Boquet remained here two weeks, occupied with sending and receiving messengers who were charged with business relating to the restoration of the captives. At the end of this time, two hundred and six, the majority of them women and children, had been received into camp. An hundred more yet remained in the hands of the Indians. These they solemnly promised to restore in the spring, and, as the leafless forest, the biting blast, and occasional flurries of snow, reminded Boquet of the coming on of winter, he determined to retrace his steps to Fort Pitt.
These two weeks, during which the prisoners were being brought in, were filled with scenes of the most intense, and often painful excitement. Some of the captives had been for many years with the Indians, recipients of their kindness and love; others had passed from childhood to maturity among them, till they had forgotten their native language, and the past was to them, if remembered at all, but a half-forgotten dream. All of them—men, women and children—were dressed in Indian costume, and their hair arranged in Indian fashion. Their features, also, were bronzed by long exposure to the weather, so that they appeared to have passed more than half way to a purely savage state. As troop after troop came in, the eager looks and inquiries of those who had accompanied the army to find their long-lost families and kindred, made each arrival a most thrilling scene. In some instances, where the separation had only been for a short time, the recognition was simultaneous and mutual, and the short, quick cry, and sudden rush into each other's arms, brought tears to the eyes of the hardy soldiers. In others, doubt, agony, fear and hope, would in turn take possession of the heart, chasing each other like shadows over the face, as question after question was put, to recall some event or scene familiar to both, till at last a common chord would be touched, when the dormant memory would awake as by an electric shock, a flood of fond recollections sweep away all uncertainty, and the lost one be hurried away amid sobs and cries of joy. Sometimes the disappointed father or brother would turn sorrowfully away, and, with that hope deferred which maketh the heart sick, sadly await the arrival of another group. But the most painful sight was when a mother recognized her own child, which, however, in turn, persisted in looking on her as a stranger, coldly turning from her embrace, and clinging to its savage protector; or when a mutual recognition failed to awaken affection on one side, so entirely had the heart become weaned from its early attachments. In these cases, the joy of the captors knew no bounds; the most endearing epithets and caresses would be lavished on the whilome prisoner. But when they saw them taken away, torrents of tears attested their sincere affection and grief. The attitude of intense interest, and the exhibition of uncontrollable sorrow of these wild children of the forest, on one side, and, on the other, the ecstatic joy of the white mother as she folded her long-lost child in her arms, and the deep emotion of the husband as he strained his recovered wife to his bosom, combined to form one of the most moving, novel spectacles ever witnessed in the American wilderness.
One of the captive women had an infant, three months old, at her breast, born in the Indian's wigwam. A Virginia volunteer instantly recognized her as his wife, stolen from his log-cabin six months previous, and rushing forward he snatched her to his bosom, and flew with her to his tent, where, tearing off the savage costumes of both, he clothed them in their proper garments. After the first burst of joy was over, he inquired after his little boy, two years old, who was carried off at the same time she was made prisoner; but his wife could give no tidings of him. A few days after, another party of prisoners arrived, in which was a child whose appearance answered to the description of this little fugitive. The woman was sent for and the child placed before her. She looked at it a moment and shook her head. But the next instant the powerful maternal instinct triumphed, and, recognizing in the little savage before her her lost darling, she dropped her babe, and snatching him to her bosom, burst into a torrent of tears. The husband caught the babe from the ground, and the couple hurried away to his tent. The poor Indian mother watched their retreating forms, and then burying her head in her blanket, sobbed aloud. A scene equally affecting occurred between an aged mother and her daughter, who had been carried off nine years before, and adopted in a distant tribe. Though the latter had passed from childhood to womanhood in the forest, differing from other young squaws only in the tint of her skin, which her wild life could not wholly bronze, the eyes of the parent detected the features of her child in the handsome young savage, and calling her by name, she rushed forward to embrace her. The latter, having forgotten her name and language, and all her childhood's life, looked on wondering, and turned, frightened, to her Indian parent. The true mother tried in every way to recall the memory of her child, and awaken recognition, but in vain. At length, despairing of success, she gave way to the most passionate grief. Boquet had been a silent witness of the painful interview. Moved at the grief of the mother, he approached her, and asked if she could not recall some song with which she used to sing her child to sleep. Brightening at the suggestion, she looked up through her tears, and struck a familiar strain, with which she used to quiet her babe. The moment the ears of the maiden caught the sound, her countenance changed, and as the strain proceeded, a strange light stole over her features. All stood hushed as death, as that simple melody floated out through the forest, watching with intense interest the countenances of the two actors in this touching scene. The eager, anxious look of the mother, as she sang, and the rapidly changing expression of the captive's face as she listened, awoke the profoundest sympathy of Boquet's generous heart, so that he could hardly restrain his feelings. Slowly, almost painfully, the dormant memory awoke from its long sleep; at length the dark cloud was rent asunder, and the scenes of childhood came back in all the freshness of their early springtime, and the half-wild young creature sank in joy on her mother's bosom.
Some of the children had been so long with their captors that they regarded them as their true parents, crying bitterly at being separated from them. Stranger still, the young women had become so attached to their savage but kind husbands, that, when told they were to be given up to their white friends, they refused to go; and many of them had to be bound and brought as prisoners to camp. The promise that they should take their half-breed children with them, could not change their wishes. On the other hand, the Indians clung to them with a tenacity and fondness which made the spectators forget that they were gazing upon savages. It was pitiful to see their habitual stoicism give way so completely at the prospect of separation. They made no effort to conceal their grief; the chieftain's eye, which gleamed like his tomahawk in battle, now wept like a child's. His strong nature seemed wholly subdued; his haughty bearing changed to one of humility, as he besought the white men to treat his pale-face squaw tenderly. His wild life suddenly lost all its charms, and he hung round the camp to get a sight of her whom, though she was lost to him, he still loved. He watched near the log-building in which she was left, leaving it only to bring from the forests pheasants, wild pigeons, or some delicacy to lay at her feet. Some of the young captive wives refused to be comforted, and, using that sagacity they had acquired during their sojourn with the red-men, managed to escape from their white friends, and, joining their swarthy lovers, fled with them to the forest.
