Chapter 3
FEAR
The fear and intense anxiety that the mere possibility of an Indian attack on their homes created among settlers should not be understated. At times, it must have felt like there was a constant stream of rumors and reports regarding yet another Indian “outrage” on either lives or property. It might be a neighbor reporting a stolen cow or pilfered food supplies, but more often than not, settlers learned that a nearby farm was burned to the ground, its occupants murdered, scalped or taken captive. Consequently, settlers lived under an omnipresent shadow that ruled the nature of their routine daily activities and even invaded their dreams. In a letter to a friend, J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur described the absolute sense of dread and terror produced by the simple sound of a tree branch rattling against the cabin roof or your dog barking at a perceived threat:
What renders these incursions still more terrible is, that they most commonly take place in the dead of the night; we never go to our fields but we are seised [sic] with an involuntary fear, which lessens our strength and weakens our labour [sic]. No other subject of conversation intervenes between the different accounts, which spread through the country, of successive acts of devastation; and these told in chimney-corners, swell themselves in our affrighted imaginations into the most terrific ideas! We never sit down either to dinner or supper, but the least noise immediately spreads a general alarm and prevents us from enjoying the comfort of our meals. The very appetite proceeding from labour [sic] and peace of mind is gone; we eat just enough to keep us alive: our sleep is disturbed by the most frightful dreams; sometimes I start awake, as if the great hour of danger was come; at other times the howling of our dogs seems to announce the arrival of the enemy: We leap out of bed and run to arms; my poor wife with panting bosom and silent tears, takes leave of me, as if we were to see each other no more; she snatches the youngest children from their beds, who, suddenly awakened, increase by their innocent questions the horror of the dreadful moment. She tries to hide them in the cellar, as if our cellar was inaccessible to the fire…Fear industriously encreases [sic] every sound; we all listen; each communicates to the other his ideas and conjectures. We remain thus sometimes for whole hours, our hearts and our minds racked by the most anxious suspense: what a dreadful situation, a thousand times worse than that of a soldier engaged in the midst of the most severe conflict! Sometimes feeling the spontaneous courage of a man, I seem to wish for the decisive minute; the next instant a message from my wife, sent by one of the children, puzzling me beside with their little questions, unmans me: away goes my courage, and I descend again into the deepest despondency. At last finding that it was a false alarm, we return once more to our beds.109
In these circumstances, sending children to the nearby woods to gather berries, going out after dusk to get water from the well or an early morning trip to the barn to milk a cow was cause for anxiety, trepidation and genuine foreboding. Susannah Johnson, a frontier farmer’s wife who later became a captive of the Indians, remembered:
The fears of the night were horrible beyond description, and even the light of day was far from dispelling painful anxiety. While looking from the windows of my log-house and seeing my neighbors tread cautiously by each hedge and hillock, lest some secreted savage might start forth to take their scalp, my fears would baffle description…Imagination now saw and heard a thousand Indians; and I never went round my own house, without first looking with trembling caution by each corner, to see if a tomahawk was not raised for my destruction.110
Another settler recalled, “The Indians were around every night, and round the stable…We shut our door early; and in the morning, it was sun up before we opened it.” Another remembered, “In those times they always shut the doors towards night, and never opened them again, till after we had peaked [sic] out at the port-holes next morning.” Daniel Drake, a settler who grew up on the Ohio frontier, recounted that as a young man living on a frontier farm, his first chore of every day was to climb up the ladder to the loft at dawn and look through the cracks for Indians.111
Given that children were often the targets of Indian captive raids, it is not surprising that parents issued numerous warnings, tried to encourage awareness in their children and made every attempt to restrict their movements, especially during the spring and summer months, when Indian raids were most likely to occur. Naturally, as children are prone to do, frontier youngsters often did their best to circumvent these parental directives, probably to the extreme anxiety of their parents. As a young girl, Sarah Graham was forbidden to wander away from her family’s refuge fort during the summer months, but, nonetheless, she remembered sneaking out into the woods to gather wild cherries and papaws. Meanwhile, young boys chafed at being told they could not venture out to the banks of a nearby stream or river to fish. When he was a boy, William Moseby and his friends were under orders not to go fishing alone. Despite this restriction, it became their favorite pastime. The problem they encountered was how to conceal their catch. In one case, he convinced his “old aunt Sarah” to cook the buffalo fish he and his friends planned to hook, and “pa wouldn’t know it.” However, the potential dangers of their fishing did come home to roost. When William and the other boys went back in the evening to check their lines, they heard an owl that “hallooed very pert.” Having been taught by their fathers that Indians “could halloo like owls, and these owls were on the ground,” the boys abandoned their lines, ran back to the settlement and immediately confessed their crime to their parents.112
