In consequence of this occurrence, I again left my course, bearing to the left, and came upon the head waters of Squaw run, and kept down the run the remainder of that day.
During the day it rained, and I was in a very deplorable situation; so cold and shivering were my limbs, that frequently, in opposition to all my struggles, I gave an involuntary groan. I suffered intensely this day from hunger, though my jaws were so far recovered from the injury they sustained from the blows of the Indians, that wherever I could I procured grape vines, and chewed them for a little sustenance. In the evening I came within one mile of the Allegheny river, though I was ignorant of it at the time; and there, at the root of a tree, through a most tremendous night's rain, I took up my fifth night's lodgings; and in order to shelter my infant at much as possible, I placed him in my lap, and placed my head against the tree, and thus let the rain fall upon me.
On the sixth (that was Sabbath) morning from my captivity, I found myself unable, for a very considerable time, to raise myself from the ground; and when I had once more, by hard struggling, got myself upon my feet, and started upon the sixth day's encounter, nature was so nearly exhausted, and my spirits were so completely depressed, that my progress was amazingly slow and discouraging.
In this almost helpless condition, I had not gone far before I came to a path where there had been cattle traveling; I took the path, under the impression that it would lead me to the abode of some white people, and by traveling it about one mile, I came to an uninhabited cabin; and though I was in a river bottom, yet I knew not where I was, nor yet on what river bank I had come. Here I was seized with the feelings of despair, and under those feelings I went to the threshold of the uninhabited cabin, and concluded that I would enter and lie down and die; as death would have been to me an angel of mercy in such a situation, and would have removed me from all my misery.
Such were my feelings at this distressing moment, and had it not been for the recollection of those sufferings which my infant would endure, who would survive for some time after I was dead, I should have carried my determination into execution. Here, too, I heard the sound of a cow bell, which imparted a gleam of hope to my desponding mind. I followed the sound of the bell till I came opposite to the fort at the Six Mile Island.
When I came there, I saw three men on the opposite bank of the river. My feelings at the sight of these were better felt than described. I called to the men, but they seemed unwilling to risk the danger of coming after me, and requested to know who I was. I replied that I was one who had been taken prisoner by the Indians on the Allegheny river on last Tuesday morning, and had made my escape from them. They requested me to walk up the bank of the river for a while, that they might see if the Indians were making a decoy of me or not; but I replied to them that my feet were so sore that I could not walk.
Then one of them, James Closier, got into a canoe to fetch me over, and the other two stood on the bank, with their rifles cocked, ready to fire on the Indians, provided they were using me as a decoy. When Mr. Closier came near to the shore, and saw my haggard and dejected situation, he exclaimed, "who, in the name of God, are you?" This man was one of my nearest neighbors before I was taken; yet in six days I was so much altered that he did not know me, either by my voice or my countenance.
When I landed on the inhabited side of the river, the people from the fort came running out to the boat to see me; they took the child from me, and now I felt safe from all danger, I found myself unable to move or to assist myself in any degree; whereupon the people took me and carried me out of the boat to the house of Mr. Cortus.
Here, when I felt I was secure from the ravages and cruelties of the barbarians, for the first time since my captivity my feelings returned with all their poignancy. When I was dragged from my bed and from my home, a prisoner with the savages; when the in-human butchers dashed the brains of one of my dear children out on the door-sill, and afterward scalped him before my eyes; when they took and tomahawked, scalped, and stabbed another of them before me on the island; and when, with still more barbarous feelings, they afterward made a hoop, and stretched his scalp on it; nor yet, when I endured hunger, cold, and nearly nakedness, and at the same time my infant sucking my very blood to support it, I never wept. No! it was too, too much for nature. A tear then would have been too great a luxury. And it is more than probable, that tears at these seasons of distress would have been fatal in their consequences; for savages despise a tear. But now that my danger was removed, and I was delivered from the pangs of the barbarians, the tears flowed freely, and imparted a happiness beyond what I ever experienced before, or ever expect to experience in this world.
When I was taken into the house, having been so long from fire, and having endured so much from hunger for a long period, the heat of the fire, and the smell of the victuals, which the kindness of the people immediately induced them to provide for me, caused me to faint. Some of the people attempted to restore me and some of them put some clothes upon me. But the kindness of these friends would, in all probability, have killed me, had it not been for the providential arrival from down the river, of Major McCulley, who then commanded the line along the river. When he came in and saw my situation, and the provisions they were making for me, he became greatly alarmed, and immediately ordered me out of the house, from the heat and smell; prohibited my taking any thing but the whey of buttermilk, and that in very small quantities, which he administered with his own hands. Through this judicious management of my almost lost situation, I was mercifully restored again to my senses, and very gradually to my health and strength.