Lafayette Daily Courier
Tuesday, November 15, 1859
OLD SETTLERS
"The next summer after writing the letter published in our last number,
we find the following entry made by our journalist:
July 14, 1827
A report reached here yesterday by a messenger dispatched from Osborn's
prairie, that the Pottowatomie, Miami and Kickapoo Indians, were
massacring the white population on Tippecanoe River near the Pretty
Prairie, and on Wild Cat and Wea creeks, and that they were hourly
expected at Shawnee Prairie, where the inhabitants were gathering into
forts, and making preparations to repel their murderous attack.
We were advised that prudence dictated that our neighborhood should also
fortify forthwith.
A general panic seized the people hereabout, a majority of whom were in
favor of gathering into a fort as quick as possible, but others, used to
frontier life and Indian alarms, and among them my father, thought it
best to first send out a few scouts to reconnoiter and report the actual
state of things. Accordingly my father, eldest brother, and Mr. R---
accompanied the messenger on his return to Osborn's neighborhood.
Without assembling together, the neighborhood awaited their return.
Mother, thinking that Mrs. R---, (who was lief at home with two little
children during her husband's absence) would be alarmed for her and her
children's safety, sent her word to come down and bring her two little
boys and stay with us until her husband returned. But Mrs. R. returned
in answer to mother's kind invitation, that "she made up her mind to
stay at home and defend her house to the last extremity--that she would
fight in blood shoe-mouth deep before she would leave her cabin to be
burned by the redskins."
I thought Mrs. R--- possessed such true grit, that I certainly had pluck
enough to go into the water melon patch and get some melons. So I told
the family that I would slip through the corn field and bring in a few
melons for us to eat. Mother at first remonstrated against my going,
but finally consented, on condition that I would be prudent, and keep
amongst the growing corn, going and returning. Just as i had reached
the patch and was stooping to pull a melon, bang! went a rifle about
thirty yards distant in the corn. I straightened up--clear miss,
thought I, a stupid, bewildered sensation came over me for a moment.
But the thought that the enemy would soon be on me with tomahawk and
scalping knife, dispelled the stupor that momentarily bound me, and I
instantly sprang out into the growing corn and made for home with all
possible speed, meeting mother half way. She had heard the rifle, and
run to the rescue, without any weapon to screen me except a mother's
impulsive heart.
Mrs. R--- also heard the gun, and supposed that the work of death had
already commenced in the neighborhood. But her intrepid spirit was
rather intensified than depressed by the proximity of danger, and her
husband's axe, which she had brought in from the wood pile, looked as
though it was ready and willing to be sunk to the helve in the skulls of
half a dozen Indians.
During the afternoon it was ascertained that one of our neighbors had
discharged his gun at a squirrel in our field, and that he knew nothing
of my being in the melon patch at the time, nor of the panic produced by
the sound of his gun.
This morning our scouts returned, and brought the news that the Indians
were peaceable, that no depredations had be committed, and that the
story and alarm originated in this manner: A man who owned a claim on
Tippecanoe River, near Pretty Prairie, fearing some one of the numerous
land hunter, that were constantly scouring the country, might enter the
land he had settled upon, before he could raise the money to buy it,
seeing one day a cavalcade of land hunters riding in the direction of
his claim, mounted his horse and dashed off at full speed to meet them,
swinging his hat and shouting at the top of his voice, "Indians!
Indians! The woods are full of Indians, murdering and scalping all
before them!" They paused a moment, but as the terrified horseman still
urged his jaded animal, and cried, "help, Longlois--Cicots, help," they
turned and fled like a troop of retreating cavalry, hastening to the
thickest settlement and giving the alarm, which spread like fire amongst
the stubble, until the whole frontier regions were shocked with the
startling cry.
The squatter who fabricated the story and perpetrated the false alarm,
took a circuitous route and returned home that evening; and while others
were busy building temporary block houses, and rubbing their guns to
meet the Indians, he was quietly gathering up money, slipped down to
Crawfordsville and entered his land, to which he returned again,
chuckling in his sleeve, and mentally soliloquising--"there is a
Yankee trick for you--done up by a Hoosier." INCOG
**Wouldn't you love to know who that squatter was?? I certainly would!!
Adina.