Although William’s story did not end badly, the psychological impact from these constant warnings must have had a telling effect on the minds of frontier children. Daniel Drake recounted that he received numerous warnings from his parents about the “great enemies,” the Shawnee and Wyandot, which gave him many a childhood nightmare. At bedtime, he and his siblings were told to “lie still and go to sleep, or the Shawnees will catch you.” Not surprisingly, this led to dreams that continued until adulthood and “included either Indians or snakes—the copper-colored man, and the copper-colored snake, then extremely common.”113
Another factor that played heavily on the fears of settlers was the constant sense that they were being watched by Indians lurking nearby, which was a premonition actually grounded in reality. Indian attacks on settlers were often not merely the result of a chance meeting in the woods. Raiding parties of warriors typically conducted what we might call “intelligence gathering” activities by observing the farms in a region, determining which were the best targets, studying the inhabitants’ daily activities and planning how best to make their approach. The latter might mean carefully setting up an ambush in lieu of an assault on the main cabin. One settler, William Longley, went out to do the morning chores one day and discovered his livestock were loose and wandering about the cornfields. Unarmed, Longley rushed out to drive the cattle back to their pens, which was exactly what a nearby raiding party desired. The warriors emerged from hiding, killed the unsuspecting farmer and then attacked the undefended cabin where they killed his wife and two children before carrying three other children away to captivity.114
One woman who was held captive learned from her captors that they had observed the farm for some time prior to their attack. They told her they had “looked through cracks around the house, and saw what [we] had for supper” two days prior to her kidnapping. As she walked to the nearby blockhouse the next day, her two dogs sprinted away into the woods and came back “growling and much excited.” Later, she would find out that the dogs had indeed approached the warriors hiding in the woods before returning in an attempt to warn her of the danger. Eventually, she and her family decided to seek the protection of the blockhouse. However, as they walked toward the safety of its walls, she fell behind her husband and son. Seeing this opportunity, the Indians “reached from the bushes, and took hold of her, charging her to make no noise, and covering her mouth with their hands.”115
On the upper Monongahela, similar events had a telling effect. One historian studied all the records and anecdotal evidence available in an attempt to determine the costs of Indian raids during the period from 1777 to 1780. The data indicates that at least forty-seven attacks took place in the upper Monongahela Valley during this four-year period alone. In these reports, 84 settlers are specifically reported to have been killed, while in four of the attacks, the accounts are too vague to determine precisely how many settlers may have become casualties. However, by applying a conservative standard of “some” equaling at least 4 people, “several” as 3 and “children” as 5, the deaths from Indian attacks in the region can be calculated to have been at least 100. Given that Monongalia County’s population in 1782 included less than 2,300 residents, this means that Indian raids accounted for the deaths of approximately 5 percent of the county’s populace in only four years. Add an approximate figure of 42 additional people taken into captivity during the same period, and you have 142 casualties, or more than 6 percent of the population.116
It is not surprising, therefore, that many settlers abandoned their homes and moved east of the Alleghenies during the period from Dunmore’s War until the late 1780s. Although no data on settler desertions in Monongalia County is available, one resident of nearby Fayette County, Pennsylvania, wrote in 1774 that “the country at this time is in great confusion…I suppose there have been broken up and gone off at least 500 families within one week past.”117 That same year, it was reported that some settlers near present-day Bridgeport, West Virginia, “broke up” their farms and “moved down to Prickets [sic] Settlement and Built a Fort.”118
FORTING UP
