Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1883-09-24
FAMOUS ESCAPES FROM IN
DIANS.

DR.. Edward Eggleston's profusely
illustrated paper in the September
Century on "Indian War in the Col
onies," recounts the following eX-
ploits:
ssStories of marvellous and ingen-
ious escapes were the romance of
the colonies, and such adventures
date back to the earliest Indian war
of Virginia, where man and his
wife who had been spared in the
wholesale slaughter found the oppor-
tunity while the Indians were dancing
for Joy over the acquisition of a
white mans boat that had drifted
ashore. These captives got into a
canoe, and soon afterwards surprised
their friends in the settlements, who
had believed them to be dead.
Very likely this was the escape of
Anthony Bracket and his wife in
Maine. They were left to follow on
after their captors, who were eager
to reach plundering party in time
to share in the spoil. Brackets wife
found broken bark canoe, which
she mended with needle and thread !;
the whole family then put to sea in
this rickety craft, and at length
reached Black Point, where they got
on board vessel. A little lad of
eleven years, named Eames, taken in
Phillips war, made his way thirty
miles to the settlements. Two sons
of the famous Hannah Bradley, pre-
viously mentioned, effected an ingen-
ious escape, lying all the first day in
a hollow log and using their provis-
ions to make friends with the dogs
that had tracked them. They jour-
neyed in extreme peril and suffering
nine days, and one of them fell down
with exhaustion just as they were
entering white settlement. A girl
in Massachusetts,, after three weeks
of captivity, made bride of bark,
and, catching horse, rode all night
through the woods to Concord. Mrs.
Dean, taken at Oyster River, in 1894,
was left with her daughter in charge
of an old Indian while the rest fin
ished their work of destruction. The
old fellow asked his prisoner what
would cure a pain in his head. She
recommended him to drink some rum
taken from her house. This put him
to sleep and the woman and her
child got away. Another down east
captive, with the fitting name of
Toogood, while his captor during an
attack on settlement was disentang-
ling a string with which to tie him,
| jerked the Indians gun flom under
his arm, and leveling it at his head
got away.
Escaping Indians endured great
hardships. One Bard, taken in
Pennsylvania, lived nine days upon
few buds and four snakes. Mrs.
Inglis, captured in the Valley of
Virginia, escaped in company with a
German woman from place far
down the Ohio. After narrowly
avoiding discovery and recapture,
they succeeded in ascending the
south bank of the Ohio for some
| hundreds of miles. When within a
few days travel of settlements they
| were so reduced by famine that the
German woman, enraged that she
had been persuaded to desert the
Indian flesh pots, and crazed with
hunger, made an unsuccessful attack
upon her companion with cannibal
intentions.
The most famous of all the escapes
of New England captives was that of
Hannah Dustin, Mary Neff and a
boy, Samuel Leonardson. The three
were carried off. with many others,
in 1897, in the attack on Haverhill,
Mrs. Dustin's infant child having
been killed by the Indians. When
the captors had separated, the party
to whom the two women and the boy
were assigned encamped on an island
in the Merrlmac river. At midnight
the captives secured some hatchets
and killed ten Indians-two men,
two women and six children-one ia
vorite boy, whom they had meant
to save, and one badly wounded wo-
man escaping. After they had left the
camp the fugitives remembered that
nobody in the settlements would be-
lieve, without evidence, that they
had performed so redoubtable an ac-
ton; they therefor returned and
scalped the Indians, after which they