On Monday morning Captain Young again went out with a small party to bury the dead, and many of them were interred near the spot where they fell; while others, after the men got tired of digging graves, were merely covered with bark and leaves, and left on the spot to be food for the wolves, which some of the bodies unquestionably became, as Jones sought for that of his brother on Tuesday, and found nothing but the crushed remains of some bones.
In 1852, a young man in the employ of Mr. Burns exhumed one of these skeletons with the plough. It was found near the surface of the earth, on the bank of the river. The skull was perforated with a bullet-hole, and was in a remarkable state of preservation, although it had been in the ground uncoffined for a period of seventy-one years! It was placed in the earth again.
Immediately after the news of the massacre was spread, the people from Standing Stone and other places gathered at Fetter's; and on the Tuesday following a party of nearly one hundred men started in pursuit of the Indians. Colonel Albright was solicited to accompany this force with his command and march until they overtook the enemy; but he refused. The men went as far as Hart's Sleeping Place, but they might just as well have remained at home; for the savages, with the scalps of the scout dangling from their belts, were then far on their way to Detroit.
When the firing took place, it was plainly heard at the fort; and some of the men, fully convinced that the scout had been attacked, asked Colonel Albright to go out with his command to their relief. He merely answered by saying that he "knew his own business."
For his part in the matter, he gained the ill-will of the settlers, and it was very fortunate that his time expired when it did. The settlers were not much divided in opinion as to whether he was a rigid disciplinarian or a coward.
Men, arms, and ammunition, in abundance followed this last outrage; but it was the last formidable and warlike incursion into the Juniata Valley.
OLD BRIDGE NEAR PETERSBURG.