Those hardy souls who elected to stay west of the mountains had no choice but to try to defend themselves. To that end, they organized county militia units and began building refuge forts. Any advance warning of potential Indian attack was crucial, so the militia employed what they called “Indian spies,” essentially scouts who constantly patrolled the woodlands watching for any signs of raiding party activity in the vicinity. Should these scouts discover footprints or other evidence, such as the remains of a recent campsite, they tried to determine the size of the party, what tribe they might be from and if there was hostile intent. They then sent word to the nearest militia commander and “would fly from Fort to Fort and give the alarm.”119
Joseph Doddridge later wrote of those nights when, as a young boy, his family received the alarm from scouts, what they called an “express,” and hurriedly gathered what they could before fleeing to the safety of the refuge fort:
I well remember that, when a little boy, the family were sometimes waked up in the dead of night by an express with a report that the Indians were at hand. The express came softly to the door, or back window, and by a gentle tapping waked the family. This was easily done, as an habitual fear made us ever watchful and sensible to the slightest alarm. The whole family were instantly in motion. My father seized his gun and other implements of war. My stepmother waked up and dressed the children as well as she could, and being myself the oldest of the children I had to take my share of the burdens to be carried to the fort. There was no possibility of getting a horse in the night to aid us in removing to the fort. Besides the little children, we caught up what articles of clothing and provision we could get hold of in the dark, for we durst not light a candle or even stir the fire. All this was done with the utmost dispatch and the silence of death. The greatest care was taken not to awaken the youngest child. To the rest it was enough to say Indian and not a whimper was heard afterwards. Thus it often happened that the whole number of families belonging to a fort who were in the evening at their homes were all in their little fortress before the dawn of the next morning.120
Sometimes the settlers’ stay at the fort might be only a matter of a few days, but at the height of Indian raiding in the mid-1770s, they often remained for months at a time. Given the small size of many of the forts and the number of settlers seeking refuge, these visits could become quite unpleasant. Noise, crowding, disease and the typical human filth that accompanies such conditions made for a difficult, even miserable stay. Naturally, during long stays, the condition of homes and especially crops became a concern. So residents would return to their farms during daylight hours, often in the company of their neighbors who came along armed with rifles to stand guard as they worked in the fields. Occasionally, a variation of this approach was employed, with groups of armed men venturing forth and traveling from farm to farm, functioning as an armed work party.121 Moreover, because of the seasonal nature of the raiding activity, an entire generation of Allegheny Plateau settlers grew up “forted up in the summer and staying at home in the winter.”122
Settlers’ quarters line the stockade walls at the contemporary re-creation of Prickett’s Fort. Photo by the author.
Refuge forts of the upper Monongahela Valley. Drawn by the author using data from the Prickett’s Fort Memorial Foundation.
The surge in Indian raids beginning in 1774 resulted in a corresponding increase in the building of refuge forts. Within a few years, there were forty-five refuge forts and blockhouses in the upper Monongahela Valley alone. While some of these were merely two-story log blockhouses, others included sleeping quarters and corner blockhouses, all enclosed within twelve-foot-high stockade walls whose foundations were sunk deep into the earth. Prickett’s Fort, where Phebe and Thomas Cunningham were married, was of the latter, more complex variety.
Prickett’s Fort was born out of the turmoil surrounding Dunmore’s War, when concern about imminent strikes from Shawnees drove the settlers living near Prickett’s Creek and the Monongahela to organize a militia company. Zackwell Morgan was elected captain, with James Chew serving as his second-in-command, and every fit male adult in the immediate area between the age of eighteen and fifty was required to serve. Sometime in mid-May 1774, the militiamen mustered in for the first time, with a total strength of forty-five men. However, over the course of the next two weeks, new families arrived near Jacob Prickett’s settlement and increased the militia’s ranks to ninety-six men.123
Almost immediately, the militia company set about erecting a stockade fort. The precise location of the fort has long been the subject of conjecture, but most sources agree that it stood on a hill overlooking the Monongahela, about one thousand feet from the river and some five hundred feet from Prickett’s Creek. Furthermore, Job Prickett, a descendant of Jacob, remembered having seen the ruins of the old fort, and before his death, he pointed out the remains of a chimney on that location as belonging to the fort.124Unfortunately, little information regarding the fort’s physical description survived the passage of time. The fort that can be visited today in Prickett’s Fort State Park is essentially an accurate but composite representation of the large stockade-style forts of the time.
