity of winter, to go down to the mouth of the river to meet their provi- sions, as the only expedient to preserve their lives. Not meeting with the vessels which they expected, they all went on board the Rebecca, a vessel of about sixty tons. This, two days before, was frozen in, twenty miles up the river ; but by the falling of a small rain,
COLD AND FAMIXE. ff
and the influence of the tide, the ice became so broken and was so far removed, that she made a shift to get out. She ran, however, upon the bar, and the people were forced to unlade her to get off. She was re- leased, and in five days reached Boston. Had it not been for these providential circumstances, the people must have perished with famine.
" The people who kept their stations on the river suffered in an extreme degree. After all the help they were able to obtain, by hunting, and from the Indians, they were obliged to subsist on acorns, malt, and grains.
"Numbers of the cattle which could not be got over the river before winter, lived through without anything but what they found in the woods and mea- dows. They wintered as well, or better than those which were brought over, and for which all the pro- vision was made and pains taken of which the owners were capable. However, a great number of cattle perished. The Dorchester or Windsor people, lost in this way alone about two hundred pounds sterling. Their other losses were very considerable."
It is difficult to describe, or even to conceive, the apprehensions or distresses of a people in the circum- stances of our venerable ancestors, during this doleful winter. All the horrors of a dreary wilderness spread themselves around them. They were compassed with numerous fierce and cruel tribes of wild and savage men, who could have swallowed up parents and chil- dren at pleasure, in their feeble and distressed condi- tion. They had neither bread for themselves nor children ; neither habitation nor clothing convenient for them. Whatever emergency might happen, they were cut off, both by land and water, from any succor
78 WOMAN'S ADVENTURES AND HEROISM.
or retreat. What self-denial, firmness, and magna- nimity are necessary for such enterprises ! How dis- tressing, in the beginning, was the condition of those now fair and opulent towns on Connecticut River !
Under the most favorable circumstances, the lives of the pioneer-women must have been one long ordeal of hardship and suffering. The fertile valleys were the scenes of the bloodiest Indian raids, while the re- mote and sterile hill country, if it escaped the atten- tion of the hostile savage, was liable to be visited by other ills. Famine in such regions was always immi- nent, and the remoteness and isolation of those fron- tier-cabins often made relief impossible. A failure in the little crop of corn, which the thin soil of the hill- side scantily furnished, and the family were driven to the front for game and to the streams for fish, to supply their wTant&. Then came the winter, and the cabin was often blockaded with snow for weeks. The fuel and food consumed, nothing seemed left to the doomed household but to struggle on for a season, and then lie down and die. Fortunately the last sad catastro- phe was of rare occurrence, owing to the extraordi- nary resolution and hardihood of the settlers.
It is a striking fact that in all the records, chronicles, and letters of the early settlers that have come down to us, there are scarcely to be found any complaining word from woman. She simply stated her sufferings, the dangers she encountered, the hardships she en- dured, and that was all. No querulous or peevish com- plaints, no meanings over her hard lot. She bore her pains and sorrows and privations in silence, looking forward to her reward, and knowing that she was making homes in the wilderness, and that future gene- rations would rise up and call her blessed.
CHAPTER IV.
THE BLOCK-HOUSE, AND ON THE INDIAN TRAIL.
axe and the gun, the one to conquer the -L forces of wild nature, the other to battle against savage man and beast — these were the twin weapons that the pioneer always kept beside him, whether on the march or during a halt. In defensive warfare the axe was scarcely less potent than the gun, for with its keen edge the great logs were hewed which formed the block-house, and the tall saplings shaped, which were driven into the earth to make the stockade. We know too that woman could handle the gun and ply the axe when required so to do.
In one of our historical galleries there was exhibited not long since a painting representing a party of Indi- ans attacking a block-house in a New England settle- ment. The house is a structure framed, and built of enormous logs, hexagonal in shape, the upper stories over-hanging those beneath, and pierced with loop- holes. There is a thick parapet on the roof, behind which are collected the children of the settlement guarded by women, old and young, some of whom are firing over the parapet at the yelling fiends who have just emerged from their forest-ambush. A glimpse of the interior of the block-house shows us women engaged in casting bullets and loading fire-arms which they are handing to the men. In the back- ground a brave girl is returning swiftly to the garri-
(79)
30 THE BLOCK-HOUSE, AND ON THE INDIAN TRAIL.
son, with buckets of water which she has drawn from the spring, a few rods away from the house. A crouch- ing savage has leveled his gun at her, and she evidently knows the' danger she is in, but moves steadily forward without spilling a drop of her pre- cious burden.
The block-house is surrounded by the primeval forest, which is alive with savages. Some are shaking at the defenders of the block-house fresh scalps, evi- dently just torn from the heads of men and women who have been overtaken and tomahawked before they could reach their forest-citadel : others have fired the stack of corn. A large fire has been kindled in the woods and a score of savages are wrapping dry grass around the ends of long poles, with which to fire the wooden walls of the block-house.
Thirty or forty men women and children in a wooden fort, a hundred miles, perhaps, from any settlement, and surrounded by five times their number of Pequots or Wampanoags thirsting for their blood ! This is in- deed a faithful picture of one of the frequent episodes of colonial life in New England !
Every new settlement was brought face to face with such dangers as we have described. The red-man and the white man were next door neighbors. The smokes of the wigwam and the cabin mingled as they rose to the sky. From the first there was more or less antago- nism. Life among the white settlers was a kind of picket-service in which woman shared.
At times, as for example in the wars with the Pe- quots and King Philip, there was safety nowhere. Men went armed to the field, to meeting, and to bring home their brides from their father's house where they
MRS. ROWLANDSOWS SUFFERING. g^
had married them. "Women with muskets at their side lulled their babes to sleep. Like the tiger of the jungles, the savage lay in ambush for the women and children: he knew he could strike the infant colony best by thus desolating the homes.
The captivities of Mrs. Williams and her children, of Mrs. Shute, of Mrs. Johnson, of Mrs. Howe, and of many other matrons, as well as of unmarried women, are well-conned incidents of New England colonial history. The story of Mrs. Dustin's exploit and es- cape reads like a romance. "At night," to use the concise language of Mr. Bancroft, "while the house- hold slumbers, the captives, each with a tomahawk, strike vigorously, and fleetly, and with division of la- bor,— and of the twelve sleepers, ten lie dead ; of one squaw the wround was not mortal; one child was spared from design. The love of glory next asserted its power ; and the gun and tomahawk of the mur- derer of her infant, and a bag heaped full of scalps were choicely kept as trophies of the heroine. The streams are the guides which God has set for the stran- ger in the wilderness: in a bark canoe the three descend the Merrimac to the English settlement, astonishing their friends by their escape and filling the land with wonder at their successful daring."
The details of Mrs. Rowlandson's sufferings after her capture at Lancaster, Mass., in 1676, are almost too painful to dwell upon. When the Indians began their march the day after the destruction of that place, Mrs. Rowlandson carried her infant till her strength failed and she fell. Toward night it began to snow ; and gathering a few sticks, she made a fire. Sitting beside it on the snow, she held her child in her arms, 6
g2 THE BLOCK-HOUSE, AND ON THE INDIAN TRAIL.
through the long and dismal night. For three or four days she had no sustenance but water ; nor did her child share any better for nine days. During this time it was constantly in her arms or lap. At the end of that period, the frost of death crept into its eyes, and she was forced to relinquish it to be disposed of by the unfeeling sextons of the forest.
She went through almost every suffering but death. She was beaten, kicked, turned out of doors, refused food, insulted in the grossest manner, and at times almost starved. Nothing but experience can enable us to conceive what must be the hunger of a person by whom the discovery of six acorns and two chestnuts was regarded as a rich prize. At times, in order to make her miserable, they announced to her the death of her husband and her children.
On various occasions they threatened to kill her. Occasionally, but for short intervals only, she was permitted to see her children, and suffered her own anguish over again in their miseries. She was obliged, while hardly able to walk, to carry a heavy burden, over hills, and through rivers, swamps, and marshes ; and in the most inclement seasons. These evils were repeated daily ; and, to crown them all, she was daily saluted with the most barbarous and insolent accounts of the burning and slaughter, the tortures and agonies, inflicted by them upon her countrymen. It is to be remembered that Mrs. Rowlandson was tenderly and delicately educated, and ill fitted to encounter such distresses ; and yet she bore them all with a fortitude truly wonderful.
Instances too there were, where a single woman in- fused her own dauntless spirit into a whole garrison,
WOMAN'S COURAGE. 33
and prevented them from abandoning their post. Mrs. Heard, " a widow of good estate, a mother of many children, and a daughter of Mr. Hull, a revered min- ister formerly settled in Piscataqua," having escaped from captivity among the Indians, about 1689, returned to one of the garrisons on the extreme frontier of New Hampshire. By her presence and courage this out- post was maintained for ten years and during the whole war, though frequently assaulted by savages. It is stated that if she had left the garrison and retired to Portsmouth, as she was solicited to do by her friends, the out-post would have been abandoned, greatly to the damage of the surrounding country.
