INDIAN WARFARE: In Western PA and North WV at the Time of the American Revolution

1-204380

Indian Warfare in Western Pennsylvania and North West Virginia at the Time of the American Revolution, Including the Narrative of Indian and Tory Depredations by John Crawford, the Military Reminiscences of Captain Henry Jolly, and the Narrative of Lydia Boggs Shepherd Cruger. Indian Warfare is one of the volumes in Mr. Lobdell's series covering the Heroic Age (1770 to 1794) on the early frontier.

The three narratives often read like adventure stories. The Indians and the British engaged in guerrilla warfare against the settlers: raiding cabins, slaughtering livestock, killing children and the elderly and taking captive those in their teens or early twenties, who were usually taken to Quebec. Some were adopted into the tribes, like Arthur Crawford, who hunted for almost seven years for his adopted father White Eyes before returning home; or Miss Hawkins, who married an Indian and/or Frenchman. John Crawford (1772-1831) based his narrative mainly on the stories he had heard from his relatives, especially his father, William Crawford, who took a very active part in the Revolution in his area.

Henry Jolly (1757-1842) was one of the few Revolutionary War soldiers on the frontier who left a written account. Lydia Cruger was sixteen and inside Fort Henry during its third and final siege in 1782. Her account of the taunting and insulting remarks passed back and forth between the defenders and attackers reminds one irresistibly of the soldiers before and on the wall of Troy.