In turn the band into whose merciless hands poor John had fallen told of the exciting times along the border, of burning and killing both by night and by day. They told, too, of much powder and much lead which the Indians could obtain at Detroit, and two of them exhibited brand new rifles. While they were anxious to see the “witch” destroyed, they said, they did not wish to go to Pipe’s town as they were on their way to a fruitful source of plunder.
As John heard and understood a considerable part of the conversation, a determination to escape or die in the attempt rapidly grew within him. And when he heard an agreement reached that he should be turned over to the Delawares, while the Shawnees continued on their way, he set his mind intently upon the problem of getting away, or making an effort at least, let the cost be what it might.
The Shawnees turned John over to the Delawares, after binding him securely, with many a kick and cuff. They particularly denounced him as a “forked-tongued witch,” and worked themselves into such passions of hatred that the prisoner was in imminent danger of being killed then and there.
With his hands tied behind him, and led and dragged by a long rope of rawhide about his neck, the captive was taken in charge by the Delawares, and the two Indian bands set off in different directions. The mission of the Shawnees, as has been stated, John never learned; but he well knew the destination of the five young Delawares, and a lump of pain and bitterness grew big in his throat as he thought of the cowardice and wretched injustice of it all.
CHAPTER XXI—THE BURNING OF THE CABIN
Indian troubles along the border were perhaps never worse in the history of the Northwest territory than in this year (1792) when Return Kingdom and John Jerome daily lived surrounded by dangers, the true, awful extent of which they little realized.
The scalping knife was never sharper, seldom bloodier. The torch was put to cabin after cabin. At mid-day and at midnight the flames which consumed the scattered evidences of civilization west of the Ohio river leaped skyward. The fierce war-whoop rang defiantly from Detroit south to the settlements in Kentucky and no white man was safe. Harmless traders, and peaceable hunters as well as settlers were murdered and their scalps hung high on the lodges of the Delawares, Shawnees, Chippewas, Wyandots, and all the tribes between the Wabash river and the Allegheny mountains.
And all the while the British at Detroit were urging the Indians on, and all the while the authorities of the American government were urging moderation on Wayne’s part and trying hopelessly to bring about peace.
Some peace commissioners who were sent to treat with the Indians were at first received kindly, but without warning, a few days later, slain.
News traveled far less rapidly in those days than now. A family might at midnight hear the redskins’ dreadful yells and die fleeing from the fierce savages, even while flames devoured their home. But neighbors only a few miles distant would continue to dwell in supposed security, knowing nothing of the outrage, and so only the more readily fall victims of the same ferocious Indian band a little later.