196 The Winning of the West 



mother who was a captive among the Indians might 

 lay down her life for her child; but if she could 

 not save it, and to stay with it forbade her own es- 

 cape, it was possible that she would kiss it good-by 

 and leave it to its certain fate, while she herself, 

 facing death at every step, fled homeward through 

 hundreds of miles of wilderness. 6 The man who 

 daily imperiled his own life would, if water was 

 needed in the fort, send his wife and daughter to 

 draw it from the spring round which he knew In- 

 dians lurked, trusting that the appearance of the 

 women would make the savages think themselves 

 undiscovered, and that they would therefore defer 

 their attack. 7 Such people were not likely to spare 

 their red-skinned foes. Many of their friends, who 

 had never hurt the savages in any way, had per- 



6 See Hale's " Trans- Alleghany Pioneers," the adventures 

 of Mrs. Inglis. She was captured on the head-waters of the 

 Kanawha, at the time of Braddock's defeat. The other in- 

 habitants of the settlement were also taken prisoners or 

 massacred by the savages, whom they had never wronged in 

 any way. She was taken to the Big Bone Lick in Kentucky. 

 On the way her baby was born, but she was not allowed to 

 halt a day on account of this incident. She left it in the In- 

 dian camp, and made her escape in company with "an old 

 Dutch woman." They lived on berries and nuts for forty 

 days, while they made their way homeward. Both got in 

 safely, though they separated after the old Dutch woman, in 

 the extremity of hunger, had tried to kill her companion that 

 she might eat her. When Cornstalk's party perpetrated the 

 massacre of the Clendennins during Pontiac's war (see Stew- 

 art's Narrative), Mrs. Clendennin likewise left her baby to 

 its death, and made her escape ; her husband had previously 

 been killed and his bloody scalp tied across her jaws as a gag. 



1 As at the siege of Bryan's Station. 



