Holmes County Republican. [volume] (Millersburg, Holmes County, Ohio) 1856-1865, 1857-06-04

He passed 1t too, and never crossed ii
again. Still the Indians were appalled,
by hearing of the braves slain in the fore It
and at their camp fires, by an arm which
they now SO fully believed to be the arm
of some avenging spirit, that they never
dreamed of conflict. The Silent Hunter
never lost their trail. Then they once
more burned their wigwams, and went
away forever from that country. And
when the last of the Shawanees had lanch-
ed his canoe upon the Ohio, Bill Smith
rose from amid the bushes on the shore,
and fired after the little bark.
Revenge was his monomania. When
he buried his wife and children, rash
and bloody resolution fixed itself in his
mind. 1t became madness. He never
more spoke to man, but silently and re-
morselessly haunted the trail of the Shaw
anees to slay every one that came within
the range of his far famed rife. Then af-
ther that Indian tribe had gono from its
ancient hunting grounds, he retired, mute
and alone, to the most inaccessible part of
the Green River Hills. There in shady
cleft, remote from the habitations of men,
he built himself hut, where, in solitary
quiet, he passed the remainder of his days.
He hunted to supply himself with food and
skins enough to exchange for powder and
shot, which an-old man at an out settlement
down on the Green river was accustomed
to supply him with. His life was protect
ed to the age of eighty-eight.
One day the old man of the settlement
was heard to say that something must
have happened to the Silent Hunter, for
he had not come as usual to fill his shot
bag and his powder-pouch. Bidding no
one follow him, he went away to the Green
River Mountains, and when he came back,
though many questioned, he said nothing
of where he had been. From that day,
however, no man ever saw the Silent Hun
ter. No one heard of his fate, but it be-
came dim tradition in that country that
his spirit was still among the mountains of
the Green river.
Not many years ago, however, Weber,
the hunter naturalist, started with COM
panion in search of game among the Green
River Hills. After wandering for many
lays among their solitudes,~ they came to
he dwelling of an old trapper, living alone
with the dogs-an eremite of the forest,
iull of its traditions, and familiar with all
he spots they haunted, He said that
hear that place lay under black oak, the
yraye of mighty hunter. He had been a
mysterious inhabitant of those mountains,
md his resting-bed was marked by stone.
lie had chosen it himself years before he
lied. 1t was near a spring of which ne
had drank and an old man had buried him,
though no one had since visited the grave.
Webber offered the trapper some money if |
ne would lead them to the spot; but he
and refused, though at length,
with visible trepidation, consented TO guide
them within sight of it. a..
He walked before them for some time,
among cliffs and trees, and over streams,
md through hollows, till, from bluff emf
renee they looked down on narrow wild
plain. Over the surface of this lay sprin-
sled what seemed to be number of flat |
'ocks, but were in reality stone sarcophaiga,
,r graves, which are to be found in thou
ands, sometimes covering miles of ground
n the southern part of Kentucky and por
ions of Tennessee. The people who used
his curious mode of sepulturc are now ex-
inct. They existed long tefore the Indian
before the red skins hunted
trough those woods and savannas. Their
backgrounds are all that remain of them.
They were, apparently, pigmies, for the
raves are not, on an average, moro than
hree feet in length. Some have imagined
hat these were the tombs of their children;
ut the children of the Aztec nation, in
his case, must have died by thousands
then they were just about three feet high,
nd the older people must have been burn
d or secretly inferred.
In one Of these curious scpulchers the
ody of Bill Smith was discovered. 1t
;as a sarcophagus sunk in the earth al
lost eighteen inches deep, by the same in
7idth. The bottom and sides were lined
nth flat unhewn stones, and one of a simi-
lr kind was laid over the top. No ce-
nent of any kind had been used. The ex-
lorers examined the gravc-they even
isturbed the remains, bu. they laid them
gain in their places of rest, and left once
lore to his solitary repose the Silent Hun
er of the Green River Hills.
What a dark mournful story! How
range and checkered life! 1t was the
nth of this man to his early love, and the
Ifection of his heart to her children, that
lade the terrible, silent, restless being he af
,rward became. But he was not in his
ature wicked. During the latter part of
is life his mind was shaken by remem-
rance of that melancholy day when Mat
g and her little ones had been buried by
is hands in the ''Vale of Pines.,'
n. 4 |