Long after the New England colonies rested in com- parative security from the attacks of the aboriginal tribes, the warfare was continued in the Middle, South- ern, and Western States ; and even at this hour, sitting in our peaceful homes we read in the journals of the day reports of Indian atrocities perpetrated against the families of the pioneers on our extreme western frontier.
Our whole history from the earliest times to the present, is full of instances of woman's noble achieve- ments. East, west, north, south, wherever we wan- der, we tread the soil which has been wearily trodden by her feet as a pioneer, moistened by her tears as a captive, or by her blood as a martyr in the cause of civilization on this western continent.
The sorrows of maidens, wives, and mothers in the border wars of our colonial times, have furnished themes for the poet, the artist, and the novelist, but the reality of these scenes as described in the simple
g4 THE BLOCK-HOUSE, AND ON THE INDIAN TRAIL.
words of the local historians, often exceeds the most vivid dress in which imagination can clothe it.
One of the most deeply rooted traits of woman's nature is sympathy, and the outflow of that emotion into action is as natural as the emotion itself. When a woman witnesses the sufferings of others it is instinct- ive with her to try and relieve them, and to be thwarted in the exercise of this faculty is to her a positive pain.
We may judge from this of what her feelings must have been when she saw, as she often did, those who were dearest to her put to torture and death without being permitted to rescue them or even alleviate their agonies.
Such was the position in which Mrs. Waldron was placed, on the northern border, during the French and Indian war of the last century. She and her hus- band occupied a small block-house which they had built a few miles from Cherry Valley, New York, and here she was doomed to suffer all that a wife could, in witnessing the terrible fate of her husband and being at the same time powerless to rescue him. •
" One fatal evening," to use the quaint words of our heroine, " I was all alone in the house, when I was of a sudden surprised with the fearful war-whoop and a tremendous attack upon the door and the palisades around. I flew to the upper window and seizing my husband's gun, which I had learned to use expertly, I leveled the barrel on the window-sill and took aim at the foremost savage. Knowing their cruelty and merciless disposition, and wishing to obtain some favor, I desisted from firing ; but how vain and fruit- less are the efforts of one woman against the united
A SHOCKING SPECTACLE. g5
force of so many, and of such merciless monsters as I had here to deal with ! One of them that could speak a little English, threatened me in return, ' that if I did not come out, they would burn me alive in the house.' My terror and distraction at hearing this is not to be expressed by words nor easily imagined by any person unless in the same condition. Dis- tracted as I was in such deplorable circumstances, I chose to rely on the uncertainty of their protection, rather than meet with certain death in the house ; and accordingly went out with my gun in my hand, scarcely knowing what I did. Immediately on my approach, they rushed on me like so many tigers, and instantly disarmed me. Having me thus in their power, the merciless villians bound me to a tree near the door.
" While our house and barns were burning, sad to relate, my husband just then came through the woods, and being spied by the barbarians, they gave chase and soon overtook him. Alas ! for what a fate was he reserved ! Digging a deep pit, they tied his arms to his side and put him into it and then rammed and beat the earth all around his body up to his neck, his head only appearing above ground. They then scalped him and kindled a slow fire near his head.
" I broke my bonds, and running to him kissed his poor bleeding face, and threw myself at the feet of his barbarous tormentors, begging them to spare his life. Deaf to all my tears and entreaties and to the piercing shrieks of my unfortunate husband, they dragged me away and bound me more firmly to the tree, smiting my face with the dripping scalp and laughing at my agonies.
86 THE BLOCK-HOUSE, AND ON THE INDIAN TRAIL.
Thank God ! I then lost all consciousness of the dreadful scene j and when I regained my senses the monsters had fled after cutting off the head of the poor victim of their cruel rage."
When the British formed an unholy alliance with the Indians during the Revolutionary War and turned the tomahawk and scalping knife against their kins- men, the beautiful valley of Wyoming became a dark and bloody battle-ground. The organization and dis- ciplined valor of the white man, leagued with the cunning and ferocity of the red man, was a combina- tion which met the patriots at every step in those then remote settlements, and spread rapine, fire, and murder over that lovely region.
The sufferings of the captive women, the dreadful scenes they witnessed, and the fortitude and courage they displayed, have been rescued from tradition and embodied in a permanent record by more than one historian. The names of Mrs. Bennet, Mrs. Myers, Mrs. Marcy, Mrs. Franklin, and a host of others, are inseparably associated with the household legends of the Wyoming Valley.
Miss Cook, after witnessing the barbarous murder and mutilation of a beautiful girl, whose rosy cheeks were gashed and whose silken tresses were torn from her head with the scalping knife, was threatened with instant death unless she would assist in dressing a bundle of fresh, reeking scalps cut from the heads of her friends and relatives. As she handled the gory trophies, expecting every moment that her own locks would be added to the ghastly heap, she saw some- thing in each of those sad mementos that reminded her of those who were near and dear to her. At last
A MURDEROUS SUGGESTION. gf
she lifted one which she thought was her mother's ; she gazed at the long tresses sprinkled with gray and called to mind how often she had combed and caressed them in happier hours : shuddering through her whole frame, the wretched girl burst into a passion of tears. The ruthless savage who stood guard over her with brandished tomahawk immediately forced her to re- sume and complete her horrible task.
In estimating the heroism of American women dis- played in their conflicts with the aborigines, we must take into account her natural repugnance to repulsive and horrid spectacles. The North American savage streaked with war-paint, a bunch of reeking scalps at his girdle, his snaky eyes gleaming with malignity, was a direful sight for even a hardened frontiers-man ; how much more, then, to his impressionable and delicate wife and daughter. The very appearance of the savage suggested thoughts of the tomahawk, the scalping knife, the butchered relations, the desolated homestead. Nothing can better illustrate the hardi- hood of these bold spirited women than the fact that they showed themselves not seldom superior to these feelings of dread and abhorrence,- daring even in the midst of scenes of blood to denounce personally and to their face the treachery and cruelty of their foes. * In the year 1763 a party of Shawnees visited the Block-House at Big Levels, Virginia, and after being hospitably entertained by the inhabitants, turned treacherously upon them and massacred every white man in the house. The women and children were carried away as captives, including Mrs. Glendenning, the late wife, and now the widow of one of the lead- ing settlers. Notwithstanding the dreadful scenes
* DeHass.
gg THE BLOCK-HOUSE, AND ON THE INDIAN TRAIL.
through which she had passed, Mrs. Glendenning was not intimidated. Her husband and friends had been butchered before her eyes ; but though possessed of keen sensibilities, her spirit was undaunted by the awful spectacle. Filled with indignation at the treachery and cruelty of the Indians, she loudly denounced them, and tauntingly told them that they lacked the hearts of great warriors who met their foes in fair and open conflict. The savages were astound- ed at her audacity; they tried to frighten her into silence by flapping the bloody scalp of her husband in her face and by flourishing their tomahawks above her head. The intrepid woman still continued to express her indignation and detestation. The savages, admiring her courage, refrained from inflicting any injury upon. her. She soon after managed to effect her escape and returned to her desolate home, where she gave decent interment to the mangled remains of her husband. During all the trying scenes of the massacre and captivity Mrs. Glendenning proved her- self worthy of being ranked with the bravest women of our Colonial history.
The region watered by the upper Ohio and its tributary streams was for fifty years the battle-ground where the French and their Indian allies, and afterwards the Indians alone, strove to drive back the Anglo- Saxon race as it moved westward. The country there was rich and beautiful, but what made its possession especially desirable was the fact that it was the strategic key to the great West. The French, under- standing its importance, established their fortresses and trading-posts as bulwarks against the army of
MISS ZANE'S EXPLOIT. gg
English settlers advancing from the East, and also instructed their savage allies in the art of war.
The Indian tribes in that region were warlike and powerful, and for some years it seemed as if the country would be effectually barred against the access of the Eastern pioneer. But the same school that reared and trained the daughters and grand-daughters of the Pilgrims, and of the settlers of Jamestown, and fitted them to cope with the perils and hardships of the wilderness, and to battle with hostile aboriginal tribes, also fitted their descendants for new struggles on a wider field and against more desperate odds. The courage and fortitude of men and women alike rose to the occasion, and in those scenes of danger and carnage, the presence of mind displayed by women especially, have been frequent themes of panegyric by the border annalists. *The scene wherein Miss Elizabeth Zane, one of these heroines, played so conspicuous a part, was at Fort Henry, n'ear the present city of Wheeling, Vir- ginia, in the latter part of November, 1782. Of the forty-two men who originally composed the garrisons, nearly all had been drawn into an ambush and slaughtered. The Indians, to the number of several hundred, surrounded the garrison which numbered no more than twelve men and boys.
