BIG JOE LOGSTON.
DEBORAH, THE MAIDEN WARRIOR.
GEN. MORGAN'S PRAYER.
BRAVERY OF THE JOHNSON BOYS.
NEW YORK:
BEADLE AND COMPANY, PUBLISHERS,
118 WILLIAM STREET.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1863, by
BEADLE AND COMPANY,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for
the Southern District of New York.
BIG JOE LOGSTON'S
STRUGGLE WITH AN INDIAN.
We have plentiful stories of encounters between the white man and the
red, in which the fierce rivalry is contested with rifles, knives, or
the swift foot-race for life; but it is seldom we hear of a genuine
_fist-fight_ between the hardy men of the forest and their implacable
foe. Only two or three such novel incidents occur in the history of the
Western border.
Joe Logston was one of the race of famous frontier men, the "Hunters of
Kentucky," whose exploits have been told in story and sung in song. He
could, to use his own words, "outrun, outhop, outjump, throw down, drag
out and whip any man in the country"—which was saying a good deal for
those days, when men like Brady, Wetzel, M'Clelland, Adam Poe and Kenton
sprung up to face the dangers of the hour.
Joe was a powerful fellow of six foot three in his stockings, and
proportionately stout and muscular, with a handsome, good-natured face,
and a fist like a sledge-hammer. Fear was a word of which he knew not
the meaning, while to _fight_ was his pastime, particularly if his own
scalp was the prize he fought for.
On one occasion he was mounted on his favorite pony, bound on an
expedition outside the fort. The pony was leisurely picking his way
along the trail, with his head down and half asleep, while his rider was
enjoying a feast on some wild grapes which he had gathered as he passed
along. Neither dreamed of danger, until the crack of two rifles on
either side the path killed the horse and wounded the rider. A ball
struck Joe, grazing the skin above the breast-bone, but without doing
any material damage. The other ball passed through his horse, just
behind the saddle. In an instant Joe found himself on his feet, grasping
his trusty rifle, which he had instinctively seized as he slipped to the
ground, ready for the foe. He might easily have escaped by running, as
the guns of the Indians were empty, and they could not begin to compete
with him in speed. But Joe was not one of that sort. He boasted that he
had never left a battle-field without making his "mark," and he was not
disposed to begin now. One of the savages sprung into the path and made
at him, but finding his antagonist prepared, he "treed" again. Joe,
knowing there were two of the varmints, looked earnestly about him for
the other, and soon discovered him between two saplings, engaged in
reloading his piece. The trees were scarcely large enough to shield his
person, and in pushing down the ball, he exposed his hips, when Joe,
quick as thought, drew a bead, and firing, struck him in the exposed
part. Now that his rifle was empty, the big Indian who had first made
his appearance, rushed forward, feeling sure of his prey, and rejoicing
in the anticipated possession of the white man's scalp. Joe was not
going to resign this necessary and becoming covering to his head without
a struggle, and stood, calmly awaiting the savage, with his rifle
clubbed and his feet braced for a powerful blow. Perceiving this, his
foe halted within ten paces, and with all the vengeful force of a
vigorous arm, threw his tomahawk full at Joe's face. With the rapidity
of lightning it whirled through the air; but Joe, equally quick in his
movements, dodged it, suffering only a slight cut on the left shoulder
as it passed, when he "went in."
The Indian darted into the bushes, successfully dodging the blows made
at his head by the now enraged hunter, who, becoming excited to madness
at the failure of his previous efforts, gathered all his strength for a
final blow, which the cunning savage dodged as before, while the rifle,
which by this time had become reduced to the simple barrel, struck a
tree and flew out of Joe's hands at least ten feet into the bushes.
The Indian sprung to his feet and confronted him. Both empty-handed,
they stood for a moment, measuring each the other's strength; it was but
a moment, for the blood was flowing freely from the wound in Joe's
breast, and the other thinking him more seriously wounded than he really
was, and expecting to take advantage of his weakness, closed with him,
intending to throw him. In this, however, he reckoned without his host.
