portunity offered. It was at this time that Frances Slocum was captured. The story of her life fully illustrates the remark, that "truth is strange stranger than fiction." The following, originally published in the North American, of Philadelphia, narrates the circumstances of this singular affair:

At a little distance from the present court-house at Wilkesbarre, lived the family of Mr. Jonathan Slocum. The men were one day away in the fields, and in an instant the house was surrounded by Indians. There were in it a mother, a daughter about nine years of age, a son aged thirteen, another daughter aged five, and a little boy aged two and a half. A young man, and a boy by the name of Kingsley, were present grinding a knife. The first

INDIANS CAPTURING THE CHILD OF MRS. SLOCUM.

thing the Indians did was to shoot down the young man and scalp him with the knife which he had in his hand. The nine year old sister took the little boy two years and a half old, and ran out of the back door to get to the fort. The Indians chased her just enough to see her fright, and to have a hearty laugh, as she ran and clung to

and lifted her chubby little brother. They then took the Kingsley boy and young Slocum, aged thirteen, and little Frances, aged five, and prepared to depart. But finding young Slocum lame, at the earnest entreaties of the mother, they set him down and left him. Their captives were then young Kingsley and the little girl. The mother's heart swelled unutterably, and for years she could not describe the scene without tears. She saw an Indian throw her child over his shoulder, and as her hair fell over her face, with one hand she brushed it aside, while the tears fell from her distended eyes, and stretching out her other hand towards her mother, she called for her aid. The Indian turned into the bushes, and this was the last seen of little Frances. This image, probably, was carried by the mother to her grave. About a month after this they came again, and with the most awful cruelties murdered the aged grandfather, and shot a ball in the leg of the lame boy. This he carried with him in his leg, nearly six years, to the grave. The last child was born a few months after these tragedies! What were the conversations, the conjectures, the hopes and the fears respecting the fate of little Frances, I will not attempt to describe.

As the boys grew up and became men, they were very anxious to know the fate of their little fair-haired sister. They wrote letters, they sent inquiries, they made journeys through all the West and into the Canadas. Four of these journeys were made in vain. A silence, deep as that of the forest through which they wandered, hung over her fate during sixty years.

My reader will now pass over fifty-eight years, and suppose himself far in the wilderness of Indiana, on the bank of the Mississinewa, about fifty miles southwest of Fort Wayne. A very respectable agent of the United States, Hon. George W. Ewing, of Peru, Ia., is travelling there, and weary and belated, with a tired horse, he stops in an Indian wigwam for the night. He can speak the Indian language. The family are rich for Indians, and have horses and skins in abundance. In the course of the evening he notices that the hair of the woman is light, and her skin under her dress is also white. This led to a conversation. She told him she was a white child, but had been carried away when a very small girl. She could only remember that her name was Slocum, that she lived in a little house on the banks

of the Susquehanna, and how many there were in her father's family, and the order of their ages! But the name of the town she could

not remember. On reaching his home, the agent mentioned this story to his mother. She urged and pressed him to write and print the account. Accordingly he wrote it, and sent it to Lancaster in this State, requesting that it might be published. By some, to me, unaccountable blunder, it lay in the office two years before it was published. In a few days it fell into the hands of Mr. Slocum, of Wilkesbarre, who was the little two year and a half old boy when Frances was taken. In a few days he was off to seek his sister, taking with him his oldest sister, (the one who aided him to escape,) and writing to a brother who now lives in Ohio, and who I believe was born after the captivity, to meet him and go with him.

The two brothers and sister are now (1838) on their way to seek little Frances, just sixty years after her captivity. They reach the Indian country, the home of the Miami Indians. Nine miles from the nearest white they find the little wigwam. “I shall know my sister," said the civilized sister, “because she lost the nail of her first finger. You, brother, hammered it off in the blacksmith-shop, when she was four years old." They go into the cabin, and find an Indian woman having the appearance of seventy-five. She is painted and jewelled off, and dressed like the Indians in all respects. Nothing but her hair and covered skin would indicate her origin. They get an interpreter, and begin to converse. She tells them where she was born, her name, &c., with the order of her father's family. "How came your nail gone?" said the oldest sister. "My older brother pounded it off when I was a little child in the shop!" In a word, they were satisfied that this was Frances, their long-lost sister! They asked her what her Christian name was. She could not remember. Was it Frances? She smiled, and said "yes." It was the first time she had heard it pronounced for sixty years! Here, then, they were met-two brothers and two sisters! They were all satisfied they were brothers and sisters. But what a contrast! The brothers were walking the cabin, unable to speak; the oldest sister was weeping, but the poor Indian sister sat motionless and passionless, as indifferent as a spectator. There was no throbbing, no fine chords in her bosom to be touched.