A brisk fire upon the fort was kept up for six hours by the savages, who at times rushed close up to the palisades and received the reward of their temerity from the rifles of the frontiersmen. In the afternoon the stock of powder was nearly exhausted. There was a keg in a house ten or twelve rods from the gate of the fort, and the question arose, who shall attempt
*DcHass.
90 THE BLOCK-HOUSE, AND ON THE INDIAN TRAIL.
to seize this prize? Strange to say, every soldier proffered his services, and there was an ardent con- tention among them for the honor. In the weak state of the garrison, Colonel Shepard, the commander, deemed it advisable that only one person could be spared ; and in the midst of the confusion, before any one could be designated, Elizabeth Zane interrupted the debate, saying that her life was not so important at that time as any one of the soldiers, and claiming the privilege of performing the contested services. The Colonel would not at first listen to her proposal, but she was so resolute, so persevering in her plea, and her argument wras so powerful, that he finally suffered the gate to be opened, and she passed out. The Indians saw her before she reached her brother's house, where the keg was deposited ; but for some cause unknown, they did not molest her until she re- appeared with the article under her arm. Probably, divining the nature of her burden, they discharged a volley as she was running towards the gate, but the whizzing balls only gave agility to her feet, and her- self and the prize were quickly safe within the gate.
The successful issue of this perilous enterprise in- fused new spirit into the garrison ; re-enforcements soon reached them, the assailants were forced to beat a precipitate retreat, and Fort Henry and the whole frontier was saved, thanks to the heroism of Elizabeth Zane !
* The heroines of Bryant's Station deserve a place on the roll of honor, beside the name of the preserver of Fort Henry, since like her their courage preserved a garrison from destruction. We condense the story
* McClung's Sketches of Western Adventure.
A BAND OF HEROINES. g^
from the several sources from which it has come down to us.
The station, consisting of about forty cabins ranged in parallel lines, stood upon a gentle rise on the south- ern banks of the Elkhorn, near Lexington, Kentucky. One morning in August, 1782, an army of six hundred Indians appeared before it as suddenly as if they had risen out of the earth. One hundred picked warriors made a feint on one side of the fort, trying to entice the men out from behind the stockade, while the re- mainder were concealed in ambush near the spring with which the garrison was supplied with water. The most experienced of the defenders understood the tactics of their wily foes, and shrewdly guessed that an ambuscade had been prepared in order to cut off the garrison from access to the spring. The water in the station was already exhausted, and unless a fresh supply could be obtained the most dreadful sufferings were apprehended. It was thought probable that the Indians in ambush would not unmask themselves until they saw indications that the party on the opposite side of. the fort had succeeded in enticing the soldiers to an open engagement.
* Acting upon this impression, and yielding to the urgent necessity of the case, they summoned all the women, without exception, and explaining to them the circumstances in which they were placed, and the improbability that any injury would be done them, until the firing had been returned from the opposite side of the fort, they urged them to go in a body to the spring, and each to bring up a bucket full of water. Some, as was natural, had no relish for the undertaking; they observed they were not bullet-
*McCIung's Sketches of Western Adventure.
92 THE BLOCK-HOUSE, AND ON THE INDIAN TRAIL.
proof, and asked why the men could not bring the water as well as themselves ; adding that the Indians made no distinction between male and female scalps.
To this it was answered, that women were in the habit of bringing water every morning to the fort, and that if the Indians saw them engaged as usual, it would induce them to believe that their ambuscade was undiscovered, and that they would not unmask themselves for the sake of firing at a few women, when they hoped, by remaining concealed a few mo- ments longer to obtain complete possession of the fort ; that if men should go down to the spring, the Indians would immediately suspect that something was wrong, would despair of succeeding by ambuscade, and would instantly rush upon them, follow them into the fort, or shoot them down at the spring. The decision was soon made.
A few of the boldest declared their readiness to brave the danger, and the younger and more timid rallying in the rear of these veterans, they all marched down in a body to the spring, within point blank shot of more than five hundred Indian warriors ! Some of the girls could not help betraying symptoms of terror, but the married women, in general, moved with a steadiness and composure which completely deceived the Indians. Not a shot was fired. The party were permitted to fill their buckets, one after another, with- out interruption, and although their steps became quicker and quicker, on their return, and when near the gate of the fort, degenerated into a rather un-mil- itary celerity, attended with some little crowding in passing the gate, yet only a small portion of the water was spilled. The brave water carriers were received
HEROINES OF THE BORDER. 93
with open arms and loud cheers by the garrison, who hailed them as their preservers, and the Indians shortly after retired, baffled and cursing themselves for being outwitted by the " white squaws."
The annals of the border-wars in the region of which we have been speaking abound in stories where women have been the victors in hand-to-hand fights with savages. In all these combats we may note the spirit that inspired those brave women with such wonderful strength and courage, transforming them from gentle matrons into brave soldiers. It was love for their children, their husbands, their kindred, or their homes rather than the selfish instinct of self-preservation which impelled Mrs. Porter, the two Mrs. Cooks, Mrs. Merrill, and Mrs. Bozarth to perform those feats of prowess and daring which will make their names live for ever in the thrilling story of border-warfare.
The scene where Mrs. Porter acted her amazing part was in Huntingdon county, Pennsylvania, and the time was during the terrible war instigated by the great Pontiac. While sitting by the window of her cabin, awaiting the return of her husband, who had gone to the mill, she caught sight of an Indian ap- proaching the door. Taking her husband's sword from the wall where it hung, she planted herself behind the door; and when the Indian entered she struck with all her might, splitting his skull and stretching him a corpse upon the floor. Another savage entered and met the same fate. A third seeing the slaughter of his companions prudently retired.
Dropping the bloody weapon, she next seized the loaded gun which stood beside her and retreated to the upper story looking for an opportunity to shoot
94 THE BLOCK-HOUSE, AND ON THE INDIAN TRAIL.
the savage from the port-holes. The Indian pursued her and as he set foot upon the upper floor received the contents of her gun full in the chest and fell dead in his tracks. Cautiously reconnoitering in all direc- tions and seeing the field clear she fled swiftly toward the mill and meeting her husband, both rode to a neighboring block-house where they found refuge and aid. The next morning it was discovered that other Indians had burned their cabin, partly out of revenge and partly to conceal their discomfiture by a woman. The bones of the three savages found among the ashes were ghastly trophies of Mrs. Porter's extraordinary achievement.
In Nelson county, Kentucky, on a midsummer night, in 1787, just before the gray light of morni-ng, John Merrill, attracted by the barking of his dog, went to the door of his cabin to reconnoiter. Scarcely had he left the threshold, when he received the fire of six or seven Indians, by which his arm and thigh were both broken. He managed to crawl inside the cabin and shouted to his wife to shut the door. Scarcely had she succeeded in doing so when the tomahawks of the enemy we're hewing a breach into the apartment. * Mrs. Merrill, with Amazonian courage and strength, grasped a large axe and killed, or badly wounded, four of the enemy in succession as they attempted to force their way into the cabin.
The Indians then ascended the roof and attempted to enter by way of the chimney, but here, again, they were met by the same determined enemy. Mrs. Mer- rill seized the only feather-bed which the cabin af- forded, and hastily ripping it open, poured its contents upon the fire. A furious blaze and stifling smoke as- cended the chimney, and quickly brought down two
* McClung's Sketches of Western Adventure.
" LONG KNIFE SQUA W." g 5
of the enemy, who Lay for a few moments at the mercy of the lady. Seizing the axe, she despatched them, and was instantly summoned to the door, where the only remaining savage appeared, endeavoring to effect an entrance, while Mrs. Merrill was engaged at the chimney. He soon received a gash in the cheek which compelled him with a loud yell to relinquish his purpose, and return hastily to Chillicothe, where, from the report of a prisoner, he gave an exaggerated ac- count of the fierceness, strength, and courage of the "Long knife squaw!"
The wives of Jesse and Hosea Cook, the " heroines of Innis station " (Kentucky), as they have been styled, are shining examples of a firmness of spirit which sorrow could not blench nor tears dim.
While the brothers Cook were peacefully engaged in the avocations of the farm beside their cabins, in April, 1792, little dreaming of the proximity of the savages, a sharp crack of rifles was heard and they both lay weltering in their blood. The elder fell dead, the younger was barely able to reach his cabin.
The two Mrs. Cooks with three children were in- stantly collected in the house and the door made fast. The thickness of the door resisted the hail of rifle- balls which fell upon it, and the Indians tried in vain to cut through it with their tomahawks.
While the assault was being made on the outside of the cabin, within was heart-rending sorrow mingled with fearless determination and high resolve. The younger Cook while the door was being barred breathed his last in the arms of his wife, and the two Mrs. Cooks, thus sadly bereaved of their partners, were left the sole defenders of the cabin and the three children.
