Page:History of Delaware County (1856).djvu/118

HISTORY OF something else. After they had gone oS, Swartwout came down from his uncomfortable quarters and escaped. A man named Roolif Cuddeback was pursued some distance into the woods by an Indian, and found it impossible to out- strip his pursuer. When nearly overtaken, he stopped sud- denly, and the Indian hurled a tomahawk at him, which hit- ting a bush, missed its mark. Cuddeback at once grappled with the supple savage, and they had a furious battle with the weapons of nature. Eoth struggled for a knife which was in the Indian's belt, and which finally fell to the ground. Neither could safely stoop to pick it up, and so they resumed their struggle for life or death in the natural way. Cuddeback was the most athletic of the two; but the savage had besmeared his limbs and body with grease, so that he could slip from Cuddeback' s hands whenever the latter laid hold of him. Cuddeback, however, gave the red-skin such a buffeting that, after a while he was glad to beat a retreat. It is s^id that he never recovered from the rough handling he received from the white man, but died subsequently from the injuries inflicted » by Cuddeback. The latter escaped. Eager, in his history of Orange County, says, that " The sava- ges visited the school-house, and threatened to exterminate one generation of the settlers at a blow. Jeremiah Van Auken was the teacher, and they took him from the house, conveyed him about half a mile, and then killed him. Some of the boj^s in the school were cleft with the tomahawk, others fled to the woods for concealment from their bloody assailants, while the little girls stood by the slain body of their teacher, bewildered and horror-struck, not knowing their own fate, whether death or captivity. While they were standing in this pitiful condi- tion, a strong, muscular Indian suddenly came along, and with a brush dashed some black paint across their aprons, bidding them hold up the mark when they saw an Indian coming, and it would save them;" and with the yell of a savage