Tales, Traditions and Romance of Border and Revolutionary TimesEllis, Edward Sylvester
History
Tales, Traditions and Romance of Border and Revolutionary Times
Ellis, Edward Sylvester
Frontier and pioneer life -- United States -- Anecdotes; United States -- History -- Revolution, 1775-1783 -- Anecdotes
The night which followed the battle was one of horror for the prisoners
taken by the enemy. As usual, the Indians slaked their thirst for blood
and torture, which the battle had awakened, in pitiless cruelties upon
their defenseless captives. It does not seem that Brant here exercised,
or caused to be exercised, any clemency. Some of the doomed creatures
begged of Butler, the British officer, to use his influence with the
Indians; and to their appeals were joined the entreaties of the
guard—the tories, in whose breasts some humanity remained; but this
fiend, more savage than the savages, only cursed them for their folly in
pleading for "infernal rebels." All manner of tortures, including
roasting, was practiced upon the captives, as was testified to by one of
their number, Dr. Younglove, who, after enduring every thing but death,
finally escaped from his tormentors.
In June of the next year, 1778, Brant came upon Springfield, which he
burned, and carried off a number of prisoners. The women and children
were not maltreated, but were left in one house unmolested. About this
time great efforts were made to secure the wary chief, but none of them
were successful.
The next event of importance in which Brant was engaged was the
destruction of Wyoming, that most heart-rending affair in all the annals
of the Revolutionary war. The events of that awful massacre, the
treachery of Butler, the ferocity of the savages, and the still more
hellish malignity of their white allies, are known to all. The wail
which then arose from innocent women and helpless babes, consumed in one
funeral pyre, together, will never die—its echoes yet ring upon the
shuddering senses of each successive generation. Of late years an effort
has been made to prove that Brant was not even present at that massacre;
but of this there is no _proof_. Campbell, the author of "Gertrude of
Wyoming," was so worked upon by the representations of a son of Brant,
who visited England in 1822, that he recalled all he said of
"The foe—the monster Brant,"
and wished him, thereafter, to be regarded as a "purely fictitious
character."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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