96 THE BLOCK-HOUSE, AND ON THE INDIAN TRAIL.
There was a rifle in the house but no balls could be found. In this extremity one of the women took a musket-ball and placing it between her teeth bit it into pieces. Her eyes streaming with tears, she loaded the rifle and took her position at an aperture from which she could watch the motions of the savages. She dried her tears and thought of vengeance on her husband's murderers and of saving the innocent babes which she was guarding.
After the failure of the Indians to break down the door, one of them seated himself upon a log, appre- hending no danger from the "white squaws" who, he knew, were the only defenders of the cabin. A ball sped from the rifle in the hands of Mrs. Cook, and with a loud yell the savage bounded into the air and fell dead.
The Indians, infuriated at the death of their com- rade, threatened, in broken English, the direst ven- geance on the inmates of the cabin. A half dozen of the yelling fiends instantly climbed to the roof of the cabin and kindled a fire upon the dry boards around the chimney. As the flames began to take effect the destruction of the cabin and the doom of the unfortu- nate inmates seemed certain.
But the self-possession and intrepidity of the brave women were equal to the occasion. While one stood in the loft the other handed her water with which she extinguished the fire. Again and again the roof was fired, and as often extinguished. When the water was exhausted, the dauntless pair held the flames at bay by breaking eggs upon them. The Indians, at length fatigued by the obstinacy and valor of the brave defenders, threw the body of their comrade into the creek find precipitately fled.
TEE BRAVERY OF MRS. BOZARTU.
97
The exploits of Mrs. Bozarth in defending her home and family against superior numbers, has scarcely been paralleled in ancient or modern history. Relying upon her firmness and courage, two or three families had gathered themselves for safety at her house, on the Pennsylvania border, in the spring of 1779. The forest swarmed with savages, who soon made their appearance near the stockade, severely wounding one of the only two men in the house. * The Indian who had shot him, springing over his prostrate body, engaged with the other white man in a struggle which ended in his discomfiture. A knife was wanting to dispatch the savage who lay writhing beneath his antagonist. Mrs. Bozarth seized an axe and with one blow clove the Indian's skull. Another entered and shot the white man dead. Mrs. Bozarth, with unflinching boldness, turned to this new foe and gave him several cuts with the axe, one of which laid bare his entrails. In response to his cries for help, his comrades, who had been killing some children out of doors, came rushing to his relief. The head of one of them was cut in twain by the axe of Mrs. Bozarth, and the others made a speedy retreat through the door. Rendered furious by the desperate resistance they had met, the Indians now beseiged the house, and for several days they employed all their arts to enter and slay the weak garrison. But all their efforts were futile. Mrs. Bozarth and her wounded companion emploj'ed themselves so vigorously and vigilantly that the enemy were completely baffled. At length a party of white men arrived, put the Indians to flight, and relieved Mrs. Bozarth from her perilous situation.
*Dod<3 ridge's Notes.
7
CHAPTER Y.
THE CAPTIVE SCOUTS:— THE GUARDIAN MOTHER OF THE
MOHAWK.
part that woman has taken in so many ways -A- and under so many conditions, in securing the ultimate results represented by our present status as a nation, is given too small a place in the general esti- mate of those who pen the record of civilization on the North American continent. This is no doubt partly due to her own distaste for notoriety. While man stands as a front figure in the temple of fame, and celebrates his own deeds with pen and voice, she takes her place in the background, content and happy so long as her father, or husband, or son, is conspicuous in the glory to which she has largely contributed. Thus it is that in the march of grand events the historian of the Re- public often passes by the woman's niche without dwelling upon its claims to our attention. But not- withstanding the self-chosen position of the weaker sex, their names and deeds are not all buried in obliv- ion. The filial, proud, and patriotic fondness of sons and daughters have preserved in their household tra- ditions the memory of brave and good mothers ; the antiquarian and the local historian, with loving zeal have wiped the dust from woman's urn, and traced anew the names and inscriptions which time has half effaced.
As we scan the pages of Woman's Record the roll
(98)
WOMAN AS A SENTINEL. 99
of honor lengthens, stretching far out like the line of Banquo's phantom-kings. Their names become im- pressed on our memory ; their acts dilate, and their whole lives grow brighter the more closely we study them.
Among the many duties which from necessity or choice were assigned to woman in the remote and isolated settlements, was that of standing guard. She was par excellence the vigilant member of the house- hold, a sentinel ever on the alert and ready to give alarm at the first note of danger. The pioneers were the pickets of the army of civilization: woman was a picket of pickets, a sentinel of sentinels, watch- ful of danger and the quickest to apprehend it. She was always a guardian, and not seldom the preserver of her home and of the settlement. Such duties as these, faithfully performed, contribute perhaps to the success of a campaign more even than great battles. As soon as the front line or picket-force of the pioneers was fairly established in the enemies' country, the work was more than half done, and the whole army — center, right, and left wings — could move forward with little danger, though labor, hard and continuous, was still required. In successive regions the same sentinel and picket duties were performed ; in New England and on the Atlantic coast first ; then in the interior districts, in the middle States ; and already, a hundred years ago, the flying skirmish-line had crossed the great Appalachian range, and was fording the rivers of the western basin. On the march, on the halt, in the camp, that is, in the permanent settle- ment, woman was a sentinel keeping perpetual guard over the household treasures.
100 THE CAPTIVE SCOUTS.
What materials for romance — for epic and tragic poetry — in the lives of those pioneer women ! The lonely cabin in the depths of the forest ; the father away ; the mother rocking her babe to sleep ; the howling of the wolves ; the storm beating on the roof; the crafty savage lying in ambush ; the war-whoop in the night ; the attack and the repulse ; or perchance the massacre and the cruel captivity ; and all the thousand lights and shadows of border life !
During the French and Indian war, and while the northern border was being desolated by savage raids, a hardy settler named Mack, with his wife and two children, occupied a cabin and clearing in the forest a few miles south of Lake Pleasant, in Hamilton County, New York. For some months after the breaking out of the war no molestation was offered to Mr. Mack or his family, either owing to the sequestered situation in which they lived, or from the richer opportunities for plunder offered in the valleys some distance below the lonely and rock-encompassed forest where the Mack homestead lay. Encouraged by this immunity from attack, and placing unbounded confidence in the vigilance and courage of his wife, Mr. Mack, when summoned to accompany Sir William Johnson's forces on one of their military expeditions, obeyed the call and prepared to join his fellow-borderers. Mrs. Mack cheerfully and patriotically acquiesced in her husband's resolution, assuring him that during his absence she would protect their home and children or perish in the attempt.
The cabin was a fortress, such as befitted the exposed situation in which it lay, and was supplied by the provident husband before his departure with provisions
MRS. MACK'S PLEDGE.
•and ammunition sufficient to stand a siege : it was fur- nished on each side with a loop-hole through which a gun could be fixed or a reconnoisance made in every direction.
Yielding to the dictates of prudence and desirous of redeeming the pledge which she had made to her hus- band, Mrs. Mack stayed within doors most of the time for some days after her husband had bade her farewell, keeping a vigilant look-out on every side for the prowling foe. No sound but the voices of nature dis- turbed the stillness of the forest. Everything around spoke of peace and repose. Lulled into security by these appearances and urged by the necessities of her out-door duties, she gradually relaxed her vigilance until she pursued the labors of the farm with as much regularity as she would have done if her husband had been at home.
One day while plucking ears of corn for roasting, she caught a glimpse of a moccasin and a brawny limb fringed with leggins, projecting behind a clump of bushes not twenty paces from her. Repressing the shriek which rose to her lips, she quietly and leisurely strolled back to the house with her basket of ears. Once she thought she heard the stealthy tread of the savage behind her and was about to break into a run ; but a moment's reflection convinced her that her fears were groundless. She steadily pursued her course till she reached the cabin. With a vast weight of fear taken from her mind she now turned and cast a rapid glance towards the bushes where the foe lay in ambush ; nothing was visible there, and having closed and barred the door she made a reconnoisance from each of the
I 02 THE CAPTIVE SCOUTS.
four loop-holes of her fortress, but saw nothing to alarm her.
It seemed to her probable that it was only a single prowling savage who was seeking an opportunity to plunder the cabin. Accordingly with a loaded gun by her side, she sat down before the loop-hole which commanded the spot where the savage lay concealed and watched for further developments. For two hours all was still and she began to imagine that he had left his hiding place, when she noticed a rustling in the bushes and soon after descried the savage crawling on his belly and disappearing in the cornfield. Night found her still watching, and as soon as her children had been lulled to sleep, she returned to her post and straining her eyes into the darkness, listened for the faintest sound that might give note of the approach of the enemy. It was near midnight when overcome with fatigue she leaned against the log wall and fell asleep with her gun in her hand.
