tenant Ashly, who had been so
badly wounded that he was unable to ride alone. A heavy fall of rain
induced them to halt, and stripping the bark from some trees, they
formed a tolerable shelter from the storm, and remained there all
night. In the morning they were joined by another of the troops, when
their company consisted of six--Colonel Crawford and Doctor Knight,
who kept about an hundred yards in front--Captain Biggs and Lieutenant
Ashly, in the center; and the other two men in the rear. They
proceeded in this way about two miles, when a party of Delawares
suddenly sprang from their hiding places into the road, and making
prisoners of Colonel Crawford and Doctor Knight, carried them to the
Indian camp near to where they then were. On the next day the scalps
of Captain Biggs and Lieutenant Ashly, were brought in by another
party of Indians who had been likewise watching the road. From the
encampment, they were led, in company with nine other prisoners, to
the old Wyandot town, from which place they were told they would be
taken to the new town, not far off. Before setting out from this
place, Colonel Crawford and Doctor Knight were painted black by
Captain Pipe, a Delaware chief, who told the former, that he intended
to have him shaved when he arrived among his friends, and the latter
that he was to be carried to the Shawnee town, to see some of his old
acquaintance. The nine prisoners were then marched off in front of
Colonel Crawford and Doctor Knight, who were brought on by Pipe and
Wingenim,[11] another of the Delaware chiefs. As they went on, they
passed the bodies of four of the captives, who had been tomahawked and
scalped on the way, and came [244] to where the remaining five were,
in time to see them suffer the same fate from the hands of squaws and
boys. The head of one of them (John McKinley, formerly an officer in
one of the Virginia regiments) was cut off, and for some time kicked
about on the ground. A while afterwards they met Simon Girty and
several Indians on horseback; when Col. Crawford was stripped naked,
severely beaten with clubs and sticks, and made to sit down near a
post which had been planted for the purpose, and around which a fire
of poles was burning briskly. His hands were then pinioned behind him,
and a rope attached to the band around his wrist and fastened to the
foot of a post about fifteen feet high, allowing him liberty only to
sit down, or walk once or twice round it, and return t