In less time than it takes to recount it, he found himself at full
length on his back, with Joe on top. Slipping from under him with the
agility of an eel they were both on their feet again—and again closed.
This time the savage was more wary, but the same result followed—he was
again beneath his opponent. But having the advantage of Joe, in being
naked to his breech-cloth, and _oiled_ from head to foot, he could
easily slip from the grasp of the hunter and resume his perpendicular.
Six different times was he thrown with the same effect; but
victory—fickle jade—seemed disposed to perch on the banner of neither of
the combatants. There were no admiring thousands looking on at this
exciting "mill"—no seconds to insist upon fairness and preserve the
rules of the ring—only one poor wounded spectator, and two foes fighting
not for fame but life.
By this time they had, in their struggles and contortions, returned to
the open path, and Joe resolved upon a change of tactics. He was
becoming sensibly weaker from loss of blood, while, on the other hand,
the savage seemed to lose none of his strength by the many falls he had
experienced. Closing again in a close hug, they fell as before; this
time, instead of endeavoring to keep his antagonist down, Joe sprung at
once to his feet, and, as his antagonist came up, dealt him a blow with
his fist between the eyes, which felled him like an ox, at the same time
falling with all his might upon his body.
This was repeated every time he rose, and began to tell with fearful
effect upon the savage's body as well as his face, for Joe was no light
weight, and at every succeeding fall the Indian came up weaker, seeming
finally disposed to retreat; this his opponent decidedly objected to;
his "spunk was up;" he dealt his blows more rapidly, until the savage
lay apparently insensible at his feet. Falling upon him, he grasped the
Indian's throat with a grip like a vice, intending to strangle him. He
soon found that the savage was "playing possum," and that some movement
was going forward, the purport of which he could not immediately guess.
Following with his eye the direction of the movement, Joe found that he
was trying to disengage his knife which was in his belt, but the handle
of which was so short that it had slipped down beyond reach, and he was
working it up by pressing on the point. Joe watched the effort with deep
interest, and when it was worked up sufficient for his purpose, seized
it, and with one powerful blow drove it to the owner's heart, leaving
him quivering in the agonies of death.
Springing to his feet the victor now bethought him of the other
red-skin, and looked around to discover him. He still lay, with his back
broken by Joe's ball, where he had fallen, and, having his piece loaded,
was trying to raise himself upright to fire it; but every time he
brought it to his shoulder he would tumble forward and have again to
renew the effort. Concluding that he had had enough fighting for
exercise, and knowing that the wounded Indian could not escape, Joe took
his way to the fort.
Although he presented a frightful sight when he reached there—his
clothes being torn nearly from his person, which was covered with blood
and dirt from his head to his feet—yet his account was hardly believed
by some of his comrades, who thought it one of Joe's "big stories,"
which had the reputation of being as big as himself, though not half so
well authenticated. "Go and satisfy yourselves," said he; and a party
started for the battle-ground, where their suppositions were confirmed,
as there were no Indians about, and no evidence of them, except Joe's
dead horse in the path. On looking carefully about, however, they
discovered a trail which led a little way into the bushes, where they
discovered the body of the big Indian buried under the dead leaves by
the side of a stump. Following on, they found the corpse of the second,
with his own knife thrust into his heart and his grasp still upon it, to
show that he died by his own hand. Nowhere could they discover the knife
with which Joe had killed the big Indian. They found it at last, thrust
into the ground, where it had been forced by the heel of his wounded
companion, who must have suffered the most intense agony while
endeavoring to hide all traces of the white man's victory.
Joe got the credit for his story, while his comrades universally
lamented that they had not been spectators of this pugilistic encounter
between "big Indian" and "big Joe."
Another one of the forest scenes which stand out so vividly in pictures
of American life, occurs to us. It is unique in its character, and will
excite a smile, as well as a feeling of admiration for the tact and
courage which enacted it.
