The Wild Frontier (22 page)

In 1703, about the same time the massacres were going on in the Mississippi Delta, the Abnakis from Maine and the Mohawk from Quebec again attacked Deerfield, Connecticut, killing 49 settlers and capturing at least 100. The town minister, John Williams, wrote his account of this raid. He said he was awakened by the Indians trying to break open the doors and windows and saw them enter the house. Williams ran to his bedroom to get his pistol, put it to the breast of the first Indian to come up, but it misfired, and he was seized. Two of his children were murdered together with a black woman. He and his wife (and their baby, born only a few weeks before) were marched in the winter in separate groups toward Quebec, which was 300 miles away. Williams inquired about his wife from other prisoners he passed. He finally learned she had slipped and fallen down in a river she was crossing, and the Indian who took her shortly after that killed her with his hatchet at one stroke. His daughter, Eunice, was carried almost all the way to Quebec by an Indian. The French eventually ransomed most of the prisoners, but Eunice was adopted by the Mohawk and later married the Indian who had carried her. Years later she returned to Deerfield to visit, but then went back to the Mohawk.
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In 1711, a group of Swiss colonists organized by Baron Christoph von Graffenried went to a tract of land in North Carolina only to find it occupied by the Tuscarora Indians. The baron complained to the surveyor general, who assured the colonists they had clear title. He suggested they drive the Indians off without payment. The Indians attacked, killing almost 200 settlers, including 80 children. Raids and counterraids followed. The baron was captured. In consideration of his release, he agreed not to make war on the Indians. William Brice, one of his settlers, decided the promise was “contemptible softheartedness,” captured one of the chiefs of a tribe allied with the Tuscarora, and roasted the chief alive. The fighting escalated, and eventually the Tuscarora were so badly beaten that they went north and joined the Iroquois Confederacy.
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North Carolina sought help from South Carolina. South Carolina sent an expedition of 30 militia and 500 Indians, many of whom were Yamasees. The Indians exposed some of their white prisoners and tortured others in view of the Carolina lines, forcing the militia to negotiate. Eventually they defeated the Tuscarora. British commander John
Barnwell, a slave trader, reported in his journal that he had “ordered immediately to be burned alive” several of the prisoners they had taken. Barnwell felt inadequately rewarded by North Carolina, so he invited the Tuscarora to a friendship parley. They came, and in violation of the truce he had just made with them, Barnwell trapped a large number of the Indians and sent them into slavery. The remaining Tuscarora went to war again.
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A second expedition went against the Tuscarora in 1713. This one was led by slave merchant Colonel James Moore and was composed of 33 colonists and almost 900 Cherokee, Yamasees, Creeks, and Catawbas. A Tuscarora fort was stormed and taken. Several hundred of the Indians were burned alive, and 166 male Indians were slaughtered as unsuitable for slavery. Sent into slavery this time were 392 Tuscarora, mostly women and children.
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Around 1715, North Carolina settlers made repeated raids on Indian villages to get slaves. As a result of this treatment, the Yamasees fled to Florida, the Catawbas “were overcome by disease, drink, and attacks by other Indians,” and the Shawnee
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moved north.
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Benjamin Franklin reported Shawnee torture in his
Pennsylvania Gazette
in 1729:

In the middle of the 1700s, the Apache took adult captives, but not to sell as slaves. They were taken so they could be killed by the female relatives of men killed in battle. Grenville Goodwin interviewed an Apache who described what happened to these Apache prisoners. The women did not kill the captives, so that they could prolong the suffering. They
would shoot at the captive with bows and arrows. Some of the arrows stuck in his or her body, but others just bounced back and fell on the ground. The women also shot at the prisoners with rifles. Once the men cut off the arms and legs of 2 captives who had been shot and then danced with the severed limbs. Sometimes they danced with the scalp after it was taken. After defeating the Pimas, the Apache killed all the older women, “saving the good, younger ones to take back with them.” Sometimes a prisoner would be made to dance all night with the men, then they would kill him or her in the morning.
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Twelve-year-old Peter Williamson was alone at his farm in Pennsylvania in 1754. The French and Indian War had been going on for 5 years. Indians surrounded the house and told him he would be burned alive unless he surrendered. He surrendered and the Indians burned his house, barn, and livestock. He was tied to a tree all that night. The next morning, his face, head, hands, and feet were burned with flaming sticks and coals. He shed silent tears, and when they were discovered, coals were applied near his eyes with the statement that his face was wet and would be dried for him. Williamson then described how the group walked 6 miles to the Jacob Snider house. Both parents and the 5 children were immediately scalped. A servant was captured, but when the servant complained about the heavy load he was carrying, he was tomahawked and also scalped. They then went to the John Adams house. The wife and 4 children were scalped in the presence of Adams, who was an old man. After the wife was murdered, “they acted with her in such a brutal matter, as decency will not permit me [Williamson] to mention.” Adams begged to be killed, but the Indians would not do it. He was stripped naked, painted all over with various colors, tied to a tree, whipped, and burned with red coals applied to his cheeks and legs.

Twenty-five other Indians then arrived with 20 scalps and 3 captives. They had also captured a trader and “not only scalped him, but immediately roasted him before he was dead; then, like cannibals, for want of other food, ate his whole body, and of his head made what they called an Indian pudding.” The 3 new captives escaped but were shortly captured again. Two were tied to a tree, a great fire was made near them, and they were scorched and burned. Archibald Loudon
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reported that one of the Indians then

Williamson made his escape one night when his guards were asleep.

