The Camden journal. [volume] (Camden, S.C.) 1836-1851, 1841-03-10
MISCELLANEOUS.
From the Ladies Companion.
THE WAR.WOMAN'S CREEK.

| IHE WAh-W OMhf$S ChLEfk.
In Georgia and North Carolina, ther1
is hardly river, creek, or stream, that ha
not connected with it some old lndiar
tradition. The title of the present sketch
is taken from one of these-1 believe one
of the principal tributaries of the Nata,
halee river, in the Cherokee nation, NORTH
Carolina. The Story, as told by the few
Indians remaining since the removal in
the fall of 1888. runs thus: az'r ~f- .r
Many years ago, IN the first settlement
of the country, a wandering party Of their
tribe attacked the house Of a sauatter
somewhere upon their borders duting .his
absence, and massacred all his children,
and left his wife covered with the mangfed
bodies of her butchered offspring, scalp
ed like them, and apparently dead She
was not, however, wounded so badly as
they had supposed; and no sooner did she
hear the sound of their retreating foot
steps, than disengaging herself from the
heap of slain, haggard, pale, and drenched
with her own and the blood of her chill
dren, she peered steadily from the door,
and, finding her enemies no longer in sight,
hastily extinguished the fire, which, be-
fore leaving, they had applied to her ca
bin, but which had, as yet, made very ht-
tie impression on the green logs of which
it was composed. Wiping from her eyes
the warm blood which was still reeking
from her scaIpless head, she directed her
agonized gaze to the bleeding and dis
figured forms of those who, scarce an
hour before, had been playing at the door,
and gladdening her maternal heart with
their merry laughter; and as she felt, In
the full sense of desolation, the last ray OF
hope die within her bosom, there stole
over her ghastly face all expression as sa-
wage as was ever worn by the ruthless
slayers of her innocent babes. Her eye
cleaned with the wild fury of the tigress
robbed of its young, as closing her cabin
carefully behind her, with countenance
animated by some desperate purpose, she
started off in the same path by which the
murderers had departed. Needless OF
her wounds and wasting blood, and lost
to all sense of hunger and fatigue in the
one absorbing and fell purpose which &C,
tuated her, she paused not upon the trail
of her foes until, at night, she came up
with them encamped at the side of the
creek, which is indebted to her for its pre-
sent name.
Emerging from the gloom Of the sur,
rounding darkness, on her hands ana
knees, She crept noiselessly towards the
fire, the blaze of which, as it fickered up
wards, discovered to her the PROSTATE
forms of the Indians, five in number, who,
overcome by an unusually fatiguing days
travel, were wrapped in deep sleep, with
their only weapons, their tomahawks, IN
their belts. Her own stealthily advancing
figure, as the uncertain light OF the burn
inc pine fell upon it with more or less dis
exposing its lineaments
cIotted with blood, and distorted by an
expression which her wrongs, and the
sight of the desolators of her hearth-stone,
exaggerated to a degree almost flend'sh;
and now shading all, save two cleaning
spectral eyes--was even more striking
than the swarthy faces which she glared
upon. Assuring herself that they were
fast asleep, she gently removed their toma-
hawks, and dropped all but one into the
stream. With this remaining weapon IN
her hand, and cool resolution in her heart,
she bent over the nearest enemy, and
lifting the instrument, to which her own
and her children's blood still adhered, with
one terrific and unerring blow. buried II
in the temple of its owner. The savage
moved no more than partly to turn upon
his side, gasped little, quivered a minute =
like an aspen, IS and sunk back to his former
position, quite dead. Smiling ghastly, II i
his rigid face, the desperate woman lef
him. and noiselessly as before despatched
all of the sleepers, but one, to that long
rest from which only the last trump car
awaken them. The last devoted victim
however, was aroused to a consciousness
of his situation by the death-strugg1ess o
his companions. He sprang to his feet
and felt for his weapon. 1t was not there
and one glance explaining every thing n
evaded eva the blow aimed at him by tht
brave and revengeful mother, seized from
the fire a burning brand. and with it sue
coded ln led partially in warding off the furiou
attack which followed. In little TIM