Life amongst the Indians Author:George Catlin Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. The first Indian I ever saw was in this wise. I have before told you that I was born in the beautiful and famed valley of Wyoming, which is on the... more » Susquehana Kiver, in the state of Pennsylvania. Not a long time after the close of the Eevolutionary war in that country, a settlement was formed in that fertile valley by white people, while the Indian tribes, who were pushed out, were contesting the right of the white people to settle in it. After having practised great cruelty on the Indian tribes, and been warned from year to year by the Indians, to leave it, it was ascertained one day, that large parties of Indians were gathered on the mountains, armed and prepared to attack the white inhabitants. The white men in the valley immediately armed, to the number of five or six hundred, and leaving their wives and children and old men in a rude fort on the bank of the river, advanced towards the head of the valley in search of their enemies. The Indians, watching the movements of the white men from the mountain tops, descended into the valley, and at12 " Wyoming Massacre." a favourable spot, where the soldiers were to pass, laid secreted in ambush on both sides of the road, and in an instant rush, at the sound of the war-whoop, sprang upon the whites with tomahawks and scalping-knives in hand, and destroyed them all, with the exception of a very few, who saved their lives by swimming the river. Amongst the latter was my grandfather on my mother's side, from whom I have often had the most thrilling descriptions. This onslaught is called in history, the " Wyoming Massacre." Some have called it a " treachery." It was a strategy—not a treachery—and strategy is one of the merits in the science of all warfare. After this victory, the Indians marched down the valle...« less