“O nothing! only the devil is to pay among the Shawnees again.”
“How did you know we were here?”
“I seen you go, and I can tell you, as I just now told you, you must do this courting at home, or in some safer place than this.”
Kingman concluded that the advice of the ranger was good, and arose at once.
Whether the storm of war would not have reached our settlement or not it is difficult to tell. But the smouldering fire among the frontier was fanned into a raging flame by the perpetration of one of the greatest outrages that ever disgraced the American history. In March, 1782, Colonel Daniel Williamson and his command inhumanly massacred over a hundred of the peaceful Moravian Indians. These had long been such warm friends to the whites that they had incurred the displeasure of their own people thereby, and their murder was therefore entirely unprovoked and without the shadow of excuse.
Colonel Williamson sowed the wind and others reaped the whirlwind.
CHAPTER XIII.
REAPING THE WHIRLWIND.
A few days subsequent to the massacre of the Moravian Indians, Abe Moffat made his appearance at the village, and reported their slaughter. For days nothing else was referred to, and the minister, Edwards, was so heartbroken that he started at once and alone through the wilderness to satisfy himself of the full extent of horrors.
The distance to the scene of the massacre was great, and it was a week’s journey to go and return; but an impetus, such as seldom influence the motives of any one, impelled him forward. He arrived upon the ground late at night. With a silent and cautious tread the divine emerged from the forest and walked through the stricken village.
There was a faint moon overhead that threw a ghastly light upon the scene, and the ripple of the muddy Tuscarora, as it flowed darkly by, was the only sound that disturbed the solemn stillness. All at once, and unconsciously to himself, he came upon the edge of the pit containing the slaughtered bodies. At sight of the putrid Indians, piled promiscuously together, and rendered doubly woful by the moonlight streaming down upon them, a sudden faintness overcame him, and ere he could withdraw, he fainted and swooned away.