When Mr. Slocum was giving me this history, I said to him, "But could she not speak English?" "Not a word!" "Did she know her age?" "No-had no idea of it!" "But was she entirely ignorant?" "Sir, she did'nt know when Sunday comes!" This was

indeed, the consummation of ignorance in a descendant of the Puritans!

But what a picture for a painter would the inside of that cabin have afforded! Here were the children of civilization-respectable, temperate, intelligent, and wealthy, able to overcome mountains to recover their sister. There was the child of the forest, not able to tell the day of the week, whose views and feelings were all confined to that cabin! Her whole history might be told in a word. She lived with the Delawares, who carried her off till grown up, and then married one of their number. He either died or ran away, and then she married a Miami Indian, a chief, as I believe. She has two daughters, both of whom are married, and who live in all the glory of an Indian cabin, deer skin clothes, and cow skin head-dresses! No one of the family can speak a word of English. They have horses in abundance, and when the Indian sister wanted to accompany her new relatives, she whipped out, bridled her horse, and then, a la Turk, mounted astride, and was off. At night she could throw a blanket around her, down upon the floor, and at once be asleep.

The brothers and sister tried to persuade their lost sister to return with them, and, if she desired it, bring her children. They would transplant her again to the banks of the Susquehanna, and of their wealth make her home happy. But no. She had always lived with the Indians; they had always been kind to her; and she had promised her late husband, on his death-bed, that she would never leave the Indians. And there they left her and hers, wild and darkened heathens, though sprung from a pious race. You can hardly imagine how much this brother is interested for her. His heart yearns with an indescribable tenderness for the poor helpless one, who, sixty-one years ago, was torn from the arms of her mother. Mysterious Providence! How wonderful the tie which can thus bind a family together!

Frances' second husband was known among the tribe as the Deaf Man, and the village where she lived was called Deaf-man's village. The United States by treaty has granted her a rich reserve of land. Her son-in-law, Capt. Brouillette, is a half-breed, of French extraction, and one of the noblest looking men of his tribe. The whole family are highly respectable among their nation, and live well, having a great abundance of the comforts of Indian life.

In the summer of 1779, Gen. Sullivan passed through Wyoming,

with his army from Easton, on his memorable expedition against the country of the Six Nations. As they passed the fort, amid the firing of salutes, with their arms gleaming in the sun, and their hundred and twenty boats arranged in regular order on the river, and their two thousand pack-horses in single file, they formed a military display surpassing any yet seen on the Susquehanna, and well calculated to make a deep impression on the minds of the savages. Having ravaged the country on the Genesee, and laid waste the Indian towns, General Sullivan returned to Wyoming in October, and thence to Easton. But the expedition had neither intimidated the savages nor prevented their incursions. During the remainder of the year they seemed to make it their special delight to scourge the valley-they stole into it in small parties, blood and devastation marking their track.

Early in the spring of 1784, says Mr. Day, the settlers of Wyoming were compelled again to witness the desolation of their homes by a new cause. The winter had been unusually severe, and on the breaking up of the ice in the spring, (see engraving, page 265) the Susquehanna rose with great rapidity--the immense masses of loose ice from above continued to lodge on that which was still firm at the lower end of the valley; a gorge was formed, and one general inundation overspread the plains of Wyoming. The inhabitants took refuge on the surrounding heights, many being rescued from the roofs of their floating houses. At length a gorge at the upper end of the valley gave way, and huge masses of ice were scattered in every direction, which remained a great portion of the ensuing summer. The deluge broke the gorge below with a noise like that of contending thunderstorms, and houses, barns, stacks of hay and grain, cattle, sheep, and swine, were swept off in the rushing torrent. A great scarcity of provisions followed the flood, and the sufferings of the inhabitants were aggravated by the plunder and persecution of the Pennamite soldiers, quartered among them. Gov. Dickinson represented their sufferings to the Legislature, with a recommendation for relief, but in vain. This was known as the ice flood; another, less disastrous, which occurred in 1787, was called the pumpkin flood, from the fact that it strewed the lower valley of the Susquehanna with the pumpkins of the unfortunate Yankees.

After the peace with Great Britain, and the danger from the Indians having been, in a great measure, removed, the surviving inhabitants returned to their possessions at Wyoming, and being joined by