Page:History of Delaware County (1856).djvu/356

332 HISTORY OF hand; commenced the work of death. Each blow was sure and deep — a messenger of death. So profound was their sleep, and so rapid the work of death, that eight of the eleven were dispatched before the other three awoke. While attempt- ing to rise upon their feet, two of them met the deadly blow of two champions, and fell dead beneath their own weapons. One alone escaped and fled to Oquago to relate the doleful tidings. The two heroes each took a gun and the all ammuni- tion, secreted the other guns, and with some parched corn and dried venison, guided by the polar star, commenced their journey back, keeping near the river until daylight, when they took the ridge to avoid meeting Indians, and in the evening reached a small settlement within ten miles of home. They were there met with joy unspeakable, as the news of their capture had already reached that place, and with most as much surprise as if they had arisen from the dead. When taken by the Indians, Murphy and Harper were in the woods, making maple sugar, and knew not that their fami- lies had just been murdered by the brutal savages. Imagine, you who are husbands and fathers, the bitter anguish of their souls, when informed that their wives and children had been butchered by a party of Indians, led on by the tory Brant. The day following, most of the men left the block-house, and escorted them home, there to behold a scene, too awful for re- flection, too horrible for description, too painful for humanity. Murphy had two children, one two years old ; the other three months. The eldest had fled under the bed, and been pulled out far enough to be tomahawked and scalped, and then left. The mother, a beautiful woman of about twenty-two, seemed not to have attempted an escape, as her hands and arms were much cut, and she lay in the back part of the room. She had re- ceived three blows on the head with a tomahawk, one of which penetrated the brain. Her cranium was literally bare. Across her lifeless body, lay her lovely babe, smiling in death. It