"The alarm soon spread, but the elasticity of a Delaware's step had carried the party away into the mountains.
"Mr. Slocum was absent at the time of the capture, and upon returning at night learned the sad news.
"The family's trials did not end here. Miner, who is ever in sympathy with the early annals of Wyoming, thus depicts the scenes which occurred afterwards:
"'The cup of vengeance was not yet full. December 16th, Mr. Slocum and Isaac Tripp, his father-in-law, an aged man, with William Slocum, a youth of nineteen or twenty, were feeding cattle from a stack in the meadow, in sight of the fort, when they were fired upon by Indians. Mr. Slocum was shot dead; Mr. Tripp wounded, speared, and tomahawked; both were scalped. William, wounded by a spent ball in the heel, escaped and gave the alarm, but the alert and wily foe had retreated to his hiding-place in the mountain. This deed, bold as it was cruel, was perpetrated within the town plot, in the centre of which the fortress was located. Thus, in little more than a month, Mrs. Slocum had lost a beloved child, carried into captivity; the doorway had been drenched in blood by the murder of a member of the family; two others of the household had been taken away prisoners; and now her husband and father were both stricken down to the grave, murdered and mangled by the merciless Indians. Verily, the annals of Indian atrocities, written in blood, record few instances of desolation and woe equal to this.'"
"In 1784, after peace had settled upon the country, two of the Slocum brothers visited Niagara, in hopes of learning something of the whereabouts of the lost sister, but to no purpose. Large rewards were offered, but money will not extract a confession from an Indian.
"Little Frances all this time was widely known by many tribes of Indians, but she had become one of them, hence the mystery which shrouded her fate.
"The efforts of the family were untiring. Several trips were made westward, and each resulted in vain. A large number of Indians of different tribes were convened, in 1789, at Tioga Point, to effect a treaty with Colonel Proctor. This opportunity seemed to be the fitting one, for one visit could reach several tribes, but Mrs. Slocum, after spending weeks of inquiry among them, was again obliged to return home in sorrow, and almost despair.
"The brothers took a journey in 1797, occupying nearly the whole summer, in traversing the wilderness and Indian settlements of the west, but to no purpose. Once, indeed, a ray of hope seemed to glimmer upon the domestic darkness, for a female captive responded to the many and urgent inquiries, but Mrs. Slocum discovered at once that it was not her Frances. The mother of the lost child went down to the grave, having never heard from her daughter since she was carried away captive.
"In 1826, Mr. Joseph Slocum, hearing of a prominent Wyandot chief who had a white woman for a wife, repaired to Sandusky, but was disappointed when he beheld the woman, who he knew to a certainty could not be Frances. Hope had become almost abandoned, and the family was allowing the memory of the lost girl to sink into forgetfulness, when one of those strange freaks of circumstances which seem so mysterious to humanity, but which are the ordinary actions of Infinity, brought to light the history and the person of the captive girl of Wyoming.
"Colonel Ewing, who was connected with Indian service, had occasion to rest with a tribe on the Wabash, when he discovered a woman whose outlines and texture convinced him that she must be a white woman, though her face was as red as any squaw's could be. He made inquiries, and she admitted that she had been taken from her parents when she was young, that her name was Slocum, and that she was now so old that she had no objections to having her relations know of her whereabouts.