Luckily, one reasonably good description of the fort was handed down from generation to generation in the Prickett family. J. Miles Prickett, the great-great-grandson of Jacob Prickett, wrote that Prickett’s Fort was, indeed, a stockade fort with a ten- to twelve-foot-high log wall. The stockade wall was constructed of logs that were sharpened at one end, set side by side in an upright position and then driven deeply into the ground. Heavy wooden gates were built into the wall to provide access. Inside this barrier, there stood a large, two-story double log building with a passageway, or dogtrot, in between. Although he did not mention the existence of corner blockhouses or bastions, he did say that loopholes were cut into the second-story walls of the main building, which allowed the defenders to fire their rifles out and over the stockade.125
The main gate at the modern re-creation of Prickett’s Fort at Prickett’s Fort State Park, West Virginia. Photo by the author.
There also is no exact information as to how many families used Prickett’s Fort as a refuge. However, it is known that about fifty families lived within a five-mile radius of the fort. Therefore, if each family included 4 to 5 members, there were probably 200–250 settlers who used the fort during periods of Indian raiding.126
Following the tumultuous years of the American Revolution, Prickett’s Fort seems to have faded into historical obscurity. Although the war did not end until 1781 and Indian raids continued into the 1790s, the last written historical record that mentions the fort was documented in 1780, the same year that Thomas and Phebe were married there. As a result, there have been numerous rumors and much speculation regarding the fort’s eventual fate over the centuries since 1780, none of which can be confirmed via documentation. One tale says that the fort fell into disrepair and local settlers dismantled it in 1789, while another maintains this did not occur until 1799. Still yet another story says the fort survived until 1825, when it finally burnt down, and one more version of the fort’s history says that Job Prickett lived in one of the fort’s cabins as late as 1861.127
TERROR AND TRAGEDY
In the years following Phebe and Thomas’s wedding, new settlers continued making the trek over the Alleghenies to the upper Monongahela Valley. By 1782, the population of Monongalia County included 385 households, totaling 2,169 settlers,128 and in 1784, the county’s population had grown sufficiently that the state designated the southern half as the new entity of Harrison County. By this time, Thomas and Edward Cunningham had left their lands along Ten Mile Creek and moved north to new acreage bordering the left fork of Bingamon Creek, which eventually bore the family name and became known as Cunningham’s Run. They first show up on Harrison County census records in 1785 under Benjamin Robinson’s list of “tithables,” which covered an area from the county line up the west side of the West Fork River to Limestone Creek.129 Here, the two families erected two cabins a few yards apart and then cleared and began farming the land in what was a small, beautiful valley. Nestled between steep hills on all sides, the valley was no more than two miles long and about a mile wide, with gently rolling land along its floor punctuated with dense forest. Here, they also built the first primitive gristmill in Harrison County by constructing a dam in the creek, which drove a piston over a beam with an iron wedge in the tip, which was subsequently worked to strike a rock, grinding corn into a fine powder in the process.130
Since their marriage in April 1780, Phebe and Thomas had started a large family, and their brood included four children. Henry had been born in 1781, and he was followed by Lydia and Walter in 1782, while their youngest child, Thomas Jr., was born in 1785. Meanwhile, Edward and Sarah’s family had grown to eight children, four boys and four girls, ranging from age three to fourteen. However, the lives of the two families had been far from idyllic, and the reality of Indian warfare had already visited them twice.
Thomas was the first of the Cunningham family involved in an incident related to an Indian attack, which occurred in 1777, three years before he wed Phebe. On the afternoon of September 13, Thomas and his friend Enoch James were walking down a road that passed by Coon’s Fort, another of the local refuge forts, which was located only about five miles below Prickett’s Fort. As they passed the fort, they came upon one of Mr. Coon’s daughters, sixteen-year-old Maudline, who was lifting some hemp in one of her father’s fields near the fort. Thomas and Enoch stopped and chatted with her for a few minutes, and then said farewell and continued walking down the road. Unknown to any of them, two Indian warriors were lurking in the woods a few yards away. Apparently, they had been observing the activities around the fort for some time, seeking an opportunity to seize an appropriate captive, most likely a woman or child. They had been watching Maudline carefully, waiting for the right moment to leap from the cover of the forest, grab her and get away before anyone knew she was missing.
