You might properly ask here: “What became of the friendly Indians while the hostiles were on the warpath?” Some of them forgot their friendly feelings and, like the whisky victim, when they got a taste of blood, they wanted more! They were all forced by the hostiles to don their war paint and breech-cloth, and go with them against the whites, and they were wise enough to know that it was folly to resist. Their main object was to prevent the wholesale murder of the captives, for when hostilities opened, they knew if they did not go, every woman and child in the captive camp would be murdered; and the friendlies would be blamed as much as the hostiles themselves.
MRS. EASTLICK AND CHILDREN.
CHAPTER XII.
MRS. EASTLICK AND FAMILY.
The note of alarm sounded throughout the neighborhood and without a moment’s warning hurried preparations were made for the exodus. Women and children and a few household goods were loaded into wagons and a start made for a place of safety. Indians suddenly appeared and commenced an indiscriminate fire upon the terror-stricken refugees.
The individual cases of woman’s heroism, daring, bravery, cunning and strong-willed self-sacrifice, could be recounted by the score, and in some instances are past belief. Their achievements would be considered as pure fiction but for our own personal knowledge. Many of the real occurrences would seem like legends, when the father had been murdered and the mother left with two, three and even five and six children to care for, and if possible save them from the ferocity of the painted red devils, whose thirst for blood could seemingly not be satiated. One noted case was the Eastlick family, and this was only one of a hundred. Eleven men of the party had already been killed, and Mr. Eastlick among the number. The women with their children were scattered in all directions in the brush, to escape if possible the inevitable fate in store for them if caught. The Indians shouted to them to come out from their hiding places and surrender and they should be spared. The remaining men, thinking perhaps their lives might be saved if they surrendered, urged their wives to do so, and the men would, if possible, escape and give the alarm. Thus, without a word or a look lest they should betray the remaining husbands, were these women driven from their natural protectors and obliged to submit to the tender mercies of their hated red captors. The supposed dead husbands watched the receding forms of their devoted wives, whom in all likelihood they never would see again. Burton Eastlick, the fifteen-year-old boy, could not endure the thought of leaving his mother to this uncertain fate, and he followed her, but she persuaded him, for the sake of his fifteen-months-old baby brother, to leave her and try and make his escape, carrying the little one with him. And how well did he execute his mission.