The ravages committed by these
skulking parties of murderous braves were monotonous in their horror.
All along the frontier the people on the outlying farms were ever in
danger, and there was risk for the small hamlets and block-houses. In
their essentials the attacks were alike: the stealthy approach, the
sudden rush, with its accompaniment of yelling war-whoops, the butchery
of men, women, and children, and the hasty flight with whatever
prisoners were for the moment spared, before the armed neighbors could
gather for rescue and revenge.
In most cases there was no record of the outrage; it was not put into
any book; and, save among the survivors, all remembrance of it vanished
as the logs of the forsaken cabin rotted and crumbled.
Incidents of the War on the Frontier.
Yet tradition, or some chance written record kept alive the memory of
some of these incidents, and a few such are worth reciting, if only to
show what this warfare of savage and settler really was. Most of the
tales deal merely with some piece of unavenged butchery.
In 1785, on June 29th, the house of a settler named Scott, in Washington
County, Virginia, was attacked. The Indians, thirteen in number, burst
in the door just as the family were going to bed.
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