Wetzel, the Scout; or, The Captives of the Wilderness

by Edward Sylvester Ellis

He had only lowered his musket, and the barrel was still before his breast.

As the weapon whizzed through the air it was driven directly at Kingman’s body, but in its passage it encountered the gun-barrel, emitting a stream of sparks at the concussion, and glanced off several yards into the river, and fell with a loud splash.

“There, Long Tom, I didn’t want to kill you, but I had no choice. I feel sorry for you,” said Kingman, as he saw the savage clutching the sand in his agony.

He avoided looking at him, and rapidly passed on, hoping to get beyond so sickening a sight.

Had the savage been any other than a Shawnee, Kingman would have felt more pity for him; but he well knew that the whole trouble upon the frontiers was owing to this same tribe. In fact, it is a question whether a more villainous tribe of Indians ever existed upon the North American Continent then than the Shawnees. They had figured in many of the blackest tragedies of the “dark and bloody ground,” and their very name for a long time was one of the greatest terror to the settlers. There was no compact, however sacred, no treaty, however pledged, that they hesitated to violate.

Then first known, their hunting-grounds were in the everglades of Florida and the adjoining country. Here their savage, treacherous disposition became at last so unbearable to the other tribes that the Choctaws, Cherokees, and most powerful tribes of the South united together and swore eternal destruction to them.

The Shawnees stubbornly maintained their ground for a number of years, until, seeing that nothing but decimation or utter annihilation remained to them, they gathered together and left their hunting-grounds forever.

Journeying northward, they reached the Ohio in time, when they determined to settle. There were broad, waving prairies, and deep, glorious forests, where the deer and buffalo ranged in thousands, and bright, flashing rivers, in which the fish sported in myriads. The Wyandots (as friendly then, when a mighty nation, as now, when the miserable remnant of one) welcomed them, spread the deer-skin for them to sit upon, and smoked the calamut as the token of eternal friendship.

Here the Shawnees grew to be one of the most powerful tribes in the whole North-west, and at the same time their vindictive, blood-thirsty disposition seemed to increase. None were more active in the old French war, and none more difficult to bring into Wayne’s treaty, when forty years afterward the war on the frontiers was believed to have been brought to a close.

After the celebrated victory of Mad Anthony, the Shawnees remained peaceful for a dozen years, when they again broke out in the well-known war under their renowned Tecumseh. As this is a matter of history, it is not necessary further to refer to it here.