John Cresap

“ I said. "The Senecas guard the western door of the Long House, and they have made the Cayugas' cause their own."
"And the eastern door?" demanded Cresap, quickly.
"The eastern door of the Long House is held by our Mohawks and Sir William Johnson," I said, proudly. "And, by God's grace! they will hold it in peace."
"Not while Walter Butler lives," said Cresap, bitterly, rising to his feet and turning the key of the magazine. "Throw that key into the moat, corporal," he said. "Mount, get some riflemen and roll these kegs of powder into the casemates." ”

“ Being among them as a friend, he counted them, and found them to strong for an open attack with his force. While here, he was cautioned by one or the women not to stay, for that the Indian men were drinking, and having heard of Cresap's murder of their relations at Grave creek, were angry, and she pressed him, in a friendly manner, to go home; whereupon, after inviting them to come over and drink, he returned to Baker's, which was a tavern, and desired that when any of them should come to his house he would give them as much rum as they would drink. ”

“ After a moment I plucked at his sleeve, reproachfully.
"Yes—I know—I know, my boy. But I need a man now—a man of experience, a man in bodily vigour, a man in devotion." 121
"You need a man to go to Colonel Cresap," I whispered. For the first and only time in my life I saw that I had startled Sir William.
"Let me go, sir?" I entreated, eagerly. "If I am keen enough to read your purpose, I am not too stupid to carry it out. I know what you wish. I know you cannot trust your message to paper, nor to a living soul except me. I know what to say to Colonel Cresap. ”

“ What shall we do? Instead of polishing our knives we have come to our brother Warragh. Instead of seeking our kin the Mohawk and the Oneida with painted war belts to throw between us and them, we come to our brother and ask him, by this belt, what is left for us to do? Our brothers have taught us there is a God. Teach us He is a just God—by this belt!"
(A black belt of five rows.)
During this speech Sir William sat as still as death, neither by glance nor gesture nor change of colour betraying the surprise, indignation, and alarm which this exposure of Colonel Cresap's doings caused him. ”

“ He gave implicit confidence to its authenticity. Doddridge is of the same opinion. Jacob, in his Life of Cresap, [592:A] insinuates that the speech was a counterfeit, and declares that Cresap was as humane as brave, and had no participation in the massacre. ”

“ Clearly then, no emissary of Sir William would be welcomed at Pittsburg fortress or town; and I saw nothing for it but to push on through the gateway of the west, avoiding Butler's men as best I could, and seeking the silly, deluded Cresap under the very nose of my Lord Dunmore.
My progress was slow; at times I sank between tree-roots, up to the thighs in moss; at times the little maidens of the flowering briers bade me tarry in their sharp, perfumed embrace. Now it was a wiry moose-bush snare that enlaced my ankles and sent me sprawling, pack and all ”

“ After a moment I asked why he had not expelled this fiend, Greathouse, and he replied that he had, but that Dunmore had sent him back under his special protection.
"What on earth can I do?" he repeated. "The Cayuga camp is rotten with whiskey. Their chiefs and sachems come to me and beg me to forbid the sale. I am powerless; for back of me stands Lord Dunmore in the shape of Greathouse. By God, sir, the man is a nightmare to me!"
"Why not twist his gullet?" observed Mount.
Cresap paid him no attention, and the big fellow pouted, muttering that it was a simple thing to exterminate vermin. ”

“ Bands of shadow and sunlight lay across the quiet forests; the calm hills sparkled. But the blackened clearing around the fort was alive with crawling forms, moving towards the woods, darting from cover to cover, yet always advancing. They were Cresap's Maryland riflemen, reconnoitring the pines along the river, into which the soldiers beside me on the parapet were showering bullets.
It was pretty to watch these Virginia militia fire by platoon under instructions of a tall, young captain, who lectured them as jealously as though they were training on the parade below. ”

