Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1891-09-16
THE SCALP LEGEND.
A Romance of a Settler in the
Beautiful CHARTERS Valley.
FATE OF THE PIONEERS FAMILY.
Spirits Are Seen to Wander by Night on
the Greek Banks.
SAD STORY OF AN INDIAN MASSACRE

There Is an uncanny local legend of the
lower end of the CHARTERS creek valley, near
Pittsburg, which is known to the older in
habitants of that section as ''The Scalp Le-
gend of the CHARTERS"
A mile or so up the creek the valley
opens out making beautiful pastoral ex-
panse of fertile bottom land. The view
over and upon this from the hilly heights at
the rear of Sheridan is lovely by day and
weird by night. The last named element
in the night scene is partially caused by
the Pickering gas fires from the wells in the
CHARTERS field.
of this section, and long before the days of
Indian warfare had ended, an adventursome
voyager ran his canoe into the mouth of
CHARTERS creek Attracted by its sylvan
scenery and the prospects of finding good
location to settle upon, he padded up
short distance, and then explored
further along the left bank as
he assembled. After particularly
examining the locality he chose and
marked out a ''tomahawk" claim, with fine
timber and water and southern exposure.
Hither, the next spring he came with his
wife, little boy and girl and a brother who
was slightly his Junior.
THE STORY OF A MASSACRE.
But one fateful evening in early summer,
the brothers returned from long and sue
eessful days hunt and found the cabin was
a smouldering heap of ruins. Partially in
the ashes were the charred, mangled and
scalped forms of the young wife and chill
dren. The Indians had evidently been gone
some hours. Controlling their agony as
best they could, the brothers tenderly re-
moved and sadly buried the remains of their
loved ones beneath an immense sycamore
upon the banks of little brook that ran
by their cabin and headed up in the
Sheridan hills. Then they left the
country, starting eastward to go over the
mountains, but never reached the settle
ments or were afterwards heard of, and it
was supposed that they were killed by some
wandering band of Indians. The only elew
to this pathetic bit of pioneer history that
they left was a letter written upon
birch bark enclosed in rude envelope of
the same texture and stuck in split sap
ling by the rivers edge, at the mouth of
the creek. This was fortunately found
plorers, who still later conveyed the intelli-
gence East.
But now comes the ghostly legacy of this
tragedy, which goes by the name of 'gThe
Scalp Legend of the CHARTERS" Concern
ing it it is affirmed by the country folk and
earlier settlers of this little valley, that on
some summer nights to this day the
shrieks of these murdered innocents
may be distinctly heard, and when storms
arise they are blended with the blood curd-
ling whoops of the painted savages. And
further and more awful still, that in the op-
pressiye silence of warm summer evenings
things strangely like the Ignus Fatuus or
Jack O. Lantern, may be observed to float
hither and thither over the scene of the
massacre, and to wander up and down the
banks of the little run between the hills
and the creek.
ONE SPOT WHERE SPIRITS WALK.
Some people have always stoutly main
tanned that these apparitions are the spirits
of the wife and children, as they 90 search
ing and vainly calling for help from hus-
band, brother and father Others have with
equal certainty held that they were nothing
but what is commonly known as Jack O.
Lanterns, drifting hither and thither upon
the wings of the moist evening breezes. But
the majority of the earliest settlers insist
that the original legend is sustained by the
Oldest, and therefore the most uncon-
trovertable testimony. This is, that
the spectral objects, which all unite
in saying seem to emit peculiar radi-
ance, two more golden than the other,
are nothing else but the tresses and
the scalps of the three murdered ones
These, they declare with bated breath, low
cred voice and superstitious terror, hover
about the place and steal through the mid
night air with q ghost-like uncertainty.
Whenever they drift from the shadows into
the moonbeams, or are revealed by the
lightning flashes, the tresses of the
mother and daughter, which were auburn,
shine with silvery golden radiance. The
hair is>upright, as if held in the barbarous
though unseen red hands of their slayers,
while from the pendant scalps beneath
drops of blood fall and stain the fowers