In the early part of the Revolutionary war, a sargeant and twelve armed
men undertook a journey through the wilderness, in the State of New
Hampshire. Their route was remote from any settlements, and they were
under the necessity of encamping over night in the woods. Nothing
material happened the first day of their excursion; but early in the
afternoon of the second, they, from an eminence, discovered a body of
armed Indians advancing toward them, whose number rather exceeded their
own. As soon as the whites were perceived by their red brethren, the
latter made signals, and the two parties approached each other in an
amicable manner. The Indians appeared to be much gratified with meeting
the sargeant and his men, whom they observed they considered as their
protectors; said they belonged to a tribe which had raised the hatchet
with zeal in the cause of liberty, and were determined to do all in
their power to repel the common enemy. They shook hands in friendship,
and it was, "How d'ye do, _pro_, how d'ye do, pro," that being their
pronunciation of the word brother. When they had conversed with each
other for some time, and exchanged mutual good wishes, they at length
separated, and each party traveled in a different direction. After
proceeding to the distance of a mile or more, the sargeant, who was
acquainted with all the different tribes, and knew on which side of the
contest they were respectively ranked, halted his men and addressed them
in the following words:
"My brave companions, we must use the utmost caution, or this night may
be our last. Should we not make some extraordinary exertions to defend
ourselves, to-morrow's sun may find us sleeping never to wake. You are
surprised, comrades, at my words, and your anxiety will not be lessened,
when I inform you, that we have just passed our most inveterate foe,
who, under the mask of pretended friendship you have witnessed, would
lull us to security, and by such means, in the unguarded moments of our
midnight slumber, without resistance, seal our fate."
The men with astonishment listened to this short harangue; and their
surprise was greater, as not one of them had entertained the suspicion
but they had just encountered friends. They all immediately resolved to
enter into some scheme for their mutual preservation and destruction of
their enemies. By the proposal of their leader, the following plan was
adopted and executed:
The spot selected for their night's encampment was near a stream of
water, which served to cover their rear. They felled a large tree,
before which on the approach of night, a brilliant fire was lighted.
Each individual cut a log of wood about the size of his body, rolled it
nicely in his blanket, placed his hat upon the extremity, and laid it
before the fire, that the enemy might be deceived, and mistake it for a
man. After logs equal in number to the sargeant's party were thus fitted
out, and so artfully arranged that they might be easily mistaken for so
many soldiers, the men with loaded muskets placed themselves behind the
fallen tree, by which time the shades of evening began to close around.
The fire was supplied in fuel, and kept burning brilliantly until late
in the evening, when it was suffered to decline. The critical time was
now approaching, when an attack might be expected from the Indians; but
the sargeant's men rested in their place of concealment with great
anxiety till near midnight, without perceiving any movement of the
enemy.
At length a tall Indian was discovered through the glimmering of the
fire, cautiously moving toward them, making no noise, and apparently
using every means in his power to conceal himself from any one about the
camp. For a time his actions showed him to be suspicious that a guard
might be stationed to watch any unusual appearance, who would give the
alarm in case of danger; but all appearing quiet, he ventured forward
more boldly, rested upon his toes, and was distinctly seen to move his
finger as he numbered each log of wood, or what he supposed to be a
human being quietly enjoying repose. To satisfy himself more fully as to
the number, he counted them over a second time, and cautiously retired.
He was succeeded by another Indian, who went through the same movements,
and retired in the same manner. Soon after the whole party, sixteen in
number, were discovered approaching, and greedily eyeing their supposed
victims. The feelings of the sargeant's men can better be imagined than
described, when they saw the base and cruel purpose of their enemies,
who were now so near that they could scarcely be restrained from firing
upon them. The plan, however, of the sargeant, was to have his men
remain silent in their places of concealment till the muskets of the
savages were discharged, that their own fire might be more effectual,
and opposition less formidable.
Their suspense was not of long duration. The Indians, in a body,
cautiously approached, till within a short distance; they then halted,
took deliberate aim, discharged their pieces upon inanimate _logs_, gave
the dreadful war-whoop, and instantly rushed forward with tomahawk and
scalping-knife in hand, to dispatch the living, and obtain the scalps of
the dead. As soon as they had collected in close order, more effectually
to execute their horrid intentions, the party of the sargeant, with
unerring aim, discharged their pieces, not on logs of wood, but
perfidious savages, not one of whom escaped destruction by the snare
into which they led themselves.