She was conscious in her slumbers of some mesmeric power exerting an influence upon her, and awakening with a start saw for an instant by the faint light, a pair of snaky eyes looking directly into hers through the loop-hole. They were gone before she was fairly awake, and she tried to convince herself that she had been dreaming. Not a sound was audible, and after taking an observation from each of the loop-holes she became persuaded that the fierce eyes that seemed to have been watching her was the figment of a brain disturbed by anxiety and vigils.
Once more sleep overcame her and again she was awakened by a rattling sound followed by heavy breathing. The noise seemed to proceed from the
A NIGHT OF TERROR. 103
chimney to which she had scarcely began to direct her attention, when a large body fell with a thud into the ashes of the fire-place, and a deep guttural "ugh" was uttered by an Indian who rose and peered around the room.
The first flickering light which follows the black- ness of midnight, gave him a glimpse of the heroic matron who stood with her piece cocked and leveled directly at his breast. Brandishing his tomahawk he rushed towards her yelling so as to disconcert her aim. The brave woman with unshaken nerves pulled the trigger, and the savage fell back with a screech, dead upon the floor. Almost simultaneously with the re- port of the gun, a triumphant ^warwhoop was sounded outside the cabin, and peering through the aperture in the direction from which it proceeded she saw three savages rushing toward the door. Rapidly loading her piece she took her position at the loop-hole that commanded the entrance to the cabin, and taking aim, shot one savage dead, the ball passing completely through his body and wounding another who stood in range. The third made a precipitate retreat, leaving his wounded comrade who crawled into the cornfield and there died.
After the occurrence of these events we may well suppose that the life of Mrs. Mack was one of constant vigilance. For some days and nights she stood senti- nel over her little ones, and then in her dread lest the Indians should return and take vengeance upon her and her children for the slaughter of their compan- ions, she concluded the wisest course would be to take refuge in the nearest fort thirty miles distant. Accord- ingly the following week she made all her preparations
104 THE CAPTIVE SCOUTS.
and carrying her gun started for the fort with her children.
Before they had proceeded a mile on their course she had the misfortune to drop her powder-horn in a stream : this compelled her to return to the cabin for ammunition. Hiding her children in a dense copse and telling them to preserve silence during her ab- sence, she hastened back, filled her powder-horn and returned rapidly upon her trail.
But what was her agony on discovering that her children were missing from the place where she left them! A brief scrutiny of the ground showed her the tracks of moccasins, and following them she soon ascertained that her children had been carried away by two Indians. Like the tigress robbed of her young, she followed the trail swiftly but cautiously and soon came up with the savages, whose speed had been re- tarded by the children. Stealing behind them she shot one of them and clubbing her gun rushed at the other with such fierceness that he turned and fled.
Pursuing her way to the fort she met her husband returning home from the war. The family then re- traced their steps and reached their home, the scene of Mrs. Mack's heroic exploit.
It was during their captivities that women often learned the arts and practiced the perilous profes- sion of a scout. Their Indian captors were some- times the first to suffer from the knowledge which they themselves had taught their captive pupils. In this rugged school of Indian life was nurtured a brave girl of New England parentage, who acted a conspicuous part in protecting an infant settlement in Ohio. * In the year 1790, the block-house and stockade
*Finley's Autobiography.
ASSEMBLING OF THE HOSTILES.
above the mouth of the Hockhocking river in Ohio, was a refuge and rallying point for the hardy fron- tiersmen of that region. The valley of the Hock- hocking was preeminent for the richness and lux- uriance of nature's gifts, and had been from time immemorial the seat of powerful and warlike tribes of Indians, which still clung with, desperate tenacity to a region which had been for so many years the chosen and beloved abode of the red man.
The little garrison, always on the alert, received intelligence early in the autumn that the Indian tribes were gathering in the north for the purpose of strik- ing a final and fatal blow on this or some other im- portant out-post. A council was immediately held by the garrison, and two scouts were dispatched up the Hockhocking, in order to ascertain the strength of the foe and the probable point of attack.
The scouts set out one balmy day in the Indian sum- mer, and threading the dense growth of plum and hazel bushes which skirted the prairie, stealthily climbed the eastern declivity of Mount Pleasant, and cast their eyes over the extensive prairie-country which stretches from that point far to the north. Every movement that took place upon their field of vision was carefully noted day by day. The prairie was the campus mar- tins where an army of braves had assembled, and were playing their rugged games and performing their war- like evolutions. Every day new accessions of warriors were hailed by those -already assembled, with terrific war-whoops, which, striking the face of Mount Pleas- ant, were echoed and re-echoed till it seemed as if a myriad of yelling demons were celebrating the orgies of the infernal pit.
106 THE CAPTIVE SCOUTS.
To the hardy scouts these well-known yells, so terri- ble to softer ears, were only martial music which woke a keener watchfulness and strung their iron nerves to a stronger tension. Though well aware of the ferocity of the savages, they were too well prac- ticed in the crafty and subtle arts of their profession to allow themselves to be circumvented by their wily foes.
On several occasions small parties of warriors left the prairies and ascended the mount. At these times the scouts hid themselves in fissures of the rocks or beneath sere leaves by the side of some prostrate tree, leaving their hiding places when the unwelcome vis- itors had taken their departure. Their food was jerked beef and cold corn-bread, with which their knapsacks had been well stored. Fire they dared not kindle for the smoke would have brought a hundred savages on their trail. Their drink was the rain-water remaining in the excavations in the rocks. In a few days this water was exhausted, and a new supply had to be obtained, as their observations were still incom- plete. McClelland, the elder of the two, accordingly set out alone in search of a spring or brook from which they could replenish their canteens. Cau- tiously descending the mount to the prairie, and skirt- ing the hills on the north, keeping as much as possible within the hazel-thickets, he reached at length a foun- tain of cool limpid water near the banks of the Hock- hocking river. Filling the canteens he rejoined his companion.
The daily duty of visiting the spring and obtaining a fresh supply, was after this performed alternately by the scouts. On one of these diurnal visits, after
A SQUAW'S WAR-WHOOP.
White had filled his canteens, he sat watching the limpid stream that came gurgling out of the bosom of the earth. The light sound of footsteps caught his practiced ear, and turning round he saw two squaws within a few feet of him. The elder squaw at the same moment spying White, started back and gave a far-reaching war-whoop. He comprehended at once his perilous situation. If the alarm should reach the camp, he and his companion must inevitably perish.
A noiseless death inflicted upon the squaws, and in such a manner as to leave no trace behind, was the only sure course which the instinct of self-preservation suggested. With men of his profession action follows thought as the bolt follows the flash. Springing upon his victims with the rapidity and power of a tiger, he grasped the throat of each and sprang into the Hock- hocking river. The head of the elder squaw he easily thrust under the .water, and kept it in that position ; but the younger woman powerfully resisted his efforts to submerge her. During the brief struggle she ad- dressed him to his amazement in the English language, though in inarticulate sounds. Relaxing his hold she informed him that she had been made a prisoner ten years before, on Grave Creek Flats, that the Indians in her presence had butchered her mother and two sisters, and that an only brother had been captured with her, but had succeeded on the second night in making his escape, since which time she had never heard of him.
During this narrative, White, unobserved by the girl, had released his grip on the throat of the squaw, whose corpse floated slowly down stream, and, direct- ing the girl to follow him, he pushed for the Mount
TUE CAPTIVE SCOUTS.
with the greatest speed and energy. Scarcely had they proceeded two hundred yards from the spring before an Indian alarm-cry was heard some distance down the river. A party of warriors returning from a hunt had seen the body of the squaw as it floated past. White and the girl succeeded in reaching the Mount where they found McClelland fully awake to the danger they were in. From his eyrie he had seen parties of warriors strike off in every direction on hearing the shrill note of alarm first sounded by the squaw, and before "White and the girl had joined him, twenty warriors had already gained the eastern accliv- ity of the Mount and were cautiously ascending, keep- ing their bodies under cover. The scouts soon caught glimpses of their swarthy faces as they glided from tree to tree and from rock to rock, until the hiding place of the luckless two was surrounded and all hope of escape was cut off.
The scouts calmly prepared to sell their lives as dearly as they could, but strongly advised the girl to return to the Indians and tell them that she had been captured by scouts. This she refused to do, saying that death among her own people was preferable to captivity such as she had been enduring. " Give me a rifle," she continued," and I will show you that I can fight as well as die ! On this spot will I remain, and here my bones shall bleach with yours ! Should either of you escape, you will carry the tidings of my fate to my remaining relatives."
