THE BIG BROTHER
A Story of Indian War
by
GEORGE CARY EGGLESTON
Author of "How to Educate Yourself," Etc.
Illustrated
THE DOG CHARGE.]
New YorkG. P. Putnam's SonsFourth Avenue and Twenty-Third Street1875.
Copyright.G. P. Putnam's Sons.1875.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I. Page.SINQUEFIELD 7
CHAPTER II.THE STORMING OF SINQUEFIELD 17
CHAPTER III.SAM'S LECTURE 28
CHAPTER IV.SAM FINDS IT NECESSARY TO THINK 38
CHAPTER V.SAM'S FORTRESS 46
CHAPTER VI.SURPRISED 61
CHAPTER VII.CONFUSED 67
CHAPTER VIII.WEATHERFORD 71
CHAPTER IX.WEARY WAITING 83
CHAPTER X.FIGHTING FIRE 93
CHAPTER XI.IN THE WILDERNESS 104
CHAPTER XII.AN ALARM AND A WELCOME 118
CHAPTER XIII.JOE'S PLAN 124
CHAPTER XIV.THE CANOE FIGHT 130
CHAPTER XV.THE BOYS ARE DRIVEN OUT OF THE ROOT FORTRESS 143
CHAPTER XVI.WHERE IS JOE? 159
CHAPTER XVII.A FAMINE 163
CHAPTER XVIII.WHICH ENDS THE STORY 173
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
Page.
THE DOG CHARGE _Frontispiece._
SAM'S PARTY 20
"WE'S DUN LOS'--DAT'S WHA' WE IS" 40
JUDIE ON THE RAFT 49
THE PERILOUS LEAP 83
THE BIG BROTHER.
CHAPTER I.
SINQUEFIELD.
In the quiet days of peace and security in which we live it is difficultto imagine such a time of excitement as that at which our story opens,in the summer of 1813. From the beginning of that year, the CreekIndians in Alabama and Mississippi had shown a decided disposition tobecome hostile. In addition to the usual incentives to war which alwaysexist where the white settlements border closely upon Indian territory,there were several special causes operating to bring about a struggle atthat time. We were already at war with the British, and British agentswere very active in stirring up trouble on our frontiers, knowing thatnothing would so surely weaken the Americans as a general outbreak ofIndian hostilities. Tecumseh, the great chief, had visited the Creeks,too, and had urged them to go on the war path, threatening them, in theevent of their refusal, with the wrath of the Great Spirit. His appealsto their superstition were materially strengthened by the occurrence ofan earthquake, which singularly enough, he had predicted, threateningthat when he returned to his home he would stamp his foot and shaketheir houses down. Their own prophets, Francis and Singuista, hadpreached war, too, telling the Indians that their partial adoption ofcivilization, and their relations of friendship with the whites, weresorely displeasing to the Great Spirit, who would surely punish them ifthey did not immediately abandon the civilization and butcher thepale-faces. Francis predicted, also, that in the coming struggle noIndians would be killed, while the whites would be completelyexterminated. All this was promised on condition that the Indians shouldbecome complete savages again, quitting all the habits of industry andthrift which they had been learning for some years past, and fightingmercilessly against all whites, sparing none.
All these things combined to bring on the war, and during the springseveral raids were made by small bodies of the Indians, in which theywere pretty severely punished by the whites. Finally a battle was foughtat Burnt-corn, in July 1813, and this was the signal for the breakingout of the most terrible of all Indian wars,--the most terrible, becausethe savages engaged in it had learned from the whites how to fight, andbecause many of their chiefs were educated half-breeds, familiar withthe country and with all the points of weakness on the part of thesettlers. Stockade forts were built in various places, and in these thesettlers took refuge, leaving their fields to grow as they might andtheir houses to be plundered and burned whenever the Indians shouldchoose to visit them. The stockades were so built as to enclose severalacres each, and strong block houses inside, furnished additionalprotection. Into these forts there came men, women, and children, fromall parts of the country, each bringing as much food as possible, andeach willing to lend a hand to the common defence and the commonsupport.
On the 30th of August, the Indians attacked Fort Mims, one of thelargest of the stockade stations, and after a desperate battle destroyedit, killing all but seventeen of the five hundred and fifty people whowere living in it. The news of this terrible slaughter quickly spreadover the country, and everybody knew now that a general war had begun,in which the Indians meant to destroy the whites utterly, not sparingeven the youngest children.