There must have been a touch of grim humor about that sargeant as well
as of cool courage.
Many instances are on record of those days of danger—where either in
battle or in the settlement of new countries, the cruel and crafty
red-man had to be encountered—where the minds of men have been thrown
from their balance by the sight of barbarities, or the suffering of
afflictions, which overthrow their shuddering reasons. Some men have
been called monomaniacs, from the fact of their restless and rankling
hatred of the race who had inflicted some great misery upon them or
theirs. But it is hardly strange that when they saw those savages behave
worse than tigers, they decided to treat them like wild beasts, and that
they were justified in the attempt to exterminate them. There must be
men in Minnesota, at this day, who are monomaniacs on the subject of the
red-skins. One of the most noted of these Indian haters was John
Moredock, of Kentucky; and these are the circumstances which made him
so, as given in a fine paper on the early settlers, in Harper's Magazine
for 1861:
Toward the end of the last century there lived at Vincennes a woman
whose whole life had been spent on the frontier. She had been widowed
four or five times by the Indians; her last husband, whose name was
Moredock, had been killed a few years before the time of which we speak.
But she had managed to bring up a large family in a respectable manner.
Now, when her sons were growing up, she resolved to better their
condition by moving "West." The whole of Illinois was a blooming waste
of prairie land, except in a few places where stood the trading-posts
built a hundred years before by the French.
The lower peninsula of Illinois was not of a nature to attract emigrants
when so much finer lands were to be found on the banks of the Great
River and its tributaries; nor was a land journey over that marshy
region, infested as it was by roving bands of savages, to be lightly
undertaken, when the two rivers furnished a so much more easy though
circuitous way to the delightful region beyond. Hence it was usual for a
company of those intending to make the journey to purchase a sufficient
number of pirogues, or keel-boats, in them descend the Ohio, and then
ascend the Mississippi to the mouth of the Kaskaskia, or any other
destined point. By adopting this mode of traveling all serious danger of
Indian attacks was avoided, except at one or two points on the latter
stream, where it was necessary to land and draw the boats around certain
obstructions in the channel.
To one of these companies the Moredock family joined itself—several of
the sons being sufficiently well-grown to take a part not only in the
ordinary labors of the voyage but in any conflict that might occur. All
went well with the expedition until they reached the rock known as the
"Grand Tower" on the Mississippi, almost within sight of their
destination. Here, supposing themselves to be out of danger, the men
carelessly leaped on shore to drag the boats up against the current,
which here rushed violently around the base of the cliff. The women and
children, fifteen or twenty in number, tired of being cooped in the
narrow cabins for three or four weeks, thoughtlessly followed. While the
whole party were thus making their way slowly along the narrow space
between the perpendicular precipice on one hand, the well-known yell of
savage onset rung in their ears, and a volley of rifles from above
stretched half a dozen of the number dead in their midst, while almost
at the same moment a band of the painted demons appeared at each end of
the fatal pass. The experienced border men, who saw at a glance that
their condition was hopeless, stood for one moment overwhelmed with
consternation; but in the next the spirit of the true Indian fighter
awoke within their hearts, and they faced their assailants with hopeless
but desperate valor.
The conflict that ensued was only a repetition of the scene which the
rivers and woods of the West had witnessed a thousand times before, in
which all the boasted strength and intelligence of the whites had been
baffled by the superior cunning of the red-men. "Battle Rock," "Murder
Creek," "Bloody Run," and hundreds of similar names scattered throughout
our land, are but so many characters in that stern epitaph which the
aborigines, during their slow retreat across the continent toward the
Rocky Mountains, and annihilation, have written for themselves in the
blood of the destroying race. The history of Indian warfare contains no
passage more fearful than is to be found in the narrative of the
massacre at the Grand Tower of the Mississippi. Half armed, surprised,
encumbered with their women and children, and taken in so
disadvantageous a situation, being all huddled together on a narrow
sand-beach, with their enemies above and on either side, their most
desperate efforts availed not even to postpone their fate; and in the
space of ten minutes after the warning yell was heard, the mangled
bodies of forty men, women and children lay heaped upon the narrow strip
of sand. The conflict had ended in the complete destruction of the
emigrant company—so complete that the savages imagined not a single
survivor remained to carry the disastrous tidings to the settlements.