All remonstrances with the brave girl proving use- less, the two scouts prepared for a vigorous defense. The attack by the Indians commenced in front, where from the nature of the ground they were obliged to
THE MYSTERIOUS SHOT.
advance in single file, sheltering themselves as they best could, behind rocks and trees. Availing them- selves of the slightest exposure of the warriors' bodies, the scouts made every shot tell upon them, and suc- ceeded for a time in keeping them in check.
The Indians meanwhile made for an isolated rock on the southern hillside, and having reached it, opened fire upon the scouts at point blank range. The situa- tion of the defenders was now almost hopeless; but the brave never despair. They calmly watched the movements of the warriors and calculated the few chances of escape which remained. McClelland saw a tall, swarthy figure preparing to spring from cover to a point from which their position would be com- pletely commanded. He felt that much depended >upon one lucky shot, and although but a single inch of the warrior's body was exposed, and at a distance of one hundred yards, yet he resolved to take the risk of a shot at this diminutive target. Coolly raising the rifle to his eye, and shading the sight with his hand, he threw a bead so accurately that he felt perfectly confident that his bullet would pierce the mark ; but when the hammer fell, instead of striking fire, it crushed his flint into a hundred fragments. Rapidly, but with the utmost composure, he proceeded to adjust a new flint, casting meantime many a furtive glance towards the critical point. Before his task was com- pleted he saw the warrior strain every muscle for the leap, and, with the agility of a deer, bound towards the rock ; but instead of reaching it, he fell between and rolled fifty feet down hill. He had received a death-shot from some unseen hand, and the mournful
THE CAPTIVE SCOUTS.
whoops of the savages gave token that they had lost a favorite warrior.
The advantage thus gained was only momentary. The Indians slowly advanced in front and on the flank, and only the incessant fire of the scouts sufficed to keep them in check. A second savage attempted to gain the eminence which commanded the position where the scouts were posted, but just as he was about to attain his object, McClelland saw him turn a summerset, and, with a frightful yell, fall clown the hill, a corpse. The mysterious agent had again inter- posed in their behalf. The sun was now disappearing behind the western hills, and the savages, dismayed by their losses, retired a short distance for the purpose of devising some new mode of attack. This respite was most welcome to the scouts, whose nerves had been kept in a state of severe tension for several hours. Now for the first time they missed the girl and sup- posed that she had either fled to her old captors or had been killed in the fight. Their doubts were soon dispelled by the appearance of the girl herself, advancing toward them from among the rocks, with a rifle in her hand.
During the heat of the fight she had seen a warrior fall, who had advanced some fifty yards in front of the main body; she at once resolved to possess herself of his rifle, and crouching in the undergrowth, she crept to the spot and succeeded in her enterprise, being all the time exposed to the cross-fire of the defenders and assailants; her practiced eye had early noticed the fatal rock, and hers was the mysterious hand by which the two warriors had fallen — the last being the most wary, untiring, and bloodthirsty brave of the
NEW DANGERS.
Shawanese tribe. He it was who ten years before had scalped the family of the girl, and had led her into captivity. The clouds which had been gathering now shrouded the whole heavens, and, night coming on, the darkness was intense. It was feared that in the contemplated retreat they might lose their way or accidentally fall in with the enemy, which latter contin- gency was highly probable, if not almost inevitable. After consultation it was agreed that the girl, from her intimate knowledge of the localities, should lead the way, a few paces in advance.
Another advantage might be derived from this arrangement, for in case they should fall in with an outpost of savages, the girl's knowledge of the Indian tongue might enable them to deceive and elude the sentinel. The event proved the wisdom of the plan, for they had scarcely descended an hundred feet from their eyrie when a low "hush ! " from the girl warned them of the presence of danger. The scouts threw themselves silently upon the earth, where by previous agreement they were to remain until another signal was given them by the girl, who glided away in the darkness. Her absence for more than a quarter of an hour had already begun to excite serious apprehen- sions for her safety, when she reappeared and told them that she had succeeded in removing two senti- nels who were directly in their route, to a point one hundred feet distant.
The descent was noiselessly resumed, the scouts fol- lowing their brave guide for half a mile in profound silence, when the barking of a small dog, almost at their feet, apprised them of a new danger. The click of the scout's rifle caught the ear of the girl,
THE GUARDIAN MOTHER OF THE MOHAWK.
who quickly approached and warned them against making the least noise, as they were now in the midst of an Indian village, and their lives depended upon their implicitly following her instructions.
A moment afterwards the head of a squaw was seen at an opening in a wigwam, and she was heard to accost the girl, who replied in the Indian language, and with- out stopping pressed forward. At length she paused and assured the scouts that the village was cleared, and that they were now in safety. She had been well aware that every pass leading out through the prairies was guarded, and resolved to push boldly through the midst of the village as the safest route.
After three days rapid marching and great suffering from hunger, the trio succeeded in reaching the block- house in safety. The Indians finding that the scouts had escaped, and that their plan of attack was discovered, soon after withdrew to their homes ; the girl, who by her courage, fortitude, and skill, thus preserved the little settlement from destruction, proved to be a sister of Neil Washburn, one of the most renowned scouts upon the frontier.
The situation of the earlier pioneers who settled on the outskirts of the Mississippi basin was one of pe- culiar peril. In their isolation and weakness, they were able to keep their position rather by incessant watchfulness, than by actual combat. How to extri- cate themselves from the snares and escape from the dangers that beset them, was the constant study of their lives. The knowledge and the arts of a scout were a part of the education, therefore, of the women as well as of the men.
Massy Herbeson and her husband were of those
THE CAPTIVE SCOUT.
bold pioneers who crossed the Alleghany Mountains and joined the picket-line, whose lives were spent in reconnoitering and watching the motions of the savage tribes which roamed over Western Pennsylvania. * They lived near Reed's block-house, about twenty- five miles from Pittsburgh. Mr. Herbeson, being one of the spies, was from home ; two of the scouts had lodged with her that night, but had left her house about sunrise, in order to go to the block-house, and had left the door standing wide open. Shortly after the two scouts went away, a number of Indians came into the house, and drew her out of bed, by the feet.
The Indians then scrambled to secure the articles in the house. Whilst they were at this work, Mrs. Her- beson went out of the house, and hallooed to the peo- ple in the block-house. One of the Indians then ran up and stopped her mouth, another threatened her with his tomahawk, and a third seized the tomahawk as it was about to fall upon her head, and called her his squaw.
Hurried rapidly away by her captor, she remembered the lessons taught by her husband, the scout, and marked the trail as she went on. Now breaking a bush, now dropping a piece of her dress, and when she crossed a stream, slyly turning over a stone, she hoped thus to guide her husband in pursuit or enable herself to find her way back to the block-house. The vigilance of the Indians was relaxed by the nonchal- ance with which she bore her captivity, and in a few days she succeeded in effecting her escape and pursu- ing the trail which she had marked, reached home after a weary march of two days and nights, during which it rained incessantly.
*Massey Herbeson's Deposition. 8
THE GUARDIAN MOTHER OF THE MOIIA WK.
These and countless other instances illustrate the watchfulness and courage of woman when exposed to dangers of such a description. In the west especially, the distances to be traversed, the sparseness of the population, and the perils to which settlers are exposed, render the profession of a scout a useful and necessary one, and woman's versatility of character enables her, when necessary, to practice the art.
The traveler of to-day, passing up the Mohawk Val- ley will be struck by its fertility, beauty, and above all by the air of quiet repose that broods over it. One hun- dred years ago how different the scene ! It was then the battle-ground where the fierce Indian waged an incessant warfare with the frontier settlers. Every rood of that fair valley was trodden by the wily and sanguinary foe. The people who then inhabited that region were a mixture of adventurous New England- ers and of Dutch, with a preponderance of the latter, who were a brave, steadfast, hardy race ; the women vieing with the men in deeds of heroism and devo- tion.
Womanly tact and presence of mind was often as serviceable amid those scenes of danger and carnage, as valor in combat ; and when woman combined these traits of her sex with courage and firmness she became the "guardian angel" of the settlement.
Such preeminently was the title deserved by Mrs. Van Alstine, the " Patriot mother of the Mohawk Val- ley."
All the early part of her long life, (for she counted nearly a century of years before she died,) was passed on the New York frontier, during the most trying period of our colonial history. Here, dwelling in the
A FEMINIZE STRATEGY.
115
midst of alarms, she reared her fifteen children ; here more than once she saved the lives of her husband and family, and by her ready wit, her daring courage, and her open handed generosity shielded the settlement from harm.
Born near Canajoharie, about the year 1733, and married to Martin J. Van Alstine, at the age of eigh- teen, she settled with her husband in the valley of the Mohawk, where the newly wedded pair occupied the Van Alstine family mansion.
In the month of August, 1780, an army of Indians and Tories, led on by Brant, rushed into the Mohawk Valley, devastated several settlements, and killed many of the inhabitants ; during the two following months, Sir John Johnson made a descent and finished the work which Brant had begun. The two almost com- pletely destroyed the settlements throughout the val- ley. It was during those trying times that Mrs. Van Alstine performed a portion of her exploits.
