Woman on the American Frontier 1 Woman on the American Frontier The Project Gutenberg EBook of Woman on the American Frontier by William Worthington Fowler Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the header without written permission. Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is important information about your specific rights and restrictions in how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. **Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** **eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** *****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** Title: Woman on the American Frontier Author: William Worthington Fowler Release Date: November, 2004 [EBook #6808] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on January 27, 2003] Edition: 10 Language: English Character set encoding: ASCII, with a few ISO-8859-1 characters *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WOMAN ON THE AMERICAN FRONTIER *** Produced by Wendy Crockett, Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. This file was produced from images generously made available by the Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions. WOMAN ON THE AMERICAN FRONTIER. A Valuable and Authentic History OF THE HEROISM, ADVENTURES, PRIVATIONS, CAPTIVITIES, TRIALS, AND NOBLE LIVES AND DEATHS OF THE "PIONEER MOTHERS OF THE REPUBLIC." By WILLIAM W. FOWLER, M.A. ILLUSTRATED WITH NUMEROUS ENGRAVINGS. Woman on the American Frontier 2 PREFACE. The history of our race is the record mainly of men's achievements, in war, in statecraft and diplomacy. If mention is made of woman it is of queens and intriguing beauties who ruled and schemed for power and riches, and often worked mischief and ruin by their wiles. The story of woman's work in great migrations has been told only in lines and passages where it ought instead to fill volumes. Here and there incidents and anecdotes scattered through a thousand tomes give us glimpses of the wife, the mother, or the daughter as a heroine or as an angel of kindness and goodness, but most of her story is a blank which never will be filled up. And yet it is precisely in her position as a pioneer and colonizer that her influence is the most potent and her life story most interesting. The glory of a nation consists in its migrations and the colonies it plants as well as in its wars of conquest. The warrior who wins a battle deserves a laurel no more rightfully than the pioneer who leads his race into the wilderness and builds there a new empire. The movement which has carried our people from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean and in the short space of two centuries and a half has founded the greatest republic which the world ever saw, has already taken its place in history as one of the grandest achievements of humanity since the world began. It is a moral as well as a physical triumph, and forms an epoch in the advance of civilization. In this grand achievement, in this triumph of physical and moral endurance, woman must be allowed her share of the honor. It would be a truism, if we were to say that our Republic would not have been founded without her aid. We need not enlarge on the necessary position which she fills in human society every where. We are to speak of her now as a soldier and laborer, a heroine and comforter in a peculiar set of dangers and difficulties such as are met with in our American wilderness. The crossing of a stormy ocean, the reclamation of the soil from nature, the fighting with savage men are mere generalities wherein some vague idea may be gained of true pioneer life. But it is only by following woman in her wanderings and standing beside her in the forest or in the cabin and by marking in detail the thousand trials and perils which surround her in such a position that we can obtain the true picture of the heroine in so many unmentioned battles. The recorded sum total of an observation like this would be a noble history of human effort. It would show us the latent causes from which have come extraordinary effects. It would teach us how much this republic owes to its pioneer mothers, and would fill us with gratitude and self-congratulation--gratitude for their inestimable services to our country and to mankind, self-congratulation in that we are the lawful inheritors of their work, and as Americans are partakers in their glory. In the preparation of this work particular pains have been taken to