--part1_d55f5fad.24847fcd_boundary Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit --part1_d55f5fad.24847fcd_boundary Content-Type: message/rfc822 Content-Disposition: inline Return-Path: <[email protected]> Received: from rly-yb03.mx.aol.com (rly-yb03.mail.aol.com [172.18.146.3]) by air-yb01.mail.aol.com (v59.24) with SMTP; Mon, 31 May 1999 13:39:56 -0400 Received: from bl-11.rootsweb.com (bl-11.rootsweb.com [204.212.38.27]) by rly-yb03.mx.aol.com (vx) with SMTP; Mon, 31 May 1999 13:39:36 -0400 Received: (from [email protected]) by bl-11.rootsweb.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) id KAA29316; Mon, 31 May 1999 10:38:45 -0700 (PDT) Resent-Date: Mon, 31 May 1999 10:38:45 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <[email protected]> From: "Faith Keahey" <[email protected]> Old-To: <[email protected]> Subject: Peter Henry #2 Date: Mon, 31 May 1999 11:28:59 -0600 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 4.72.3110.1 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V4.72.3110.3 Resent-Message-ID: <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Resent-From: [email protected] X-Mailing-List: <[email protected]> archive/latest/931 X-Loop: [email protected] Precedence: list Resent-Sender: [email protected] Peter Henry's Account of his capture and other events Peter Henry of Clearfield Township, Butler Co, PA, gave me the following account of his being taken prisoner by the Indians and of his being rescued by a party that followed them, under the command of Captain Samuel Brady. Mr. Henry states that he was born in Northampton Cp and of German descent and that about the year 1778 or 1779 his father with him and the rest of the family moved into Westmoreland Co, Hempfield Twp, about 4 miles from Greensburg, PA. Westmoreland Co at this time was on the frontier part of PA and the Indians had began for some summers before that of committing depradations of the then frontier settlements of that county, in murdering, burning, stealing their horses and destroying their property and carrying off prisioners, etc., and my father's house and family did not escape their savage cruelty. It was, I think, in the summer of 1781 or 1782 that a party of 9 Indians came to my father's house just after breakfast. The dog barked and I opened the door and the youngest child in my arms, and as soon as I had opened the door and Indian took hold of me and the other pulled the child from me and took it by the legs and knocked its brains out against the wall. The others had rushed into the house, and killed my mother and the other of the two youngest children, and took me and my two sisters younger than me prisoners. My father had left home early that morning to Perry's Mill, five miles off. The Indians before they left the house took everything that they thought was worth taking that they could carry with them, bed, bed clothes, and all kind of clothing that wasin the house, a web of shirteen, flour salt, butter, frying pan, handsaw and auger, a rifle gun, a Bible and a prayer book, and a house of my father's that was out in the stable. They stipped the clothes all off my mother and little sisters they had killed, and took all along. They then drew the dead bodies of my mother and the children out of the house and burnt the house. The Indians put all on the horse that they got at father's that they could get fastened on, just as much as would lie on him, and the rest of their plunder they packed themselves, and was pretty full ladened when thy gathered up all they took with them. I do not now recollect my age when taken prisoner, but I suppose I was about 10 or perhaps 11 years old, my sisters, say one 9 and the other 7 that was prisoners. We had not got more than a half a mile when my youngest sister who they was leading by the hand continued to cry, calling for her mother, and one of the Indians took out his butcher knife and ran the child entirely through the body that I seen the point of the knife that came out its back. She sunk down at once. The Indian gave me a slap in the face and motioned for me to go on. My other sister was there crying a little. I told her to quit crying or the Indians would kill her to, she soon quit. They put moccassins on my sister and me. They travelled about 5 or 6 miles that day, being all heavy ladened and stopped before night a while, and stole seven horses that night and the one got at my father's was 8. They then the next morning divided the plunder on the horses, so that they rode all but one. They tool my sister and me on horse back with them. When the Indians left my father's, they took a homeward direction thinking, I suppose, if they could make their escape with what they had got there, they would be doing very well, with a chance of picking up horses on the way, which they did, and made the horses pack what they had done the day before. The following night they fettered the horses out to pasture and three of them broke off from them that night. The way the Indians fetter or are fastening them is they hold them back and ties their two forefeet together, say about 18 - 20 inches apart, so that they can step around slowly as to gather something to eat. We went all and crossed the Kiskiminetas River near where the town of Warren is now, in Armstrong County. Two of the Indians left us after we crossed the river. They took a more eastwardly than we done, and I seen nothing more of them. We took across the country, keeping more north, and keeping Kittanning for some miles on our left, as I afterwards understood, and crossed several small streams, and struck the Mahoning Creek a short distance above its mouth and came down to its mouth and encamped there on the upper side of the point between the mouth of Mahoning and the Allegheny River. The day that we got to the mouth of Mahoning we travelled a short distance. The Indians killed a near and two does that day, and they encamped early in the evening. They brought the meat of all to the camp that eveing, and some of them busily engaged in cutting the meat off the bones and drying it on a little rod or stick over the fire to make what the Indians call Jerk- dried meat to carry with them. The bones they boiled with flour and salt they got from my father's to make a great supper of soup. One of them was very expert in cooking and turning pan cakes. He had a long-handled pan that they took from my father's and he had the batter mixed up and would pour it into the pan, which was swimming in gravy and grease, as they had plenty of bear meat and fat. That night this Indian would swing round the cake in the pan - then he would throw it up and turn the cake out of the pan, and would catch the cake again in the pan and when it would fall back into the pan again, it would make the grease and fat fly all round, which afforded during the cooking operation a great deal of laughing and sport, as the mode of turning the cakes and making the grease fly round was likely new to them. One or two of them was sitting mending their moccassins near the fire, and the cook who suffered the most in the scalding scattered grease from the cook's exploits in turning the pancakes. Early in the evening the Indians brought a canoe into the mouth of Mahoning, either down the creek or from the river. I did not see it until it was there. They had six or seven small camp kettles in it. I did not hear where they came from. The day the Indians came to the mouth of the Mahoning, they cut several short forks or crutches to fix something like packsaddles. Having a saw along, they sawed up the sides of an old canoe, and they had something, I suppose, to fasten the sides to the crutches so as to make the packsaddle to lay on the horse's back, with a bag or quilt under it. In this way they intended to carry off all of their plunder, with 5 horses that they still had there. The horses they took up Mahoning Creek about a quarter or half a mile to the small bottom. There they fettered them. I rode one of the horses up to where they left them. After supper when they had their packsaddles made and their work done, but supper with them lasted a long time. They eat a while and quit and begin again, as I suppose it was the richest and most sumptuous supper they had got in a long time, or perhaps ever had in their lifetime. At a late hour, before they lay down, they had a dance. They danced around one man sitting that made some kind of music for them on a pan. They took hands some times and danced around. They had madde a great deal of noise that day in shooting and whooping when they killed the bear and two deers - they thinking, I suppose, that they were out of danger, little expecting that Captain Brady and 23 others was lying across the mouth of Mahoning from them, watching their movements. cont. --part1_d55f5fad.24847fcd_boundary--