Page:History of Delaware County (1856).djvu/139

DELAWARE COUNTY. 115 But this was not possible, even if they could have made their escape, unless they should first have effected the death of the whole party of Indians. This object, therefore, was their constant aim. In the night, by some means unknown, one of the prisoners got loose, doubtless either by gnawing off his cord, or by chafing it in two as he lay on it, or during the day had managed to hitch it as often as he could against the snags of the trees, till it had become fretted and weak in some place, so that at last he got it in two. When this was effected he silently cut the cords of his fellows, the Indians sleeping ex- ceedingly sound ; when each man took a hatchet, and in a moment nine of them received their blades to their handles, in their brains; but the sound of the blows, in cutting through the bone of their heads, awaked the other two, who sprung upon their feet as quick as thought, when one of them as they fled, received the blade of a hatchet between his shoulders, which, however, did not kill him, nor prevent his escape, yet he was terribly wounded. These men, who had so heroically made their escape, returned, as was supposed, to their homes, to relate to their families and posterity the perils of that awful night. After they had gone, the two Indians returned to the spot where lay their ruthless, but unfortunate companions, fast locked, not only in the sleep of night, but that of death, never more to torment the ear of civilized life with the death-yells of their sepulchral throats. They took the moccasins from the feet of their slaughtered friends, nine pair in number, and then constructed a float of logs on which they crossed the river, and had proceeded a little way up the Chemung, where they had built a hut, and the well Indian was endeavoring to cure his wounded companion. ^'When the whooping of the party of Indians to whom we were prisoners struck his ear, he gave the death-T/ell, which rung on the dull air as the scream of a demon, reverberating in