American Prisoners of the RevolutionDandridge, Danske
History
American Prisoners of the Revolution
Dandridge, Danske
United States -- History -- Revolution, 1775-1783 -- Prisoners and prisons
“On Friday evening last arrived at Lancaster, Pa., on their way to the
American camp, Captain Cresap’s Company of Riflemen, consisting of one
hundred and thirty active, brave young fellows, many of whom have been
in the late expedition under Lord Dunmore against the Indians. They
bear in their bodies visible marks of their prowess, and show scars and
wounds which would do honour to Homer’s Iliad. They show you, to use the
poet’s words:
“‘Where the gor’d battle bled at ev’ry vein!’
“One of these warriors in particular shows the cicatrices of four bullet
holes through his body.
“These men have been bred in the woods to hardships and dangers since
their infancy. They appear as if they were entirely unacquainted with,
and had never felt the passion of fear. With their rifles in their
hands, they assume a kind of omnipotence over their enemies. One cannot
much wonder at this when we mention a fact which can be fully attested
by several of the reputable persons who were eye-witnesses of it. Two
brothers in the company took a piece of board five inches broad, and
seven inches long, with a bit of white paper, the size of a dollar,
nailed in the centre, and while one of them supported this board
perpendicularly between his knees, the other at the distance of upwards
of sixty yards, and without any kind of rest, shot eight bullets through
it successively, and spared a brother’s thigh!
“Another of the company held a barrel stave perpendicularly in his
hands, with one edge close to his side, while one of his comrades, at
the same distance, and in the manner before mentioned, shot several
bullets through it, without any apprehension of danger on either side.
“The spectators appearing to be amazed at these feats, were told that
there were upwards of fifty persons in the same company who could do the
same thing; that there was not one who could not ‘plug nineteen bullets
out of twenty,’ as they termed it, within an inch of the head of a
ten-penny nail.
“In short, to evince the confidence they possessed in these kind of
arms, some of them proposed to stand with apples on their heads, while
others at the same distance undertook to shoot them off, but the people
who saw the other experiments declined to be witnesses of this.
“At night a great fire was kindled around a pole planted in the Court
House Square, where the company with the Captain at their head, all
naked to the waist and painted like savages (except the Captain, who was
in an Indian shirt), indulged a vast concourse of people with a perfect
exhibition of a war-dance and all the manoeuvres of Indians; holding
council, going to war; circumventing their enemies by defiles;
ambuscades; attacking; scalping, etc. It is said by those who are judges
that no representation could possibly come nearer the original. The
Captain’s expertness and agility, in particular, in these experiments,
astonished every beholder. This morning they will set out on their march
for Cambridge.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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