At this time, Simon Girty was sitting on his horse near by, taking no part in the proceedings, but showing by his looks and manner that he enjoyed them fully as much as did the executioners themselves.
Happening to catch the eye of the renegade, Colonel Crawford asked him whether the Indians really intended to burn him at the stake. Girty answered with a laugh that there could be no doubt of it, and Crawford said no more. He knew that it was useless to appeal to him who was of his own race, for his heart was blacker and more merciless than those of the savages who were kindling the fagots at his feet.
The particulars of the burning of Colonel Crawford have been given by Dr. Knight, his comrade, who succeeded in escaping, when he, too, had been condemned to the same fate. These particulars are too frightful to present in full, for they could only horrify the reader.
Colonel Crawford was subjected to the most dreadful form of torture, the fire burning slowly, while the Indians amused themselves by firing charges of powder into his body. He bore it for a long time with fortitude, but finally ran round and round the stake, when his thongs were burned in two, in the instinctive effort to escape his tormentors.
The squaws were among the most fiendish of the tormentors, until the miserable captive was driven so frantic by his sufferings that he appealed to Girty to shoot him and thus end his awful sufferings.
This dying request was refused, and at the end of two hours nature gave out and the poor Colonel died.
Simon Girty assured Dr. Knight that a similar fate was awaiting him, and Knight himself had little hope of its being averted. A son of Colonel Crawford was subjected to the same torture, but, as we have stated, Dr. Knight effected his escape shortly afterward.
Simon Girty, the most notorious renegade of the West, remained with the Indians until his death. He became a great drunkard, but took part in the defeat and massacre of St. Clair's army in 1791, and was at the battle of the Fallen Timbers, three years later. Fearful of returning to his own kindred at the end of hostilities, he went to Canada, where he became something of a trader, until the breaking out of the war of 1812, when he once more joined the Indians and was killed at the battle of the Thames.