During these three months, and while the hostile forces were making their headquarters at Johnstown, the neighborhood in which Mrs. Van Alstine lived en- joyed a remarkable immunity from attack, although in a state of continual alarm. Intelligence at length came that the enemy, having ravaged the surrounding coun- try, was about to fall upon the little settlement, and the inhabitants, for the most part women and children, were almost beside themselves with terror.
Mrs. Van Alstine's coolness and intrepidity, in this critical hour, were quickly displayed. Calling her neighbors together, she tried to relieve their fears and urged them to remove with their effects to an island belonging to her husband, near the opposite side of the
THE GUARDIAN MOTHER OF THE MOHAWK.
river, believing that the savages would either not dis- cover their place of refuge or would be in too great haste to cross the river and attack them.
Her suggestion was speedily adopted, and in a few hours the seven families in the neighborhood were re- moved to their asylum, together with a store of pro- visions and other articles essential to their comfort. Mrs. Van Alstine was the last to cross and assisted to place out of re.ach of the enemy, the boat in which the passage had been made. An hour after they had been all snugly bestowed in their bushy retreat, the war-whoop was heard and the Indians made their ap- pearance. Gazing from their hiding place the unf or- nate women and children soon saw their loved homes in flames, Van Alstine's house alone being spared, ow- ing to the friendship borne the owner fry Sir John Johnson.
The voices and even the words of the Indian raid- ers could be distinctly heard on the island,, and as Mrs. Van Alstine gazed at the mansion untouched by the flames she rejoiced that she would now be able to give shelter to the homeless families by whom she was surrounded. In the following year the Van Alstine mansion was pillaged by the Indians, and although the house was completely stripped of furniture and provisions and clothing, none of the family were killed or carried away as prisoners.
The Indians came upon them by surprise, entered the house without ceremony, and plundered and de- stroyed everything in their way. " Mrs. Van Alstine saw her most valued articles, brought from Holland, broken one after another, till the house was strewed with fragments. As they passed a large mirror with-
A DARING ENTERPRISE.
out demolishing it, she hoped it might be saved ; but presently two of the savages led in a colt from the etables and the glass being laid in the hall, compelled the animal to walk over it. The beds which they could not carry away they ripped open, shaking out the feathers and taking the ticks with them. They also took all the clothing. One young Indian, attracted by the brilliancy of a pair of inlaid buckles on the shoes of the aged grandmother seated in the corner, rudely snatched them from her feet, tore off the buck- les, and flung the shoes in her face. Another took her shawl from her neck, threatening to kill her if re- sistance was offered."
The eldest daughter, seeing a young savage carry- ing off a basket containing a hat and cap her father had brought her from Philadelphia, and which she highly prized, followed him, snatched her basket, and after a struggle succeeded in pushing him down. She then fled to a pile of hemp and hid herself, throwing the basket into it as far as she could. The other Indi- ans gathered round, and as the young girl rose clapped their hands, shouting " Brave girl," while he skulked away to escape their derision. During the struggle itrs. Van Alstine had called to her daughter to give up the contest; but she insisted, that her basket should not be taken.
Winter coming on, the family suffered severely from the want of bedding, woolen clothes, cooking utensils, and numerous other articles which had been taken from them. Mrs. Van Alstine's arduous and constant labors could do but little toward providing for so many desti- tute persons. Their neighbors were in no condition to help them ; the roads were almost impassable be-
THE GUARDIAN MOTHER OF THE MOHAWK.
sides being infested with the Indians, and all their best horses had been driven away.
This situation appealing continually to Mrs. Van Alstine as a wife and a mother, so wrought upon her as to induce her to propose to her husband to organ- ize an expedition, and attempt to recover their prop- erty from the Indian forts eighteen or twenty miles distant, where it had been carried. But the plan seemed scarcely feasible at the time, and was therefore abandoned.
The cold soon became intense and their necessities more desperate than ever. Mrs. Van Alstine, incapable longer of witnessing the sufferings of those dependent upon her, boldly determined to go herself to the In- dian country and bring back the property. Firm against all the entreaties of her husband and children who sought to move her from her purpose, she left home with a horse and sleigh accompanied by her son, a youth of sixteen.
Pushing on over wretched roads and through the deep snow she arrived at her destination at a time when the Indians were all absent on a hunting excur- sion, the women and children only being left at home. On entering the principal house where she supposed the moslb valuable articles were, she was met by an old squaw in charge of the .place and asked what she wanted. "Food," she replied; the squaw sullenly commenced preparing a meal and in doing so brought out a number of utensils that Mrs. Van Alstine recog- nized as her own. While the squaw's back was turned she took possession of the articles and removed them to her sleigh. "When the custodian of the plunder discovered that it was being reclaimed, she was about
A BRAVE EXPLOIT.
119
to interfere forcibly with the bold intruders and take the property into her possession. But Mrs. Van Als- tine showed her a paper which she averred was an or- der signed by " Yankee Peter," a man of great influ- ence among the savages, and succeeded in convincing the squaw that the property was removed by his au. thority.
She next proceeded to the stables and cut the halters of the horses belonging to her husband: the animals recognized their mistress with loud neighs and bounded homeward at full speed. The mother and son then • drove rapidly back to their house. Beaching home late in the evening they passed a sleepless night, dreading an instant pursuit and a night attack from the in- furiated savages.
The Indians came soon after daylight in full war- costume armed with rifles and tomahawks. Mrs. Van Alstine begged her husband not to show himself but to leave the matter in her hands. The Indians took their course to the stables when they were met by the daring woman alone and asked what they wanted. " Our horses," replied the marauder. " They are ours/' she said boldly, " and we mean to keep them."
The chief approached in a threatening manner, and drawing her away pulled out the plug that fastened the door of the stable, but she immediately snatched it from his hand, and pushing him away resumed her position in front of the door. Presenting his rifle, he threatened her with instant death if she did not im- mediately move. Opening her neck-handkerchief she told him to shoot if he dared.
The Indians, cowed by her daring, or fearing pun- ishment from their allies in case they killed her, after
THE GUARDIAN MOTHER OF THE MOHAWK.
some hesitation retired from the premises. They af- terwards related their adventure to one of the settlers, and said that were fifty such women as she in the settlement, the Indians never would have molested the inhabitants of the Mohawk Valley.
On many subsequent occasions Mrs. Van Alstine exhibited the heroic qualities of her nature. Twice by her prudence, courage, and address, she saved the lives of her husband and family. Her influence in settling difficulties with the savages was acknowledged throughout the region, and but for her it may well be doubted whether the little settlement in which she lived would have been able to sustain itself, surrounded as it was by deadly foes.
Her influence was felt in another and higher way. She was a Christian woman, and her husband's house was opened for religious worship every Sunday when the weather would permit. She wras able to persuade many of the Indians to attend, and as she had ac- quired their language she was wont to interpret to them the word of God and what was said by the min- ister. Many times their rude hearts were touched, and the tears rolled down their swarthy faces, while she dwelt on the wondrous story of our Redeemer's life and death, and explained how the white man and the red man alike could be saved by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. In after years the savages blessed her as their benefactress.
Nearly a hundred summers have passed since the occurrence of the events we have been describing. The war-whoop of the cruel Mohawk sounds no more from the forest-ambush, nor in the clearing ; the dews and rains have washed away the red stains on the
PATRIOT WOMEN OF THE REVOLUTION.
soft sward, and green and peaceful in the sunshine lies the turf by the beautiful river and oji the grave where the patriot mother is sleeping ; but still in the mem- ory of the sons and daughters of the region she once blessed, lives the courage, the firmness, and the good- ness of Nancy Van Alstine, the guardian of the Mo- hawk Valley.
CHAPTEE VI.
PATEIOT WOMEN OF THE EEVOLUTION.
DURING the dangers and trials of early colonial life, the daughters learned from the example of their mothers the lesson and the power of self-trust ; they learned to endure what their parents endured, to face the perils which environed the settlement or the household, and grew up to woman's estate versed in that knowledge and experience of border-life which well fitted them to repeat, in wilder and more perilous scenes, the heroism of their forefathers and fore- mothers.
The daughters again taught these, and added other lessons, to their children. The grand-daughters of the first emigrants seemed to possess — with the traits and virtues of woman — the wisdom, courage, and strength of their fathers and brothers. Each succeeding gen- eration seemed to acquire new features of character, added force, and stronger virtues, and thus woman became a heroine endowed with manly vigor and
PATRIOT WOMEN OF THE HE VOLUTION.
capable of performing deeds of masculine courage and resolution.
The generation of daughters, fourth in descent from the first settlers, lived during the stormy days of the Revolution ; and right worthily did they perform their part on that stage of action, and prove by their deeds that they were lineal descendants of the first mothers of the Republic.