Those who had remained on their farms now flocked in great numbers tothe forts, and every effort was made to strengthen the defences at allpoints. The men, including all the boys who were large enough to point agun and pull a trigger, were organized into companies and assigned toport-holes, in order that each might know where to go to do his part ofthe fighting whenever the Indians should come. Even those of the womenwho knew how to shoot, insisted upon being provided with guns andassigned to posts of duty. There was not only no use in flinching, butevery one of them knew that whenever the fort should be attacked theonly question to be decided was, "Shall we beat the savages off, orshall every man woman and child of us be butchered?" They could not runaway, for there was nowhere to run, except into the hands of themerciless foe. The life of every one of them was involved in the defenceof the forts, and each was, therefore, anxious to do all he could tomake the defense a successful one. Their only hope was in desperatecourage, and, being Americans, their courage was equal to the demandmade upon it. It was not a civilized war, in which surrenders, andexchanges of prisoners, and treaties and flags of truce, or evenneutrality offered any escape. It was a savage war, in which the Indiansintended to kill all the whites, old and young, wherever they could findthem. The people in the forts knew this, and they made theirarrangements accordingly.
Now if the boys and girls who read this story will get their atlases andturn to the map of Alabama, they will find some points, the relativepositions of which they must remember if they wish to understand fullythe happenings with which we have to do. Just below the junction of theAlabama and Tombigbee rivers, on the east side of the stream, they willfind the little town of Tensaw, and Fort Mims stood very near thatplace. The peninsula formed by the two rivers above their junction isnow Clarke County, and almost exactly in its centre stands the villageof Grove Hill. A mile or two to the north-east stood Fort Sinquefield.Fort White was several miles further west, and Fort Glass, afterwardscalled Fort Madison, stood fifteen miles south, at a point about threemiles south of the present village of Suggsville. On the eastern side ofthe Alabama river is the town of
Claiborne, and at a point about threemiles below Claiborne the principal events of this story occurred. Itwill not hurt you, boys and girls, to learn a little accurate geography,by looking up these places before going on with the story, and if I wereyour schoolmaster, instead of your story teller, I should stop here toadvise you always to look on the map for every town, river, lake,mountain or other geographical thing mentioned in any book or paper youread. I would advise you, too, if I were your schoolmaster, to add upall the figures given in books and newspapers, to see if the writershave made any mistakes; and it is a good plan too, to go at once to thedictionary when you meet a word you do not quite comprehend, or to theencyclopaedia or history, or whatever else is handy, whenever you readabout anything and would like to know more about it. I say I should stophere to give you some such advice as this, if I were your schoolmaster.As I am not, however, I must go on with my story instead.
Within a mile or two of Fort Sinquefield lived a gentleman namedHardwicke. He was a widower with three children. Sam, the oldest of thethree, was nearly seventeen; Tommy was eleven, and a little girl ofseven years, named Judith, but called Judie, was the other. Mr.Hardwicke was a quiet, studious man, who had come to Alabama fromBaltimore, not many years before, and since the death of his wife he hadspent most of his time in his library, which was famous throughout thesettlement on account of the wonderful number of books it contained.There were hardly any schools in Alabama in those days, and Mr.Hardwicke, being a man of education and considerable wealth, gave upalmost the whole of his time to his children, teaching them in doors andout, and directing them in their reading. It was understood that Samwould be sent north to attend College the next year, and meantime he hadbecome a voracious reader. He read all sorts of books, and as heremembered and applied the things he learned from them, it was a commonsaying in the country round about, that "Sam Hardwicke knows prettynearly everything." Of course that was not true, but he knew a good dealmore than most of the men in the country, and better than all, he knewhow very much there was for him yet to learn. A boy has learned the verybest lesson of his life when he knows that he really does not know much;it is a lesson some people never learn at all. But books were not theonly things Sam Hardwicke was familiar with. He could ride the worsthorses in the country and shoot a rifle almost as well as Tandy Walkerhimself, and Tandy, as every reader of history knows, was the mostfamous rifleman, as well as the best guide and most daring scout in thewhole south-west. Sam had hunted, too, over almost every inch ofcountry within twenty miles around, trudging alone sometimes for a weekor a fortnight before returning, and in this way he had learned to knowthe distances, the directions, and the nature of the country lyingbetween different places,--a knowledge worth gaining by anybody, andespecially valuable to a boy who lived in a frontier settlement. He wasstrong of limb and active as he was strong, and his "book knowledge," asthe neighbors called it, served him many a good turn in the woods, whenhe was beset by difficulties.
Sam's father was one of the very last of the settlers to go into a fort.He remained at home as long as he could, and went to Fort Sinquefield atlast, only when warned by an Indian who for some reason liked him, thathe and his children's lives were in imminent danger. That was on thefirst of September, and when the Hardwicke family, black and white, weresafely within the little fortress, there remained outside only twofamilies, namely, those of Abner James and Ransom Kimball, whodetermined to remain one more night at Kimball's house, two miles fromSinquefield. That very night the Indians, under Francis the prophet,burned the house, killing twelve of the inmates. Five others escaped,and one of them, Isham Kimball, who was then a boy of sixteen,afterwards became Clerk of Clarke County, where he was still living in1857.