But one such wretched survivor, however, there was. John Moredock, who,
having fought like a young tiger until all hope of saving even a part of
the unfortunate company was lost, and who then, favored by the smoke,
and the eagerness of the assailants for scalps, and the plunder of the
boats, glided through the midst of the savages and nestled himself in a
cleft of the rocks. Here he lay for hours, sole spectator of a scene of
Indian ferocity which transformed his young heart to flint, and awoke
that thirst for revenge which continued to form the ruling sentiment of
his future life, and which raged as insatiably on the day of his death,
forty years later, when he had become a man of mark, holding high
offices in his adopted State, as it did when crouching among the rocks
of the Grand Tower; and, beholding the bodies of his mother, sisters and
brothers mangled by the Indian tomahawk, he bound himself by a solemn
oath never from that moment to spare one of the accursed race who might
come within reach of his arm; and especially to track the footsteps of
the marauding band who had just swept away all that he loved on earth,
until the last one should have paid the penalty of life for life.
How long he remained thus concealed he never knew; but at length, as the
sun was setting, the Indians departed, and John Moredock stepped forth
from his hiding-place, not what he had entered it, a brave,
light-hearted lad of nineteen, the pride of a large family circle and
the favorite of a whole little colony of borderers, but an orphan and an
utter stranger in a strange land, standing alone amidst the ghastly and
disfigured corpses of his family and friends. He had hoped to find some
life still lingering amidst the heaps of carnage; but all, all had
perished. Having satisfied himself of this fact, the lonely boy—now
transformed into that most fearful of all beings, a thoroughly desperate
man—quitted the place, and, guiding himself by the stars, struck across
the prairie toward the nearest settlement on the Kaskaskia, where he
arrived the next morning, bringing to the inhabitants the first news of
the massacre which had taken place so near their own village, and the
first warning of the near approach of the prowling band which had been
for several months depredating, at various points along that exposed
frontier, in spite of the treaties lately made by their nations with the
Federal Government.
John Moredock was by nature formed for a leader in times of danger, and
his avowed determination to revenge the massacre of his friends and
kindred by the extirpation of the murderous band coincided so exactly
with the feelings of the frontiersmen, that, in spite of his lack of
previous acquaintance, he in a few days found himself at the head of a
company of twenty-five or thirty young men, whose lives had been spent
in the midst of all kinds of perils and hardships, and who now bound
themselves to their leader by an oath never to give up the pursuit until
the last one of the marauding band engaged in the attack at Grand Tower
should be slain.
Stanch as a pack of blood-hounds this little company of avengers ranged
the frontier from the Des Moines to the Ohio, now almost within reach of
their victims, and now losing all trace of them on the boundless
prairies over which they roamed, unconscious of the doom by which they
were being so hotly but stealthily pursued. Once, indeed, the whites
came up with their game on the banks of a tributary of the Missouri, a
hundred and fifty miles beyond the utmost line of the settlements; but
as the Indians, though unsuspicious of any particular danger, had
pitched their camp in a spot at once easy to defend and to escape from,
and as Moredock wished to destroy and not to disperse them, he forbore
striking a partial blow, and resolved rather to postpone his revenge
than to enjoy it incompletely.
Fortune, however, seemed to repay him for this act of self-restraint by
presenting the very opportunity he had sought, when, a few weeks
afterward, he discovered the whole gang of marauders encamped for the
night on a small island in the middle of the Mississippi. After a hasty
consultation with his companions, a course of procedure was determined
upon which strikingly displays both the monomaniacal tendency of the
leader and the desperate ascendancy he had acquired over his followers.