When Thomas and James were almost out of sight, they made their move, running out from the shadows of the trees, leaping a fence and racing toward the teenage girl. Unfortunately, she turned, saw them coming at her and immediately raced toward the safety of the fort. Realizing that they would not be able to catch her, one of the warriors quickly raised his rifle and shot her down.
Hearing the loud report of a shot being fired, Thomas and James whirled about and saw the two Indians, who were now running toward Maudline’s prostrate body, one carrying a rifle as the other brandished his tomahawk and knife, clearly intending to finish off their victim if they could not take her prisoner. James tried to load his rifle and get off a shot, but it was too late. The second warrior proceeded to bludgeon the young woman with his tomahawk and then hurriedly took her scalp with his knife. As the two warriors now ran headlong for the woods, James raised his rifle and fired, but the distance was too great, and he missed his intended target. Thomas and James then ran to where Maudline lay bleeding in the field, but as they knelt next to her, they discovered she was already dead. By now, the alarm was raised in the fort, and an armed party of men quickly left in pursuit. However, it was too late, and the warriors made good their escape.131 Six months later, the lives of the Cunningham family would again be touched by the violence of an Indian raid. This time, it would be Edward and Sarah who would be confronted with the terror and loss it could bring.
In February 1778, all signs pointed to an earlier than normal resumption of Indian activity in the upper Monongahela Valley, leading several families to take shelter at a refuge fort known as Harbert’s Fort, with Edward and Sarah’s family among them. Located on Jones’ Creek near present-day Lumberport, West Virginia, this fort was not a complex stockade structure like Prickett’s Fort but rather a simple two-story reinforced log blockhouse, with loopholes in its walls for firing. Although large enough to hold a few families, its limited space could prove very claustrophobic if one stayed longer than a few days. As a result, after a couple of weeks inside the blockhouse with no sign of any Indians, the families decided to let their guard down for a few hours. They opened the front door, allowing their children to go out and some much needed fresh air to come in. The children were soon running about the yard, burning off excess energy, and a few of them, including Edward and Sarah’s oldest son, seven-year-old Joe, played in a clay hole with a crippled crow they had found. After a few minutes of this carefree activity, the children looked up to see a raiding party of Shawnee warriors emerge from the woods and then sprint toward the blockhouse and its open door.
As this 1939 photo of the original Harbert’s Fort blockhouse shows, refuge forts were often small, unsophisticated structures. Courtesy Brian Harbert.
Most of the children ran for the blockhouse, while Joe headed straight for an old loom house nearby, where he slipped down through a treadle hole and hid under the floor. Meanwhile, the other children burst through the blockhouse door screaming that Indians were coming. In fact, they were in very close pursuit. One of the men inside, John Murphy, went to the door to see if the children were telling the truth or playing a game. As he stepped outside, one of the Shawnee came around the corner of the building, raised his rifle and fired, killing Murphy, whose lifeless body fell back inside the blockhouse.
The other adults sprang into action, with men trying to grab weapons as the women either hid the children or moved to close the open door. However, they were not fast enough, as the warrior who had shot Murphy burst through the door, where he was immediately confronted by Thomas Harbert. The two men grappled with one another and fell to the floor as Harbert repeatedly struck his assailant with a tomahawk. A shot then came from outside, wounding Harbert. He continued his struggle, but seconds later, another shot was fired, hitting Harbert in the head and killing him instantly.
As Harbert’s attacker retreated out the door, another warrior entered. By this time, Edward Cunningham had managed to reach his rifle, but as he raised it, the weapon misfired. The warrior, armed with a tomahawk that had a long spike in the end, leapt at Edward, and the two men fought hand to hand. Both were young and strong, and neither could get an advantage over the other. As they crashed about the room, locked in a deadly wrestling match, Edward was able to wrench the tomahawk from the Shawnee’s hand and land a crippling blow, sinking the spike into the warrior’s back. Despite this wound, the Shawnee would not give up the struggle and continued to fight. At that moment, Sarah, who had been standing nearby, came to her husband’s aid. Grabbing an axe, she hurried forward, took a swing at the warrior and struck a severe but glancing blow on the side of his face. Crying out in severe pain, the Shawnee finally let loose his death grip on Edward, turned away and ran from the room.
