Allegheny Episodes / Folk Lore and Legends Collected in Northern and Western Pennsylvania

by Henry W. Shoemaker

He was too intoxicated to indicate his pleasure, if he felt any, at the arrival of the prisoners. In front of where he sat were the embers of a campfire, as the weather–it was early in March–was still very cold. He had the prisoners lined up in front of him beyond the coals, while he squatted on his rug, eyeing them as carefully as his bleared, inebriated vision would permit. Calling to several of his henchmen, he had them fetch fresh wood and pile it beside the embers, as if a big bonfire was to be started later.[later.]

Just as they were in the midst of bringing the wood, a group of six stalwart Indians rushed on the scene, literally dragging a rather good-looking, dark-haired white woman of about thirty years, whose face showed every sign[sign] of intense terror. From words that he could understand, and the gestures[gestures], Gibson made out that this woman had belonged to another batch of prisoners, but before she could be delivered at Shannopin’s Town had somehow made her escape.

To deliver a body of prisoners short one of the quota had brought some criticism on Cooties, and he was in an ugly frame of mind when she was brought before him. There was an ash pole near the wood pile, to which prisoners were tied while being interrogated, and Cooties ordered that the unfortunate woman should be strapped to it. The Indian warriors, needless to say, made a thorough job and bound her to it securely, hand and foot.

Though she saw twelve or more white persons, the bound woman never said a word, and the captives from Fort Robinson and other places were too terror-stricken to address a word to her. They stared at her with that look of dumb helplessness that a flock of sheep assume when peering through the bars of their fold at a farmer in the act of butchering one of their number. Sympathy they may have felt, but to express it in words would have availed nothing.

Once tied to the tree, Cooties ordered that the wood be piled about her feet. It was ranked until it came almost to her waist. Then the cruel warrior turned to his victim, saying to her in German, “It’s going to be a cold night; I think you can warm me up very nicely.”

Then he grinned and looked at each of his other prisoners menacingly. Silas Wright in his excellent “History of Perry County” thus quotes Hugh Gibson in describing the scene then enacted: “All the prisoners in the neighborhood were collected to be spectators of the death by torture of a poor, unhappy woman, a fellow-prisoner who had escaped, and been recaptured. They stripped her naked, tied her to a post and pierced her with red hot irons, the flesh sticking to the irons at every touch. She screamed in the most pitiful manner, and cried for mercy, but the ruthless barbarians were deaf to her agonizing shrieks and prayers, and continued their horrid cruelty until death came to her relief.”

After this fiendish episode, the Fort Robinson prisoners were sick at heart and in body for days, and most of them would have dropped in their tracks if they had been compelled to resume the long, tedious western journey.

It appeared that in the foray on Fort Robinson one young Indian had been slain; rumor among the Indians had it that he had been shot by mistake by a member of his own party. At any rate his parents, who lived near Cooties’ camp-ground, took his end very hard, and the squaw, who was Cooties’ sister, demanded the adoption of Hugh Gibson to take the place of her lost warrior son. This was a good point for Gibson, although the warrior’s father, Busqueetam, acted very coldly towards him, and he feared he might some day, in a fit of revenge and hate, take his life. However, the young white man, by making every effort to help his Indian foster parents, who were very feeble and unable to work, won their confidence, and also that of Cooties, who requisitioned him to do all sorts of errands and work about the encampment.

One day Busqueetam was in a terrible state of excitement. His spotted pony, the only equine in the camp, and the one that he expected to give to Cooties to ride with chiefly dignity through the portals of the Fort had strayed off in the night.

Most of the Fort Robinson and other prisoners who had been brought in from various directions since their arrival, to make a great caravan of captives to impress the commanders at Shannopin’s Town, like a Roman triumph, were allowed their liberty during the daytime. At night they were all tied together as they lay about the campfire, not far from the charred stump of the ash pole where the poor white woman had been burned to death, and where the small Indian dogs were constantly sniffing. There were about twenty-five prisoners, all told, and with these were tied about half a dozen guards, and all lay down in a circle about the fire, guards and prisoners sleeping at the same time. It was a different system from that of the whites, for if a prisoner got uneasy or tried to get up, he or she would naturally pull on the leather thongs, and rouse the guardians and other prisoners. The thongs were around both wrists, so a prisoner was tied to the person on either side.