The Border Watch: A Story of the Great Chief's Last StandAltsheler, Joseph A. (Joseph Alexander)
General
The Border Watch: A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand
Altsheler, Joseph A. (Joseph Alexander)
Frontier and pioneer life -- Juvenile fiction
Henry did not know until much later that it was the cunning and crafty
Girty who had given up first. He had suddenly announced to those near
him that Piqua could not be defended against the American army. Then he
had precipitately retreated to the other side of the town followed by
Braxton Wyatt, Blackstaffe and all the renegades. The Indians were
shaken by this retreat because they had great confidence in Girty. The
Delawares gave up, then the Ottawas and Illinois, the Wyandots,
Shawnees, Miamis and the little detachment of Mohawks, as usual, stood
to the bitter last. At the very edge of the village the great war
chiefs, Yellow Panther, the Miami, and Red Eagle, the Shawnee, fell
almost side by side, and went to the happy hunting grounds together.
Moluntha, the other famous Shawnee chief, received two wounds, but lived
to secure a momentary revenge at the great Indian victory of the Blue
Licks, two years later. Timmendiquas would have died in the defense, but
a half dozen of his faithful warriors fairly dragged him beyond the
range of the Kentucky rifles.
Yet Timmendiquas, although the Kentuckians were in the town, did not
cease to fight. He and a hundred of the warriors threw themselves into
the strongest of the houses, those built of timber, and opened a
dangerous fire from doors and windows. The woodsmen were ordered to
charge and to take every house by assault, no matter what the loss, but
Clark, always resourceful, sternly ordered a halt.
"You forget our cannon," he said. "Logan, do you, Floyd and Harrod keep
the riflemen back, and we'll drive the enemy out of these houses without
losing a single man on our side."
"Thar speaks wisdom," said Shif'less Sol to the other. "Now in all the
excitement I had clean forgot that we could blow them houses to pieces,
but the Colonel didn't forget it."
"No, he didn't," replied Henry. "Stand back and we'll see the fun. A lot
of destruction will be done soon."
The twilight had not yet come, although the sun was slowly dimming in
the East. A great cloud of smoke from the firing hung over Piqua and the
bordering fields that had witnessed so fierce a combat. The smoke and
the burned gunpowder made a bitter odor. Flashes of firing from the
strong houses, and from ambushed Indians here and there pierced the
smoke. Then came a tremendous report and a twelve-pound cannon ball
smashed through a wooden house. Another and another and it was
demolished. The defenders fled for their lives. Every other house that
could be used for shelter was served in the same way. The last ambushed
foe was swept from his covert, and when the twilight fell Piqua,
throughout its whole length of three miles along Mad River, was held by
the Kentuckians.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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