Captain Dunning went up the valley from Carlisle with a posse, determined to overtake and punish the savages if possible. Before his arrival, however, some five or six men conceived the rash idea of giving the Indians battle, and attacked them while in a barn. The attack was an exceedingly ill-judged affair, for but few Indians were wounded, and none killed. They bounded out with great fury, and shot the entire party but one, who managed to escape. Those who were killed were Alexander Logan and his son John, Charles Coyle, and William Hamilton. Bartholomew Davis made his escape, and at Logan's house overtook Captain Dunning and his command. Judging that the Indians would visit Logan's for plunder, Captain Dunning ambuscaded his men, and in a very short time the savages came, boldly, and entirely unconscious of impending danger. They were greeted by a volley from Dunning's men, and but a short engagement followed. Three or four Indians fell at the first fire; and the rest, dismayed, fled in consternation toward the mountain, and were not pursued.
Thus it will be perceived that a large number of most cruel and cold-blooded murders were committed by these marauders before they were checked, simply because in treachery and cunning the white men could not cope with them.
CHAPTER VI.
TUSCARORA VALLEY — ITS EARLY SETTLERS — ITS MOUNDS AND ITS FORTS — MASSACRES, ETC.
Tuscarora Path Valley, as it was formerly called, is one of the most fertile and beautiful within the Juniata range. It embraces an extent of probably thirty miles in length, beginning in Franklin county, and ending at the river at Perrysville, in Juniata county. The name of "Path" was given to it in consequence of the old western Indian path running through it nearly its entire length.
Tuscarora, in its day, must have been a famous place for the Indians. Its great natural advantages, and the abundance of game it contained, must alone have rendered it an attractive place, independent of the fact that it was the regular highway between the East and the West, where the warrior, the politician, and the loafer, could lie in the
"Umbrageous grots and caves of cool recess,"
before the wigwam door, and hear from travellers all the news astir worthy of their profound attention.
Tradition, however, speaks of battles among them; for they would fight among themselves, and that, too, with all the relentless fury that characterized their warfare with the whites. But of these battles said to be fought in the valley the tradition is so vague and unsatisfactory that we omit any further mention of them.
There are two mounds in the valley,—one of them near its head, the other some twelve or fourteen miles from its mouth, at or near a place, we believe, now called Academia. Some persons who examined this mound about twenty years ago tried to make it appear that it had been enclosed in a fortification, as they averred that they had discovered fragments of a wall. This was probably a wrong conclusion, as a burial-place would not likely be within a fortification. If the mound was once enclosed within a wall for protection, it was an act that stands without a parallel in Indian history.