The American wilderness never before presented such a spectacle as was exhibited on the banks of the Muskingum. It was no longer a hostile camp, but a stage on which human nature was displaying its most noble, attractive traits; or, rather, a sublime poem, enacted in that lovely natural temple, whose burden was human affection, and whose great argument, the common brotherhood of mankind.
Boquet and his officers were deeply impressed. They could hardly believe their own eyes when they saw young warriors whose deeds of daring ferocity had made their names a terror on the frontier, weeping like children over their bereavement.
A treaty of peace having been concluded between the various tribes, Boquet, taking hostages to secure their good behavior, and the return of the remaining prisoners, broke up his camp on the 18th of November, and began to retrace his steps towards Fort Pitt. The leafless forest rocked and roared above the little army, as it once more entered its gloomy recesses; and that lovely spot on the banks of the Muskingum, which had witnessed such strange scenes, lapsed again into its primeval quiet.
MOODY, THE REFUGEE.
In about the central part of Sussex county, New Jersey, two miles south of the village of Newton, the county seat, are two ponds or bodies of water, which go by the name of the "Big" and "Little Muckshaw." The lower, or Little Muckshaw, loses itself, at its western extremity, in a marsh or swamp, which is almost impassable, except after a long drought. This vicinity possesses some considerable interest, from having been the haunt of one of those fiends in human shape, who preyed upon the substance of the patriotic citizens of the neighborhood during that gloomy period in our Revolutionary contest, when even the Father of his country was wrapped in despondency at the prospect for the future.
Bonnel Moody was a ruffian of the deepest dye, and possessed of all those qualities which constitute an accomplished freebooter and highwayman. He was cunning as a fox; energetic and determined in the pursuit of an object; void of all pity or remorse; avaricious as a miser; and with a brute courage which made him formidable in combat, he was a dangerous enemy in the midst of the inhabitants of Sussex county, as they learned to their cost during the war. His place of retreat, or rather, his lair—for it was more like the haunt of some wild beast than the abode of human beings—was on the west side of the swamp above mentioned, where nature seemed to have provided him with a retreat more impregnable than art could have furnished him. A point of land projects into the western side of the marsh, affording only a very narrow and difficult foothold for one man to pass between its base and an inlet of the pond which washes the foot of the rocks. The ledge then recedes in the shape of a crescent, forming a little cove, with water in front and rocks behind and above. About forty-five yards from this point is a huge rock, screened by overhanging trees and shrubs, in which is a cavern, where Moody and his gang of marauders found shelter when their deeds of rapine and murder had roused the inhabitants of the vicinity to rid themselves of the dangerous foe. This cavern is eighteen feet high in front, gradually receding until it meets the foundation at a distance of fifteen feet, and about fifty feet in length from north to south. Beyond this cavern the ledge again approaches the marsh, into which it projects, forming an elbow almost impossible to pass around, and on the opposite side it again recedes, presenting a bold and rugged aspect, heightened by the gloom of perpetual shade, numerous cavern-like fissures, and masses of rock which have fallen, from time to time, from the overhanging ledge. One of these is a large, flat slab, about ten feet long, six high, and between three and four feet thick, which has fallen in such a position as to leave a passage behind it of about a yard in width. The rocks above project over this slab, so as to shield it effectually from that quarter, and a half-dozen men might defend themselves behind this natural buckler against the attack of an army. Such was the haunt of Moody, and his congenial band of Tory cut-throats and murderers; and from here, like a flock of ravenous wolves would they issue, when opportunity offered, and lay waste and destroy all within their reach until danger threatened, when they would retreat to this natural fastness with their ill-gotten plunder, here to divide and secrete it. From the brow of the ledge, which rises nearly a hundred feet from the water, they had a fair view of every avenue to their hiding-place, and no one ever approached it alive except Moody and his associates, or perhaps some friend of theirs, with provision or information. There were those so lost to principle as to furnish this crew of land-pirates with the necessaries of life, and with accurate intelligence of every movement, on the part of the Americans, which occurred in the vicinity. Several attempts to capture the wretch were frustrated by these loyal friends. At one time, when a party, having tracked him for some distance, were about to spring upon him, he was alarmed by a negro in time to make his escape; and on another occasion a young woman mounted a horse and rode some twelve or fourteen miles, of a dark night, to warn him of a projected attack by a party of Whigs, who had determined to capture him at all hazards. One cold winter night he broke into the house of a Mr. Ogden, and after robbing it of every thing of any value, he took the old man out in the yard, and made him take an oath not to make known his visit until a sufficient time had elapsed for himself and his party to make their escape. Two or three men who were working for Mr. Ogden, and who slept in a loft up stairs, not feeling bound by the old man's oath, alarmed the neighborhood and commenced a pursuit. Their track was easily followed in the snow, and in the morning they came upon a camp where the marauders had slept over night, and where their fires were still burning. The chase was kept up until they reached Goshen, in the State of New York, where they recovered part of the plunder, but the rascals escaped. These expeditions in pursuit of the Tory wretch were called "Moody-hunting," and were followed up frequently with great energy.