In 1755, Mohawk captive James Smith saw the warriors leave the Indian fort in the morning to fight General Braddock’s army. He had high hopes that he would see them vanquished and that Braddock would take the fort and rescue him. That afternoon, a runner arrived and said that Braddock was losing. Later that day, he heard a number of scalp halloos, then saw the Mohawks and French returning with a great number of scalps and much British equipment. They said Braddock was defeated. A second group of about 100, mostly Indians, came in. Almost all of them were carrying scalps. Then a third group with wagon horses arrived with more scalps. About sundown a small party of warriors came in with around a dozen prisoners. They were naked, with their hands tied behind them and their faces and part of their bodies blackened with coal and water, which meant they were to be burned. The prisoners were all burned to death opposite the fort on the Allegheny River. The first man was tied to a stake and repeatedly touched with firebrands and red-hot irons. He screamed pitifully, and the Indians yelled like devils. Smith was too shocked by this scene to watch any further.
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Upon Braddock’s defeat in 1755 in the French and Indian War, the Delaware Indians did a lot of scalping on the western borders of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia. Braddock had offered his troops 200 pounds for the scalp of Delaware leader Shinngass.
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In the same year, the British offered 40 pounds for each scalp from an enemy tribe.
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In 1756, Indian chief Jacobs and his warriors burned and destroyed the little town of Coves, Pennsylvania. Settler Hugh M’Swine was away at the time, but when he returned, Jacobs took him prisoner and put
him, with an Indian prisoner, under the care of a white named Jackson, who “had joined the Indians” and had been instructed to find more settlers. That night Jackson gave M’Swine an ax and told him to cut rails to make a fire. M’Swine immediately split the Indian with the ax, and after a fight shot and killed Jackson. M’Swine scalped them both.
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Blacksmith Robert Eastburn was fearful in 1756 that his town would be attacked by Indians. He therefore asked a British soldier if he could enlist. He was told he could. He walked with his unit half a mile out of town, heard a shot, climbed a large pine tree, and saw 2 Indians. He fired one shot, hoping he could kill them both, but he didn’t know at the time what the result was. His unit retreated, he fell behind in the mud, and the Indians captured him. They took off all his clothes except his vest, put a rope around his neck, and began a 400-mile march to Montreal. One of the other prisoners with him revealed that his shot had killed one Indian and wounded another. He was fed porcupine, which he didn’t like, and horse flesh, “which tasted very agreeably.”

One night the Indian Eastburn had wounded took his blanket away and ordered him to dance around the campfire and sing. He refused because he thought it would be sinful. The Indian then tried to push him into the fire. When they reached Canada, the wounded Indian told a Frenchman about his refusal. The Frenchman tried to get him to dance and sing; he again refused, and the Frenchman took away Eastburn’s vest, “which was my all.” They were then joined by 8 more prisoners from his unit. All were made to lie down and were painted by the Indians. The rope was taken off his neck for the first time. They came to an Indian village where all the Indians came out and fell on the prisoners with their fists. Eastburn alone was taken to another town. As they entered the town, about 150 young Indians pelted him with dirt, gravel, and small stones. An Indian threw him into very cold water. He worked as a smith in Montreal for a time, then escaped, and was eventually reunited with his family.
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In 1756, Hugh Gibson was captured in an Indian raid in which his mother was killed. Whenever the Indians were to torture someone, all the captives were brought to watch. An Indian woman had fled to the settlers. During a skirmish, she got lost and fell back into Indian hands. She was stripped naked, tied to a post, and hot irons were applied to her skin until she died. Gibson saw the rule invoked that if one man kills another and the murderer cannot be found, the friends of the victim may kill the murderer’s next of kin. The brother of an escaped murderer was killed under this rule.
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The house of Simon Girty’s stepfather, John Turner, was raided by the
Delaware the same year in western Pennsylvania. The Girtys were taken west to the Delaware town of Kittanning. John Turner was tortured with red-hot gun barrels; blazing faggots were piled on his stomach and “a scalping knife slipped over his skull.” After 3 hours, he was tomahawked to death. Turner’s wife (who was Girty’s mother), Simon Girty, who was 15, and Girty’s brothers all were forced to watch. His mother was then killed. The family was split up among the Delaware, the Shawnee, and Simon Girty went to the Seneca. There he ran the gauntlet twice, then was adopted by the tribe.
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The Seneca released him to the British, and he worked as a military scout and interpreter for them in the Ohio Valley from 1759 to 1776. In that year, he changed sides and joined the Virginia militia. He changed sides a second time, defecting to the British in 1778 and thereafter used Iroquoian methods of torture and execution against pro-Revolutionary captives.
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During the French and Indian War in 1756, the French under General Louis-Joseph de Montcalm captured Fort Oswego in New York. Montcalm promised the defeated commander of the fort safe conduct for his men. The Indian allies of the French, however, ambushed the men as they were leaving.

The next year, Montcalm took Fort William Henry and its 2,372 men. Again Montcalm promised safe conduct. Again the Indians ambushed the soldiers and plundered the fort. Montcalm had insisted that special protection should be given the sick and wounded, yet the Indians entered the hospital, scalped smallpox patients, and carried the disease home with them. Perhaps as many as 1,500 soldiers, women, and children were killed or taken prisoner at Fort William Henry. It is not known how many Indians died from smallpox because of the warriors’ unauthorized conduct.
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