While Dunbar had lived, squaw man, though he was, he was the leader of the Indians among whom he resided, else they would never have permitted his erecting a pretentious fortress in the midst of their humble tepees of hides and poorly constructed log cabins. At his death the leadership devolved on his eighteen-year-old daughter, “Black Agnes,” his widow being a poor, inoffensive creature, a typical Indian drudge.
“Black Agnes” was even darker complexioned than her father, but was better looking, having fine, clear cut features, expressive dark eyes which flashed fire, although she was much below medium height, in fact, no bigger than a twelve-year-old child. She wore her hair in such a tangled way that her eyes, lean cheeks and white throat were half hidden by the masses of her sable tresses. She usually attired herself in a blue coat and cape, a short tan skirt trimmed with grey squirrel tails, and long Indian stockings. She was in miniature a counterpart of Miriam Donsdebes, the beautiful heroine of one of the chapters in this writer’s book “South Mountain Sketches.”
While it may have given the Senecas added cause to repeat their jibe of “old women” at the Lenni-Lenapes, for not avenging Dunbar’s death, it was a case of living on sufferance anyway, and foolish to have attacked superior numbers. The Senecas always had white allies to call on for arms and ammunition, while from the first, the Delawares were a proscribed people, slated to be run off the earth and exterminated.
During this lull, following the Scotchman’s murder, which the Senecas would have doubtless have disavowed, an embassy appeared at the Dunbar stronghold to ask “Black Agnes’” hand in marriage with a young Seneca warrior named Shingaegundin, whom the intrepid young girl had never seen. While it would have been extremely politic for “Black Agnes” to have accepted, and allied herself with the powerful tribe that had wronged her people, she sent back word firmly declining.
After the emissaries departed through the gate of the stockade, she turned to her warriors, saying, in the metaphorical language of her race: “The sky is overcast with dark, blustering clouds,” which means that troublesome times were coming, that they would have war.
The embassy returned crestfallen to Shingaegundin, who was angry enough to have slain them all. Instead, he rallied his braves, and told them that if he could not have “Black Agnes” willingly, he would take[take] her by force, and if she would not be a happy and complaisant bride, he would tie her to a tree and starve her until she ceased to be recalcitrant.
The bulk of the Monseys having departed from the valleys on both sides of the Susquehanna, to join others of their tribe at the headwaters of the Ohe-yu, left the Dunbar clan in the midst of an enemy’s country, so that it would look like an easy victory for Shingaegundin’s punitive expedition.
“Black Agnes” had that splendid military quality of knowing ahead of time what her adversaries planned to do–whether “second sight” from her Scotch blood, or merely a highly developed sense of strategy, matters not. At any rate, she was ready to deal a blow at her unkind enemies. Therefore she posted her best marksmen along the rocky face of the South Mountains, on either side of Fourth Gap. Behind these grey-yellow, pulpit-shaped rocks, the tribesmen crouched, ready for the oncoming Senecas. “Black Agnes” herself was in personal command inside the stockade, where she was surrounded by a courageous bodyguard twice her size. The women, old men and children, were sent to the top of the mountain, to about where Zimmerman’s Run heads at the now famous Zimmerman Mountain-top Hospice. At a signal, consisting of a shot fired in the air by “Black Agnes” herself, the fusillade from the riflemen concealed among the rocks was to begin, to make the Fourth Gap a prototype of Killiecrankie.
In turn the entrance of the Senecas into the defile was to be announced by arrow shot into the air by a Monsey scout who was concealed behind the Raven’s Rock, the most extensive point of vantage overlooking the “Gap.”
When “Black Agnes” saw the graceful arrow speed up into space, she again spoke metaphorically, “The path is already shut up!” which meant that hostilities had commenced, the war begun.