Page:History of Delaware County (1856).djvu/113

DELAWARE COUNTY. 89 a four hundred miles' journey through the woods^ by night and day, compelled, at the end to run this race of shame and suffer- ing. Her head was bare, and her hair tangled into mats, her feet naked and bleeding from wounds, all her clothes torn to rags during her march — one would have thought the heart- rending sight would have moved the savages. She wept not, for all her tears had been shed— she stared around upon the grin- ning multitude in hopeless amazement and fixed despair, while she glanced mournfully at the fort which lay at the end of the race. The signal was given, which was a yell, when she imme- diately started off as fast as she could, while the squaws laid on their whips with all their might ; thus venting their malice and envy upon the hated white woman. She reached the fort in almost a dying condition, being beaten and cut in the most dreadful manner, as her person had been so much exposed on account of the want of clothing to protect her. She was at length allowed to go to her friends — some Scotch people then living in Canada — ^and after the war she returned to the States. > The startling massacres that had been perpetrated the year before in the beautiful and peaceful valley of Wyoming and at Cherry Yalley, as well as the almost numberless tragedies similar to the one related above— hardly a week passing but the ears of the public were startled by the tale of cruel murder committed upon the peaceful frontier settler — these, and other important considerations, at last induced Congress to send a sufficient army into their territory to at least cripple the movements of the enemy in future, if not to bring them to terms of peace. The command of this expedition was entrusted to Major General Sullivan. More effectually to carry out the designs of Congress, and to prevent any premature attacks, by clearing the country of the numer- ous parties of savages who were continually prowling in the secure recesses of the forest bordering on the frontiers, ready to spring out when a favorable opportunity presented itself, 8*