This was nothing less than to shut themselves up on that narrow sand-bar
and to engage the savages in a hand-to-hand conflict—a conflict from
which neither party could retreat, and which must necessarily end in the
total destruction of one or the other. A most desperate undertaking
truly, when we reflect that the numbers of the combatants were about
equal, and that to surprise an Indian encampment was next to impossible.
But John Moredock, and, probably, more than one of his companions, were
monomaniacs, and considerations of personal danger never entered into
their calculations. Revenge, not safety, was their object, and they took
little thought of the latter when the opportunity of compassing the
former was presented.
Slowly and stealthily, therefore, the canoes approached the island when
all sounds there had ceased, and the flame of the camp-fire had sunk
into a pale-red glow, barely marking the position of the doomed party
among the undergrowth with which the central portion of the little isle
was covered. The Indians, confiding in their natural watchfulness,
seldom place sentinels around their camps; and thus Moredock and his
band reached the island without being discovered. A few moments sufficed
to set their own canoes as well as those of the Indians adrift, and
then, with gun in hand and tomahawk ready, they glided noiselessly, as
so many panthers, into the thicket, separating as they advanced so as to
approach the camp from different quarters. All remained still as death
for many minutes while the assailants were thus closing in around their
prey, and not a twig snapped, and scarcely a leaf stirred in the thick
jungle through which thirty armed men were making their way in as many
different directions, but all converging toward the same point, where a
pale glimmer indicated the position of the unsuspected savages. But
though an Indian camp may be easily approached within a certain
distance, it is almost impossible, if there be any considerable number
of them, to actually strike its occupants while asleep. As savages,
roaming at large over the face of the continent without fixed
habitations, and relying upon chance for the supply of their few wants,
they know nothing of that regularity of habit which devotes certain
fixed portions of time to the various purposes of life, but each one
eats, sleeps or watches, just as his own feelings may dictate at the
moment, without any regard to established usages of time or place. Hence
the probability of finding all the members of an Indian party asleep at
the same time is small indeed.
On the present occasion two or three warriors, who were smoking over the
embers, caught the alarm before the assailants had quite closed in.
Still the surprise gave the white men a great advantage, and half a
dozen of the savages were shot down in their tracks before they
comprehended the meaning of the hideous uproar, which suddenly broke the
midnight stillness as Moredock and his company, finding their approach
discovered, rushed in upon them. This fatal effect of the first volley
was a lucky thing for the adventurers; for the Indians are less liable
to panics than almost any other people, and they closed with their
assailants with a fury that, combined with their superior skill in
nocturnal conflict, would have rendered the issue of the struggle a very
doubtful matter had the number of combatants been more nearly even. As
it was, the nimble warriors fought their way against all odds to the
point where their canoes had been moored. Here, finding their expected
means of flight removed, and exposed upon the naked sand-beach, the
survivors still made desperate battle until all were slain except three,
who plunged boldly into the stream, and, aided by the darkness,
succeeded in reaching the main land in safety.
Twenty-seven of those engaged in the massacre at the Grand Tower had
been destroyed at a single blow. But three had escaped from the bloody
trap, and while these lived the vengeance of John Moredock was
unsatisfied. They must perish, and he determined that it should be by
his own hand. He therefore dismissed his faithful band, and thenceforth
continued the pursuit alone. Having learned the names of the three
survivors he easily tracked them from place to place, as they roamed
about in a circuit of three or four hundred miles. Had the wretches
known what avenger of blood was thus dogging their tracks, the whole
extent of the continent would not have afforded space enough for their
flight, or its most retired nook a sufficiently secure retreat. But
quite as relentless Moredock pursued his purpose, and but few even of
his acquaintances knew the motive of his ceaseless journey along the
frontiers from Green Bay to the mouth of the Ohio, and far into the
unsettled wastes beyond the Mississippi.
At length, about two years after the massacre of his family at the
Tower, he returned to Kaskaskia, having completed his terrible task, and
bearing the scalp of the last of the murderers at his girdle.
Moredock lived to be a popular and leading man in his State, an
office-holder, a kind neighbor and beloved head of a family, yet he
never relaxed in his hatred of the race who had poisoned the fountain of
youthful hope for him.