APPENDIX.
An account of the destruction of a part of the British Army, by the Indians, at a place called the Devil's Hole, on the Niagara River, in the year 1763.
It is to be regretted that an event of so tragical a nature as the following, should have escaped the pens of American Historians, and have been suffered to slide down the current of time, to the verge of oblivion, without having been snatched almost from the vortex of forgetfulness, and placed on the faithful page, as a memorial of premeditated cruelties, which, in former times, were practised upon the white people, by the North American Savages.
Modern History, perhaps, cannot furnish a parallel so atrocious in design and execution, as the one before us, and it may be questioned, even if the history of ancient times, when men fought hand to hand, and disgraced their nature by inventing engines of torture, can more than produce its equal.
It will be observed in the preceding narrative, that the affair at the Devil's Hole is said to have happened in November, 1759. That Mrs. Jemison arrived at Genesee about that time, is rendered certain from a number of circumstances; and that a battle was fought on the Niagara in Nov. 1759, in which two prisoners and some oxen were taken, and brought to Genesee, as she has stated, is altogether probable. But it is equally certain that the event which is the subject of this article, did not take place till the year 1763.
In the time of the French war, the neighborhood of Forts Niagara and Sclusser, (or Schlosser, as it was formerly written,) on the Niagara river, was a general battle-ground, and for this reason, Mrs. Jemison's memory ought not to be charged with treachery, for not having been able to distinguish accurately, after the lapse of sixty years, between the circumstances of one engagement and those of another. She resided on the Genesee at the time when the warriors of that tribe marched off to assist in laying the ambush at the Devil's Hole; and no one will doubt her having heard them rehearse the story of the event of that nefarious campaign, after they returned.
Chronology and history concur in stating that Fort Niagara was taken from the French, by the British, and that Gen. Prideaux was killed on the 25th of July, 1759.
Having obtained from Mrs. Jemison a kind of introduction to the story, I concluded that if it yet remained possible to procure a correct account of the circumstances which led to and attended that transaction, it would be highly gratifying to the American public, I accordingly directed a letter to Mr. Linus S. Everett, of Buffalo, whose ministerial labor, I well knew, frequently called him to Lewiston, requesting him to furnish me with a particular account of the destruction of the British, at the time and place before mentioned. He obligingly complied with my request, and gave me the result of his inquiries on that subject, in the following letter:—