Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 September 1883 — Famous Escapes from Indians. [ARTICLE]

Famous Escapes from Indians.

‘ Dr. Edward Eggleston, in a paper in the Century on “Indian War in Colonies, ” recounts the following exploits: “Stories es marvelous and ingenious escapes were the romance of the colonies, and such adventures date back to the earliest Indian war in Virginia, where a man and his wife, who had Leen spared in the wholesale slaughter, found their opportunity while the Indians were dancing for joy over the acquisition of a white man’s boat that had drifted ashore. These captives got into a canoe, and soon afterward surprised their friends in the settlements, who had believed them to be dead. Very like this was the escape of Anthony Bracket and his wife in Maine. They were left to follow on after their captors, who were eager to reach a plunder'ng party in time to share in the npoil. Bracket’s wife found a broken Lark canoe, which she mended with a needle and thread; the whole family then put to sea in this rickety craft, and at length reached Black Point, where they got on board a vessel. A little lad of 11 years named Eames, taken in Philip’s war, made his way thirty miles or more to the settlements. Two sons of the famous Hannah Bradley, effected an ingenious escape, lying all the first (lay in a hollow log and using their provisions to -make friends with the dogs that had traced them. They journeyed in extreme peril and suffered for pine days, and one of them fell down Rvith exhaustion just as they were entering a white settlement. A young girl in Massachusetts, after three weeks of captivity, made a bridle of bark, and, catching a horse, rode all night through the woods to Concord. Mrs. Pean, taken at Oyster river in 1694, was left with her- daughter in charge of an old Indian while the rest finished their work of destruction. The old fellow asked his prisoner what would cure a pain in his head. She recommended him to drink some rum taken from her house. This put him to sleep, and the woman and child got away. Another down-East captive, with the fitting name of Toogood, while his captor during an attack on a settlement was disentangling a piece of string with which to tie him, jerked the Indian’s gun from under his arm and, leveling it at his got safely away.

“Escaping captives endured extreme hardships. One Bard, taken in Pennsylvania, lived nine days on a few buds and four snakes. Mrs. Inglis, captured in the valley of Virginia, escaped, in company of a German woman, from a place far down the Ohio’river. After narrowly avoiding discovery and recapture, they succeeded in ascending the south bank of the Ohio for some hundreds of miles. When within a few days’ travel of settlements, they were so reduced by famine that the German woman, enraged that she had been persuaded to desert the Indian flesh-pots and crazed with hunger, made an unsuccessful attack on liqt companion, with cannibal intentions. “The most famous of all the escapes of New England captives was that of Hannah Duston, Mary Neff and a boy, Samuel Leonardson. These three were carried off, with many others, in 1697, in the attack on Haverhill, Mrs. Duston’s infant child having been killed by the Indians. When the captors had separated, the party to whom the two women and the boy were assigned encamped on an island in the Merrimac river. At midnight the captives secured hatchets and killed ten Indians—two men, two women and six children—one favorite boy, whom they meant to spare, and one badly-wounded woman escaping. After they had left the camp the fugitives remembered that nobody in |he settlements would believe, without evidence, that they had performed so Redoubtable an action; they therefore Returned and scalped the Indians, after which they scuttled all the canoes on |he island but one, and in this escaped down the Merrimac and finally reached Haverhill. This was such an exploit as made the actors immediately famous in that bloody time. The Massachusetts General Court gave Mrs. Dustan £25 and granted half that amount to each of her companions. The story of their daring deed was carried far to tire southward, and Gov. Nicholson, of Maryland, sent a valuable present to the escaped prisoners.”