t was certain, after such a
massacre as that, that the Indians meant to destroy the settlements, and
kill all the white people without mercy.

In order to protect themselves and their families the settlers built
rude forts by setting pieces of timber endwise in the ground, and the
people hurried to these places for safety. Leaving their homes to be
burned, their crops to be destroyed, and their cattle to be killed or
carried off by the Indians, the settlers hastily got together what food
they could, and took their families into the nearest forts.

One of the smallest of these stockade forts was called Sinquefield. It
stood in what is now Clarke County, Alabama, and, as that region was
very thinly settled, there were not enough men to make a strong force
for the defence of the fort. But the brave farmers and hunters thought
they could hold the place, and so they took their families thither as
quickly as they could.

Two families, numbering seventeen persons, found it was not easy to go
to Sinquefield on the 2d of September, and so, as they were pretty sure
that there were no Indians in their neighborhood as yet, they made up
their minds to stay one more night at a house a few miles from the fort.
That night they were attacked, and all but five of them were killed.
Those who got away carried the news of what had happened to the fort,
and a party was sent out to bring in the bodies.

The next day all the people in Fort Sinquefield went out to bury their
dead friends in a valley at some little distance from the fort, and,
strange as it seems, they took no arms with them. Believing that there
were no Indians near the place, they left the gates of the fortress
open, and went out in a body without their guns.

As a matter of fact there was a large body of Indians not only very
near them, but actually looking at them all the time. The celebrated
Prophet Francis was in command, and in his sly way he had crept as near
the fort as possible to look for a good chance to attack it. Making his
men lie down and crawl like snakes, he had reached a point only a few
hundred yards from the stockade without alarming the people, and now,
while they stood around the graves of their friends without arms to
defend themselves with, a host of their savage enemies lay looking at
them from the grass and bushes on the hill.

As soon as he saw that the right moment had come, Francis sprang up with
a savage war-cry, and at the head of his warrio