The answer was a hearty laugh. "Hear mother!" said Robert. "We have just got a hundred and two acres—more than we shall ever want, or know what to do with, and now she would have me go and claim fifty-eight acres more!"
"Take my advice, my boy," repeated his mother, "or you may live one day to regret it."
"Well, I cannot see how I can ever regret not getting more than we can possibly make use of." And so the matter ended. The fifty-eight acres were never claimed, and there was, I think, a very general impression that asking for our just rights in the case would have a very grasping, covetous look. How much wiser five-and-twenty years have made us!
* * * * *
During my sojourn of two months at Chicago, our mother often entertained me with stories of her early life and adventures. The following is her history of her captivity among the Senecas, which I have put in the form of a tale, although without the slightest variation from the facts as I received them from her lips, and those of her sister, Mrs. William Forsyth, of Sandwich (C.W.), the little Maggie of the story.
CHAPTER XXII.
THE CAPTIVES.
It is well known that previous to the war of the Revolution the whole of the western portion of Pennsylvania was inhabited by different Indian tribes. Of these, the Delawares were the friends of the whites, and, after the commencement of the great struggle, took part with the United States. The Iroquois, on the contrary, were the friends and allies of the mother-country.
Very few white settlers had ventured beyond the Susquehanna. The numerous roving bands of Shawanoes, Nanticokes, etc., although at times professing friendship with the Americans and acting in concert with the Delawares or Lenape as allies, at others suffered themselves to be seduced by their neighbors, the Iroquois, to show a most sanguinary spirit of hostility.
For this reason, the life of the inhabitants of the frontier was one of constant peril and alarm. Many a scene of dismal barbarity was enacted, as the history of the times testifies, and even those who felt themselves in some measure protected by their immediate neighbors, the Delawares, never lost sight of the caution required by their exposed situation.