“ We all bear patiently this great wrong done us by Colonel Cresap. We are patient because Sir William asks it of us. But under these tall pines around us lie hatchets, buried deep among the pine-trees' roots. See, brother! Our hands are clean. We have not dug in the earth for hatchets."
(A belt of seven.)
"Brother: We pray that our elder cousin, Lord Dunmore, will remove from us his agent Greathouse. We pray that no more spirits be sold to the Cayugas. We pray this because we cannot resist an offered cup. We pray this because we drink—and die. ”

“ To the sad and sober thoughts of the Mingo Chief, the frontiersmen listened with respectful attention, and in the hearts of some, no doubt, came feelings of remorse that the lives of his own people had been so cruelly taken. At the conclusion of the reading of this address, Clark turned to Cresap and said: "You must be a very great man that the Indians hold you guilty for every mean thing that has happened." ”

“ Oh, I know them, Michael, I know them. A painted war-belt flung between that Cayuga and the sachems of my Mohawks would have set the whole Six Nations—save, perhaps, the Oneidas—a-shining up rifle and hatchet for Cresap and his men!"
Sir William struck the mahogany table with clinched fist.
"Damn Cresap!" he bawled, in one of his familiar fits of fury—fits which were never witnessed outside his family circle. "Damn the fatuous fool to go a-meddling with the 55 Cayugas in their own lands, held by them in solemn covenant forever inviolate! What does the sorry ass want? ”

“ In the spring of the year 1774, a robbery was committed by some Indians on certain land adventurers on the river Ohio. The whites in that quarter, according to their custom, undertook to punish this outrage in a summary way. Captain Michael Cresap, and a certain Daniel Greathouse, leading on these parties, surprised at different times travelling and hunting parties of the Indians having their women and children with them, and murdered many. Among these were, unfortunately, the family of Logan; a chief celebrated in peace and war, and long distinguished as the friend of the whites. ”

“ William Huston is a man of established reputation in point of integrity.”
I, William Huston, of Washington county, in the State of Pennsylvania, do hereby certify to whom it may concern, that in the year 1774, I resided at Catfish's camp, on the main path from Wheeling to Redstone: that Michael Cresap, who resided on or near the Patowmac river, on his way up from the river Ohio, at the head of a party of armed men, lay some time at my cabin.
[2] I had previously heard the report of Mr. Cresap having killed some Indians, said to be the relations of “Logan” an Indian Chief. ”

“ God knows it was the blind who led the blind. And now, for months, I have been aware that Dunmore wishes a clash with the Cayugas yonder; but, until Sir William Johnson opened my eyes, I have never understood why Lord Dunmore desired war."
He looked at Mount as though to ask whether that notorious forest-runner had suspected Dunmore; and Mount shook his head with a sneer.
"He is a witless ass," he muttered. "I see nothing in Mr. Cardigan's fears that Dunmore means trouble here."
"I do," said Cresap, calmly. "Sir William is right; we have been tricked into this forest. ”

“ During the course of the last long and bloody war, Logan remained idle in his cabin, an advocate for peace. Such was my love for the whites that my countrymen pointed, as they passed, and said, 'Logan is the friend of white men.' I had even thought to have lived with you, but for the injuries of one man, Colonel Cresap, the last spring in cold blood, and unprovoked, murdered all the relations of Logan, not even sparing my women and children. There runs not a drop of my blood in the veins of any living creature. ”

“ God knows I have discord enough in New York town without seeking it among the loyalists of this county. Nobody believes that my Lord Dunmore is seeking trouble with your tame Indians, Sir William. If this fellow Cresap, who is a notorious malcontent, too, be imposing on the Cayugas, I doubt not that my Lord Dunmore will recall him and deal with him severely. ”

“ Crenshaw was averse to children as being inimical to cleanliness and order, oppressive virtues that drove Crenshaw himself in his hours of leisure to the woodshed, where he might spit freely.
“I reckon you'd rather drop a word with yo' missus before you toted him home?” suggested Yancy, who knew something of the nature of his friend's domestic thraldom.
“A woman ought to be boss in her own house,” said Crenshaw.
“Feelin' the truth of that, I've never married, Mr. John; I do as I please and don't have to listen to a passel of opinion. ”