If we were to analyze the characters and motives of the women who lived and acted in that great crisis of our history, we should better understand and appreciate, in its nature, height, and breadth, their singular patriotism. Untainted by selfish ambition, undefiled by greed of gain, and purged of the earthy dross that too often alloys the lofty impulses of soldiers and statesmen in the path of fame, hers was a love of country that looked not for gain or glory, imperiled much, and was locked fast in a bitter com- panionship with anxiety, fear, and grief. Her heroism was not sordid or secular. Dearly did she prize the blessings of peace — household calm, the security of her loved ones, and the comforts and amenities of an unbroken social status. But she cheerfully surren- dered them all at the call of her country in its hour of peril. For one hundred and fifty years she had toiled and suffered. She had won the right to repose, but this was not yet to be hers. A new ordeal await- ed her which would test her courage and fortitude still more keenly, especially if her lot was cast in the frontier settlements.
It is easy to see that border-life in —
" the times that tried men's souls " —
UNSELFISH PATRIOTISM.
was surrounded by double dangers and hardships. Indeed it is difficult to conceive of a more trying situ- ation than that of woman in the outlying settlements in the days of the Revolution. Left alone by her natural protector, who had gone far away to fight the battles of his country; exposed to attacks from the red men who lurked in the forest, or from the British soldiers marching up from the coast ; wearied by the labors of the farm and the household ; harassed by the cares of motherhood ; for long years in the midst of dangers, privations, and trials ; with serene patience, and with dauntless courage, she went on nobly doing her part in the great work which resulted in the glorious achievement of American Independence.
The wonder is that the American wives and mothers of that day did not sink under their burdens. Their patient endurance of accumulated hardships did not arise from a slavish servility or from insensibility to their rights and comforts. They justly appreciated the situation and nobly encountered the difficulties which could not be avoided.
Possessing all the affections of the wife, the tender- ness of the mother, and the sympathies of the woman, their tears flowed freely for others' griefs, while they bore their own wdth a fortitude that none but a woman could display. In the absence of the father the entire education devolved upon the mother, who, in the midst of the labors and sorrows of her isolated exist- ence, taught them to read, and instructed them in the principles of Christianity.
The countless roll of these unnamed heroines is inscribed in the Book of the Most Just. Their record is on high. But the names and deeds of not a few
124 PATRIOT WOMEN OF THE REVOLUTION.
are preserved as a bright example to the men and women of to-day.
While the husbands and fathers of Wyoming were on public duty the wives and daughters cheerfully assumed a large portion of the labor which women could perform. They assisted to plant, to make hay, to husk, and to garner the corn. The settlement was mainly dependent on its own resources for powder. To meet the necessary demand, the women boiled together a ley of wood-ashes, to which they added the earth scraped from beneath the floors of their house, and thus manufactured saltpeter, one of the most essential ingredients. Charcoal and sulphur were then mingled with it, and powder was produced "for the public defense."
One of the married sisters of Silas Deane, that eminent Revolutionary patriot, while her husband, Captain Ebenezer Smith, was with the army, was left alone with six small children in a hamlet among the hills of Berkshire, Massachusetts. Finding it difficult to eke out a subsistence from the sterile soil of their farm, and being quick and ingenious with her needle, she turned tailoress and made garments for her little ones, and for all the families in that region. She wrote her husband, telling him to be of good cheer, and not to give himself anxiety on his wife's or his children's account, adding that as long as her fingers could hold a needle, food should be provided for them. "Fight on for your country," she said; " God will give us deliverance."
Each section of the country had its special burdens, trials, and dangers. The populous districts bore the first brunt of the enemy's attack ; the thinly settled
A QUARTETTE OF HEROINES.
regions were drained of men, and the women were left in a pitiable condition of weakness and isolation. This was largely the condition of Massachusetts and Connecticut, where nearly every family sent some, if not all, of its men to the war. In the South the patriots were forced to practice continual vigilance in consequence of the divided feeling upon the question of the propriety of separation from the mother-coun- try. New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania were battle grounds, and here, perhaps more fully than elsewhere, were experienced war's woes and desolation. But in every State throughout the thirteen colonies, and in every town, hamlet, or household, where there were patriot wives, mothers, or daughters, woman's claims to moral greatness in that crisis were gloriously vindicated.
If we were to search for traits and incidents to illustrate the whole circle of both the stronger and the gentler virtues, we might find them in woman's record during the American Revolution.
In scenes of carnage and death women not seldom displayed a cool courage which made them peers of the bravest soldiers who bore flint-locks at Bunker Hill or Trenton. Of such bravery, the following quartette of heroines will serve as examples.
During the attack on Fort Washington, Mrs. Mar- garet Corbin, seeing her husband, who was an artillery man, fall, unhesitatingly took his place and heroically performed his duties. Her services were appreciated by the officers of the army, and honorably noticed by Congress. This body passed the following reso- lution in July, 1779:
126 PATRIOT WOMEN OF THE REVOLUTION.
Resolved, That Margaret Corbin, wounded and disabled at the battle of Fort Washington while she heroically filled the post of her husband, who was killed by her side, serving a piece of artillery, do receive durin^ her natural life, or continuance of said disability, one half the monthly pay drawn by a soldier in the service of these States ; and that she now receive out of public store one suit of clothes, or value thereof in money.
Soon after the commencement of the Revolutionary War, the family of a Dr. Charming, being in England, removed to France, and shortly afterwards sailed for the United States. The vessel, said to be stout and well armed, was attacked on the voyage by a priva- teer, and a fierce engagement ensued. During its continuance, Mrs. Channing stood on the deck, exhort- ing the crew not to give up, encouraging them with words of cheer, handing them cartridges and aiding such of them as were disabled by wounds. When at length the colors of the vessel were struck, she seized her husband's pistol and side arms and flung them into the sea, declaring that she would prefer death to the spectacle of their surrender into the hands of the foe.
At the siege of one of the forts of the Mohawk Val- ley, it is related by the author of the " Border Wars of the American Revolution," that an interesting young woman, whose name yet lives in story among her own mountains, perceiving, as she thought, symptoms of fear in a soldier who had been ordered to fetch water from a well, without the ranks and within range of the enemy's fire, snatched the bucket from his hands and ran to the well herself. Without changing color or giving the slightest evidence of fear, she drew and brought back bucket after bucket to the thirsty sol- diers, and providentially escaped without injury.
Four or five miles north of the village of Herki-
ALL FOR THEIR COUNTRY.
mer, N. Y., stood the block-house of John Christian Shell, whose wife acted a heroic part when attacked by the Tories, in 1781. From two o'clock in the after- noon until twilight, the besieged kept up an almost incessant firing, Mrs. Shell loading the guns for her husband and older sons to discharge. During the siege, McDonald, the leader of the Tories, attempted to force the door with a crow-bar, and was shot in the leg, seized by Shell, and drawn within doors. Exas- perated by this bold feat, the enemy soon attempted to carry the fortress by assault ; five of them leaping upon the walls and thrusting their guns through the loop-holes. At that moment the cool courageous wo- man, Mrs. Shell, seized an axe, smote the barrels, bent and spoiled them. The enemy soon after shouldered their guns, crooked barrels and all, and quickly buried themselves in the dense forest.
Heroism in those days was confined to no section of our country. Moll Pitcher, at Monmouth, battle- stained, avenged her husband by the death-dealing cannon which she loaded and aimed. Cornelia Beek- man, at Croton, faced down the armed Tories with the fire of her eye ; Angelica Vrooman, at Schoharie, moulded bullets amid the war and carnage of battle, while Mary Hagidorn defended the fort with a pike ; Mrs. Fitzhugh, of Maryland, accompanied her blind and decrepit husband when taken prisoner at mid- night and carried into the enemy's lines.
Dicey Langston, of South Carolina, also showed a "soul of love and bravery." Living in a frontier set- tlement, and in the midst of Tories, and being patrioti- cally inquisitive, she often learned by accident, or discovered by strategy, the plottings so common in
128 PATRIOT WOMEN OF THE REVOLUTION.
those days against the Whigs. Such intelligence she was accustomed to communicate to the friends of free- dom on the opposite side of the Ennosee river.
Learning one time that a band of loyalists — known in those days as the " Bloody Scouts " —were about to fall upon the "Elder Settlement," a place where a brother of hers and other friends were residing, she resolved to warn them of their danger. To do this she must hazard her own life. Kegardless of danger she started off alone, in the darkness of the night; traveled several miles through the woods, over marshes, across creeks, through a country where foot-logs and bridges were then unknown ; came to the Tyger, a rapid and deep stream, into which she plunged and waded till the water was up to her neck. She then became bewildered, and zigzagged the channel for some time, finally reaching the opposite shore, for a helping hand was beneath, a kind Providence guided