The Winning of the West, Volume 3: The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790Roosevelt, Theodore
History
The Winning of the West, Volume 3: The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790
Roosevelt, Theodore
Northwest, Old -- History; United States -- Territorial expansion; West (U.S.) -- History
In 1785, on June 29th, the house of a settler named Scott, in Washington
County, Virginia, was attacked. The Indians, thirteen in number, burst
in the door just as the family were going to bed. Scott was shot; his
wife was seized and held motionless, while all her four children were
tomahawked, and their throats cut, the blood spouting over her clothes.
The Indians loaded themselves with plunder, and, taking with them the
wretched woman, moved off, and travelled all night. Next morning each
man took his share and nine of the party went down to steal horses on
the Clinch. The remaining four roamed off through the woods, and ten
days later the woman succeeded in making her escape. For a month she
wandered alone in the forest, living on the young cane and sassafras,
until, spent and haggard with the horror and the hardship, she at last
reached a small frontier settlement.
At about the same time three girls, sisters, walking together near
Wheeling Creek, were pounced upon by a small party of Indians. After
going a short distance the Indians halted, talked together for a few
moments, and then without any warning a warrior turned and tomahawked
one of the girls. The second instantly shared the same fate; the third
jerked away from the Indian who held her, darted up a bank, and,
extraordinary to relate, eluded her pursuer, and reached her home in
safety. Another family named Doolin, suffered in the same year; and
there was one singular circumstance connected with their fate. The
Indians came to the door of the cabin in the early morning; as the man
rose from bed the Indians fired through the door and shot him in the
thigh. They then burst in, and tomahawked him and two children; yet for
reasons unknown they did not harm the woman, nor the child in her arms.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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