20 - Legend of Brady’s Hill. 
At the period of this adventure he lived on Chartier Creek, about 
twelve miles below Fort Pitt; a stream better known, however, to 
the pilots and keel-boatmen of modern days, by the significant name of 
*¢ Shirtee.”’ He died in 1796, soon after the close of the Indian war. 
A number of articles were published in the “ Blairsville Recorder,” a 
year or two since, detailing his adventures, which would make a most 
interesting volume. His father and a brother were both killed by 
Indians. I shall have occasion to refer to him again in the course 
of my visit. 
Legend of Britis 8 Hill. —I received the particulars of the fol- 
lowing story from one of the passengers in the coach, who had re- 
sided in the country several years, and had often heard it related. 
Samuel Brady, the hero of the following adventure, was over six 
feet in height, with light blue eyes, fair skin, and dark hair: he 
was remarkably strait, an athletic, bold, and vigorous backwoods- 
man, inured to all the toils and hardships of a frontier life, and had 
become very obnoxious to the Indians, from his numerous success- 
ful attacks on their war parties, and from shooting them in his hunt- 
ing excursions, whenever they crossed his path, or came within 
reach of his rifle; for he was personally engaged in more hazardous 
contests with the savages, than any other man west of the moun- 
tains, excepting Daniel Boone. He was in fact “an Indian hater,” 
as many of the early borderers were. This class of men appear 
to have been more numerous in this region, than in any other por- 
tion of the frontiers; and this doubtless arose from the slaughter 
at Braddock’s defeat, and the numerous murders and attacks on de- 
fenceless families that for many years followed that disaster. Brady 
was also a very successful trapper and hunter, and took more bea- 
vers than any of the Indians themselves. In one of his adventurous 
trapping excursions, to the waters of the Beaver River, or Maho- 
ning, which in early days so abounded with the animals of this spe- 
cies, that it took its name from this fact, it so happened that the In- 
dians surprised him in his camp, and took him prisoner. ‘To have 
shot or tomahawked him on the spot, would have been but a small 
gratification to that of satiating their revenge by burning him at a 
slow fire, in presence of all the Indians of their village. He was 
therefore taken alive to their encampment, on the west bank of the 
Beaver River, about a mile and a half from its mouth. After the 
usual exultations and rejoicings at the capture of a noted enemy, 
and causing him to run the gauntlet, a fire was prepared, near which 
