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
The Indian women and children had fled already to the forest, and there
they were slowly followed by the warriors, their hearts filled with rage
and despair. Beaten on ground of their own choosing, and not even able
to bring away their dead, they saw their power crumbling. Fierce words
passed between Timmendiquas and Simon Girty. The Wyandot chieftain
upbraided the renegade. He charged him with giving up too soon, but
Girty, suave and diplomatic, said, after his first wrath was over, that
he had not yielded until it was obvious that they were beaten. Instead
of a fruitless defense it was better to save their warriors for another
campaign. They could yet regain all that they had lost. There was some
truth in Girty's words. Blue Lick and St. Clair's terrible defeat were
yet to come, but Clark's blow had destroyed the very nerve-center of the
Indian confederacy. The Kentuckians had shown that not only could they
fight successfully on the defensive, but they could also cross the Ohio
and shatter the Indian power on its own chosen ground. Neither the valor
of the warriors, nor the great aid that they received from their white
allies could save them from ultimate defeat.
Henry, Paul, the officers, and many others felt these things as the
night came down, and as they roamed through Piqua, now deserted by the
enemy. Paul and Jim Hart went in one direction to look at the big
Council House, but Henry, the shiftless one, and Tom Ross remained with
Colonel Clark.
"We've won a great victory, though we've lost many good men," said the
Colonel, "and now we must consign Piqua to the fate that Chillicothe has
just suffered. It's a pity, but if we leave this nest, the hornets will
be back in it as soon as we leave it, snug and warm, and with a
convenient base for raiding across the Ohio."
"We'll have to give it to the flames," said Colonel Logan.
The other Colonels nodded. First they gathered up all the dead, whether
red or white and buried them. At Henry's instance the two old chiefs,
Yellow Panther, the Miami, and Red Eagle, the Shawnee, were laid side by
side in the same grave. Then he fixed a board at their head upon which
he cut this inscription:
In this grave Lie
Yellow Panther, the Miami,
And Red Eagle, the Shawnee;
They were great Chiefs,
And died fighting
For Their People.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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