avoid what was trite and hackneyed, and at the same time preserve historic truth and accuracy. Use has been made to a limited extent of the ancient border books, selecting the most note-worthy incidents which never grow old because they illustrate a heroism, that like "renown and grace cannot die." Thanks are due to Mrs. Ellet, from whose interesting book entitled "Women of the Revolution," a few passages have been culled. The stories of Mrs. Van Alstine, of Mrs. Slocum, Mrs. McCalla, and Dicey Langston, and of Deborah Samson, are condensed from her accounts of those heroines. A large portion of the work is, however, composed of incidents which will be new to the reader. The eye-witnesses of scenes which have been lately enacted upon the border have furnished the writer with materials for many of the most thrilling stories of frontier life, and which it has been his aim to spread before the reader in this work. ILLUSTRATIONS. CHAPTER I. 3 A VIRGINIA MATRON ENCOURAGING THE PATRIOTISM OF HER SONS AT THE DEATH-BED OF THEIR FATHER, LOST IN A SNOW STORM, THE HUNTRESS OF THE LAKES SURPRISED BY INDIANS, A HEROIC EXPLOIT IN SUPPLYING WITH POWDER A BLOCK-HOUSE BESIEGED BY INDIANS, DARING EXPLOIT OF MISS VAN ALSTINE, FOOD AND CLOTHING SUPPLIED TO THE REVOLUTIONARY ARMY BY PATRIOTIC WOMEN, PERILOUS CROSSING OF THE ALLEGHANY RIVER, WAGON TRAIN ON THE PRAIRIE, STRATAGEM OF MRS. DAVIESS IN CAPTURING A KENTUCKY ROBBER, TWO KENTUCKY GIRLS CAPTURED BY INDIANS, PARTED FOR EVER, AN EQUESTRIAN FEAT, TREED BY A BEAR, RESCUING A HUSBAND FROM WOLVES, DEFEAT OF GUERILLAS, MASTERING BANDITS, CONTENTS CHAPTER I. WOMAN AS A PIONEER, America's Unnamed Heroines. Maids and Matrons of the "<i>Mayflower</i>." Woman's Work in Early Days. Devotion and Self-sacrifice. Strange Story of Mrs. Hendee. Face to Face with the Indians. A Mother's Love Triumphant Woman among the Savages. The Massacre of Wyoming. Sufferings of a Forsaken Household. The Patriot Matron and her Children. The Acmé of Heroism. Adventures of an English Traveler. Woman in the Rocky Mountains. A Story of a Lonely Life. Nocturnal Visitors and their Reception. Life in the Far West. Mrs. Manning's Home in Montana, Female Emigrants on the Plains. A True Heroine. CHAPTER II. WOMAN'S WORK IN FLOODS AND STORMS, The Frontier two Centuries ago. The Pioneer Army. The Pilgrim "Mothers." Story of Margaret Winthrop. Danger in the Wilderness. A Reckless Husband and a Watchful Wife. Lost in a Snow-storm. The Beacon-fire at Midnight. Saved by a Woman. Mrs. Noble's CHAPTER II. 4 Terrible Story. Alone with Famine and Death. A Legend of the Connecticut. What befel the Nash Family. Three Heroic Women. In Flood and Storm. A Tale of the Prairies. A Western Settler and her Fate. Battling with an Unseen Enemy. Emerging from the Valley of the Shadow. Heartbroken and Alone. CHAPTER III. EARLY PIONEERS.--WOMAN'S ADVENTURES AND HEROISM, In the Maine Wilderness. Voyaging up the Kennebec. The Huntress of the Lakes. Extraordinary Story of Mrs. Trevor. Two Hundred Miles from Civilization. Sleeping in a Birch-bark Canoe. A Fight with Five Savages. A Victorious Heroine. The Trail of a Lost Husband. Only just in Time. A Narrow Escape, Voyaging in an Ice-boat. Snow-bound in a Cave. Fighting for Food. Grappling with a Forest Monster. Mrs. Storey, the Forester. Alida Johnson's Thrilling Narrative. Caught in a Death-trap. A Desperate Measure and its Result. The Connecticut Settlers. Their Courage and Heroism. CHAPTER IV. ON THE INDIAN TRAIL A Block-house Attacked. Wild Pictures of Indian Warfare. Exploits of Mrs. Howe. A Pioneer Woman's Record. Holding the Fort alone. Treacherous "Lo." Witnessing a Husband's Tortures. The Beautiful Victim. Forced to Carry a Mother's Scalp. The Fate of the Glendennings. A Feast and a Massacre. Led into Captivity. Elizabeth Lane's Adventures. In Ambush. Siege of Bryant's Station. Outwitting the Savages. Mrs. Porter's Combat with the Indians. Ghastly Trophies of her Prowess. "Long Knife Squaw." Smoking out Redskins. The Widows of Innis Station. A Daring Achievement. The Amazon of the Stockade. CHAPTER V. CAPTIVE SCOUTS--HEROINES OF THE MOHAWK VALLEY, The Poetry of Border Life. Mrs. Mack in her Forest Fort. The Ambush in the Cornfield. The Night-watch at the Port-hole. A Shot in the Dark. The Hiding Place of her Little Ones. A Sad Discovery. An Avenger on the Track. Massy Herbeson's Strange Story. On the Trail. Miss Washburn and the Scouts. An Extraordinary <i>Rencontre</i>.