Page:The part taken by women in American history.djvu/74

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Women Pioneers
51

made near Wheeling. As soon as the outposts were established, others followed in the train of these first venturesome pioneers. In 1761, Mrs. Dennis was taken captive from the James' settlement and taken to the Indian settlement near Chillicothe, Ohio. She became famous among the Indians as a nurse, and her medicines, prepared from herbs, were sought far and near, and through this medium she ultimately made her escape. In 1763, while gathering herbs she reached the Ohio River. Wandering alone through the woods and the forests, and rafting herself down the great Kanawha, she ultimately reached the Green Brier, but was so exhausted and worn by her long tramp and the exposure that she finally gave up and lay down expecting to die, but was discovered by some of the settlers and nursed and cared for. But for this act of kindness the settlers were made to pay dearly. They were attacked by the Indians, and all the men were killed and the women and children taken captives. In this attack a Mrs. Clendennin showed such courage that her name has been enrolled among the women heroes of that time. Early in 1778, an attack was made on one of the blockhouses on the upper Monongahela. In this hand to hand conflict, Mrs. Cunningham, the wife of Edward Cunningham, seeing her husband's strength almost spent, grabbed the tomahawk and finished the Indian who would have taken her husband's life. In an attack by the Indians on the house of William Morgan, in Dunker's Bottom, Mrs. Morgan was bound to a tree. She succeeded in untying herself with her teeth and escaping with her child. In March, 1781, an attack was made by the Indians on the house of Captain John Thomas, situated on one of the little streams tributary to the Monongahela. Captain Thomas was killed and Mrs. Thomas and her six children butchered by the savages, only one little boy escaping. While this bloody orgy was going on, a woman named Elizabeth Juggins, who had been attracted by the cries of the helpless victims, had come