Page:History of Delaware County (1856).djvu/140

116 HISTORY OF dull echoes up and down the stream at which the whole body made a halt and stood in mute astonishment, not knowing what this could mean, when directly the two Indians made their ap- pearance, exhibiting the nine pair of moccasins, and relating in the Indian tongue — which Harper understood — the death of their companions. In a moment, as if transformed to deyils, they threw themselves into a great circle around us, exhibiting the most horrid gestures, gnashing their teeth like a gang of wolves ready to devour, brandishing their tomahawks over us, as so many arrows of death. But here, let it be spoken to the praise of a Divine Providence, at the moment when we had given ourselves up as lost, the very Indian, who was a chief, and had been the only one of the eleven who had escaped un- hurt, threw himself into the midst of the ring, and with a shake of his hand gave the signal of silence, when he plead our cause, by simply saying, 'These are not the men who killed our friends, and to take the life of the innocent, in cold blood, cannot be right.' " As it happened, this Indian knew us all, for he had lived about Schoharie before the war, and was known as an inoffen- sive and kind-hearted native, but when the war came on, had seen fit to join .the British Indians : his words had the desired effect, arrested the mind of Brant, and soothed to composure the terrific storm that a moment before had threatened to de- stroy us. " Again we resumed our course, bearing the anguish of our sufferings with considerably more patience and fortitude than it is likely we should have done, had not our lives been pre- served from a greater calamity, just described. We soon came to Newtown, where we were nearly at the point of starvation, Indians and all, as we had nothing to eat except a handful or two of corn a day; and what the end would have been is not hard to foresee, had not an amazing number of wolf-tracks remaining directed us to the carcass of a dead horse. The