“ John Sapp was as badly off as the fox. He was fit for a hundred places, but he never could stay in one of them. Had he known how to do one thing, he could have done it his life long.
For, when a crisis comes, or anything like a crisis, the world has a hopeless fashion of jamming its old stout felt hat over its ears, tying a stout scarf above it, and going out to battle in the storm, and forgets, in the fight, the lath-and-plaster hat which has dragged the street yesterday. It trusts a proved friend, though his felt be a little rough, and his braid a little frayed. ”

“ On the 8th of December a very brilliant operation took place at Lombard's Kop. General Hunter, with a hundred picked men of the Imperial Light Horse under Colonel Edwards (5th Dragoon Guards) , and five hundred Natal Carabineers under Colonel Royston, started from Ladysmith camp about nine o'clock on the previous night. Four abreast they marched from the outpost and faded in the gloom. The march lay across a stony, rugged plain, through the scrub of mimosa bush and among dongas deep and shallow. Close on the heels of Major Henderson and several of the Corps of Guides the troops pressed on. ”

“ On this day another trooper of the South African Light Horse (Walters) distinguished himself by swimming across the Tugela and bringing over the pontoon, thus repeating the gallant deed of his comrades at Potgieter’s Drift. Thorneycroft’s Mounted Infantry, though peppered by Boers who were ensconced on the kopjes on the opposite side, succeeded in fording the river, and proceeded to reconnoitre the kopjes on the other side. All the guns were gone, and the kopjes themselves seemed to be weakly held. ”

“ It was glorious merely to know that Ladysmith was now in sight of the British picquets: there was a sense of exhilaration in the thought of real progress after the ghastly six days at Spion Kop, the fluctuating four at Vaal Krantz, the fourteen in and out and round about the precincts of fatal Colenso. Success was now almost within a stone’s throw, and all hearts throbbed with expectation and confidence. All were in some way longing for the handclasp of those beleaguered men. ”

“ There were a number of men and several women on board whom Captain Crespin had known in India, had met in the hills, at Calcutta and in leaves in Kashmir; but none of his regiment, or of his own station in the Punjab. But at Malta two brother officers, returning from a shorter leave than his, joined the ship. As a matter of course they “chummed up” with the Crespins and Crespin with them. ”

“ The town, like many other South African towns, is dominated by cliffs or kopjes, two of these being on the north-west, while another (Wolhunter Kop) rises in the south in a high and solitary peak above the plain, and descends steeply towards the side of the town. Naturally these obstructive eminences were chosen as the stronghold of the foe, and as naturally the object of the British was now to clear the Boers from them, and to this end General Arthur Paget marched his force to within two miles of his objective, and encamped near the northerly spurs of the north-western kopjes. ”

“ Push for Ladysmith to-day, horse, foot, and artillery; both cavalry brigades to cross the river at once. The advance, which had hitherto been slow, was now hurried on. At midday it was in full swing, the cavalry having crossed the Tugela and massed at Fort Wylie. Meanwhile the Boers had taken up a formidable position on the right—on the well-entrenched height called by the gunners Three Knoll Hill, to describe the three hills, Terrace, Railway, and Pieters, that formed the entire position—while on the left they plied their activities from Grobler’s Kloof. ”

“ At length his successful exits from durance excited the suspicion of the Tories, and Crosby, deeming it unsafe to mingle with them longer, joined the detachment of the Continental army under Heath, then stationed in the Highlands. When his term of service expired, he returned to Southeast, where he cultivated a small farm, until his death in 1834. Captain Barnum asserts that the plan of Cooper's Spy was conceived at the house of John Jay, at Bedford, in West Chester county. Mr. Jay was one of the Committee of Safety who employed Crosby, and was necessarily acquainted with his exploits. ”

“ General Wauchope was down, riddled with bullets; yet gasping, dying, bleeding from every vein, the Highland chieftain raised himself on his hands and knees and cheered his men forward. Men and officers fell in heaps together. The Black Watch charged, and the Gordons and the Seaforths, with a yell that stirred the British camp below, rushed onward—onward to death or disaster. The accursed wires caught them round the legs until they floundered, like trapped wolves, and all the time the rifles of the foe sang the song of death in their ears. ”