The Shasta courier., 1867-07-06
SHASTA COURIER
HEROIC WOMEN OF AMERICA.

In Georgia and North Carolina there i,
hardly river, creek, or stream that has
not connected with it some old Indian ira
dltlon. The title of the present sketch j.
taken from one of these-we believe one O.
the principle tributaries of Natahalee river
IN the Cherokee nation, North Carolina
The story, as told by the few Indians re
naming since the removal in the Fall O
1888, runs thus:
Many years ago, in the first settlement Of
the country, wandering party of their tribe
attacked the house OF squatter somewhere
upon their borders during his absence, anC
massacred all his children, and left his wife
covered with the mangled bodies of hel
butchered offsprlngs scalped like them, anC
apparently dead. She was not, however
wounded so badly as they supposed, and nc
sooner did she hear the sound of their re
treating footsteps, then disengaging herself
from the heap of slain, haggard, pale, and
drenched with her own and the blood of heI
children, she peered steadily from the door
and finding her enemies no longer in sight
hastily extinguished the fire, which, before
leaving, they bad applied to her cabin, but
which had as yet made very little impression
on the green logs of which it was composed
Wiplng from her eyes the warm blood
still reking from her scalpess head, she
directed her agonized gaze to the bleeding
and disfgured forms of those who scarce an
hour before were playing at the door, and
gladdenlng her material heart with their
merry laughter, and as she felt, in the full
sense OF her desolation, the last ray of hope
die within her bosom, there stole over her
CHASTITY face an expression as savage 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 counte.
nance 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 actuated
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 present name.
Emerging from the gloom of the surround
ing darkness, on her hands and knees she
noselessly crept toward the fire, the blaze of
which, as it fickered upward, discovered to
her the PROSTATE forms of the Indians, who,
overcome by an unusually fatiguing days
travel. were wrapped in deep sleep, with
their only weapons, their tomahawks, in
their belts.
Her stealthilyadvancing figure, as the
uncertain light of the burning pile fell upon
it with more or less distinctness-now ex.
posing its lineaments, cotted with
blood and distorted by an expression which
her wrongs and the desolators of her hearth
stone exaggerated to degree almost fiendish:
and shading all save the 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 tomahawks.
and dropped all but one in the creek. 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 unerriug
blow buried it into the temple of the owner,
The savage moved no more than partly to
turn upon his side, gasped a little, quivered
a minute like an aspen, and sunk back to his
iormer position quite dead. Smiling ghastly
in his rigid face, the desperate woman left
him, and noiselessly as before isaatched
all the sleepers but one to that long rest
from which only the last trump can awake
them.
The last devoted victim, however, was
reused to a consciousness of his situation bv
the death struggles of his companions. He
sprang to his feet and felt for his weapon
1t was not there, and cne glance explaining
everything to him, he evaded the blow aimed
at him by the brave and revene eful mother.
seized from the fire burning brand and
with it succeeded partially in warding off
the furious attack which followed In
little time they fell struggling together, the
Indian desperately wounded and the unfor-
tuuate woman faint with the loss of blood
and her extraordinary exertion. Both were
too weak to harm each other now, and the
wounded savage only avaled his remaining
strength to crawl away
In this piteous plight the poor womaa re-
manned until near noon on the following dav,
when she was accidentally discovered by
party Of whites, to whom she told
her story and then died
After burying her on the spot, they made
some exertlons to overtake the fugitive
Indian, but unsuccessfully. He succeeded
in reaching his tribe, and from his tale the
little stream before mentioned was afterward
known among the Cherokees. and also bv the
pale faces, as the = War Woman Creek"
The instance of intropidity in woman
recorded in the above sketch furnishes re-
proof that the heroism of woman.
to whatever excesses of daring and even
ferocious courage it may lead her, has its
foundation in love- 1t was this "War
Woman's" love for her children that made
her exhaust the last energy of life which
had lost its motive and its charm in taking
on their murderers.
Under such circumstances it is difficult TO
imagine the extent to which woman's out
ragged affections will not carry her. Here
we see one of the gentle and devoted sex
losing all sense of danger, all feeling of com
passion, all regard to her own personal
safety, and her ultimate fate in the desire to
avenge the cruel murder of her children
The fact seems startling and almost incredi-
BILE; but it is corroborated by many other
. IL