"My brave companions, we must use the utmost caution, or this night may be our last. Should we not make some extraordinary exertions to defend ourselves, to-morrow's sun may find us sleeping never to wake. You are surprised, comrades, at my words, and your anxiety will not be lessened, when I inform you, that we have just passed our most inveterate foe, who, under the mask of pretended friendship you have witnessed, would lull us to security, and by such means, in the unguarded moments of our midnight slumber, without resistance, seal our fate."
The men with astonishment listened to this short harangue; and their surprise was greater, as not one of them had entertained the suspicion but they had just encountered friends. They all immediately resolved to enter into some scheme for their mutual preservation and destruction of their enemies. By the proposal of their leader, the following plan was adopted and executed:
The spot selected for their night's encampment was near a stream of water, which served to cover their rear. They felled a large tree, before which on the approach of night, a brilliant fire was lighted. Each individual cut a log of wood about the size of his body, rolled it nicely in his blanket, placed his hat upon the extremity, and laid it before the fire, that the enemy might be deceived, and mistake it for a man. After logs equal in number to the sargeant's party were thus fitted out, and so artfully arranged that they might be easily mistaken for so many soldiers, the men with loaded muskets placed themselves behind the fallen tree, by which time the shades of evening began to close around. The fire was supplied in fuel, and kept burning brilliantly until late in the evening, when it was suffered to decline. The critical time was now approaching, when an attack might be expected from the Indians; but the sargeant's men rested in their place of concealment with great anxiety till near midnight, without perceiving any movement of the enemy.
At length a tall Indian was discovered through the glimmering of the fire, cautiously moving toward them, making no noise, and apparently using every means in his power to conceal himself from any one about the camp. For a time his actions showed him to be suspicious that a guard might be stationed to watch any unusual appearance, who would give the alarm in case of danger; but all appearing quiet, he ventured forward more boldly, rested upon his toes, and was distinctly seen to move his finger as he numbered each log of wood, or what he supposed to be a human being quietly enjoying repose. To satisfy himself more fully as to the number, he counted them over a second time, and cautiously retired. He was succeeded by another Indian, who went through the same movements, and retired in the same manner. Soon after the whole party, sixteen in number, were discovered approaching, and greedily eyeing their supposed victims. The feelings of the sargeant's men can better be imagined than described, when they saw the base and cruel purpose of their enemies, who were now so near that they could scarcely be restrained from firing upon them. The plan, however, of the sargeant, was to have his men remain silent in their places of concealment till the muskets of the savages were discharged, that their own fire might be more effectual, and opposition less formidable.
Their suspense was not of long duration. The Indians, in a body, cautiously approached, till within a short distance; they then halted, took deliberate aim, discharged their pieces upon inanimate logs, gave the dreadful war-whoop, and instantly rushed forward with tomahawk and scalping-knife in hand, to dispatch the living, and obtain the scalps of the dead. As soon as they had collected in close order, more effectually to execute their horrid intentions, the party of the sargeant, with unerring aim, discharged their pieces, not on logs of wood, but perfidious savages, not one of whom escaped destruction by the snare into which they led themselves.
There must have been a touch of grim humor about that sargeant as well as of cool courage.
Many instances are on record of those days of danger—where either in battle or in the settlement of new countries, the cruel and crafty red-man had to be encountered—where the minds of men have been thrown from their balance by the sight of barbarities, or the suffering of afflictions, which overthrow their shuddering reasons. Some men have been called monomaniacs, from the fact of their restless and rankling hatred of the race who had inflicted some great misery upon them or theirs. But it is hardly strange that when they saw those savages behave worse than tigers, they decided to treat them like wild beasts, and that they were justified in the attempt to exterminate them. There must be men in Minnesota, at this day, who are monomaniacs on the subject of the red-skins. One of the most noted of these Indian haters was John Moredock, of Kentucky; and these are the circumstances which made him so, as given in a fine paper on the early settlers, in Harper's Magazine for 1861:
Toward the end of the last century there lived at Vincennes a woman whose whole life had been spent on the frontier. She had been widowed four or five times by the Indians; her last husband, whose name was Moredock, had been killed a few years before the time of which we speak. But she had managed to bring up a large family in a respectable manner. Now, when her sons were growing up, she resolved to better their condition by moving "West." The whole of Illinois was a blooming waste of prairie land, except in a few places where stood the trading-posts built a hundred years before by the French.
The lower peninsula of Illinois was not of a nature to attract emigrants when so much finer lands were to be found on the banks of the Great River and its tributaries; nor was a land journey over that marshy region, infested as it was by roving bands of savages, to be lightly undertaken, when the two rivers furnished a so much more easy though circuitous way to the delightful region beyond. Hence it was usual for a company of those intending to make the journey to purchase a sufficient number of pirogues, or keel-boats, in them descend the Ohio, and then ascend the Mississippi to the mouth of the Kaskaskia, or any other destined point. By adopting this mode of traveling all serious danger of Indian attacks was avoided, except at one or two points on the latter stream, where it was necessary to land and draw the boats around certain obstructions in the channel.
To one of these companies the Moredock family joined itself—several of the sons being sufficiently well-grown to take a part not only in the ordinary labors of the voyage but in any conflict that might occur. All went well with the expedition until they reached the rock known as the "Grand Tower" on the Mississippi, almost within sight of their destination. Here, supposing themselves to be out of danger, the men carelessly leaped on shore to drag the boats up against the current, which here rushed violently around the base of the cliff. The women and children, fifteen or twenty in number, tired of being cooped in the narrow cabins for three or four weeks, thoughtlessly followed. While the whole party were thus making their way slowly along the narrow space between the perpendicular precipice on one hand, the well-known yell of savage onset rung in their ears, and a volley of rifles from above stretched half a dozen of the number dead in their midst, while almost at the same moment a band of the painted demons appeared at each end of the fatal pass. The experienced border men, who saw at a glance that their condition was hopeless, stood for one moment overwhelmed with consternation; but in the next the spirit of the true Indian fighter awoke within their hearts, and they faced their assailants with hopeless but desperate valor.
The conflict that ensued was only a repetition of the scene which the rivers and woods of the West had witnessed a thousand times before, in which all the boasted strength and intelligence of the whites had been baffled by the superior cunning of the red-men. "Battle Rock," "Murder Creek," "Bloody Run," and hundreds of similar names scattered throughout