Indian Raids, Butchery, and the Frenchman’s Romance

Pictured is an old Shenandoah Hunting path. In the spring of the year 1756, a party of about fifty Indians, with a French captain at their head, crossed the Alleghany mountains and brutalized the white settlers.

Capt. Jeremiah Smith raised a party of twenty brave men, marched to meet this savage foe, and fought a fierce and bloody battle with them at the head of the Capon River. Smith killed the French captain with his hand; five other Indians having fallen and a number wounded, they gave way and fled. Smith lost two of his men. When Smith searched the body of the Frenchman, he found written instructions to meet another party of about fifth Indians at Fort Pleasant to attack the fort, destroy it, and blow up in a magazine. *

Captain Joshua Lewis encountered another group of Indians on the North branch of the Capon River. One Indian was killed, while the others broke and ran off. The Indians had committed considerable destruction of the property of the white settlers and took Mrs. Horner and a girl about thirteen years of age as prisoners. Mrs. Horner, the mother of seven or eight children, was never returned to her family!

A girl, Sarah Gibbons, was taken prisoner for eight or nine years before she was returned home.