As Edward and the second warrior fought, a third Shawnee pushed inside past the women who were anxiously trying to close and barricade the door. Wearing the unshorn front of a buffalo on his head, with ears and horns still attached, this man presented a most warlike appearance. He immediately moved toward a teenage girl, raising his tomahawk to strike her. Her father, who had been cowering in a nearby corner throughout the fighting, jumped up and tried to intervene but was too late to stop the first blow. Before the Shawnee could strike her again, her father grabbed the warrior’s arm and deflected the blow but was immediately tossed to the ground by the much-stronger Indian attacker. As the warrior was about to crush the settler’s skull, Edward ran across the room and, before the warrior could strike, sunk his own tomahawk deep into the Indian’s head, killing him.
During the fighting, the other women had finally managed to push the door closed against the combined weight of the remaining warriors trying to force it open. Unfortunately, several children had not made it to the safety of the blockhouse, and the warriors now killed and scalped those they did not see fit to carry away to captivity. One of those taken away was Joe Cunningham. A warrior had apparently seen him enter the loom house, followed him and discovered the little boy’s hiding place. Reaching down into the hole beneath the floor, the Shawnee grabbed his new captive by the collar, pulled him up and made him join the other prisoners, who were now being marched away to the Shawnee’s home village.
Once there, Joe was adopted but not before he was forced to run the gauntlet. This was part of almost all the woodland Indian tribes’ adoption ritual, and in this case, the young settler’s gauntlet consisted of Shawnee boys his own age who struck him with sticks and their fists. Young Joe not only made it through the gauntlet, but when he neared its end, he also turned on his tormentors and struck back. The adult Shawnee laughed at this display of courage but also appeared pleased that their new family member was so brave. Joe would remain with the Shawnee for sixteen years before he would be ransomed back to his family at age twenty-three. During that time, he forgot almost all of the English language he had been raised to speak, except for his name. Whenever he was alone throughout those sixteen years, he would whisper, “Joe Cunningham, Joe Cunningham,” to himself repeatedly as his only way to maintain a connection to his former life and family.132 However, a worse tragedy would eventually visit the Cunningham family, arriving on a late summer day in 1785.
THE WYANDOT COME TO CUNNINGHAM’S RUN
In early August 1785, Thomas Cunningham decided to make a final trip to Pittsburgh before the fall harvest and the winter that would soon follow. He packed up his horses with furs he and Edward had trapped, which would be sold for cash or traded for supplies, and said farewell to Phebe and their four children, probably assuring her that he would return in a few weeks time with everything they needed for the coming winter. Knowing that Edward and his thirteen-year-old son, Benjamin, would be able to provide some protection to his family and relying on the militia scouts for warning of any Indian activity, Thomas likely left with as little trepidation as one living on the frontier at that time could have.
As Thomas made his way down the Monongahela, Phebe continued her daily routine, working around the farm, performing seemingly endless household chores and, of course, taking care of her children. The last day of August soon arrived, and it began much the same as all the other summer days that preceded it. The only thing that was remotely noteworthy was the presence of a small bird that flew in the window during the early morning and fluttered about Phebe’s cabin. Given that the cabin doors and windows were usually open during summer days, this was not a particularly strange occurrence. However, based on what would happen later that day, every time a bird flew into her house for the rest her life, Phebe would see it as a bad omen, becoming anxious, frightened and often moved to tears.133
As the morning progressed, Phebe washed her favorite red and white coverlet and then carefully draped it over the fence in front of the cabin to dry. With that task complete, she went inside to cook a large lunch for her children, as Sarah did the same a few yards away in her cabin. The noon meal Phebe prepared that day included a main course of bear meat plus new potatoes and fresh peas from the garden, with applesauce made from apples grown in their own orchard. The meal would be topped off with dessert in the form of a fresh-baked vinegar pie and sweet milk for her children.134 As midday arrived, Phebe set the table, and since Thomas was expected home at any time, she even set a place for him at the table. Then she rounded up her children and sat down to eat with them, not knowing that danger hovered nearby.
That danger came from a raiding party of Wyandot warriors, who were at that moment crouched in the woods, watching and waiting for the right moment to move from their hiding place and attack the farm in what was likely intended as a captive-taking raid. On this occasion, the militia scout system had failed to detect the raiding party’s presence in the area, and the warriors had probably been observing the farm for some time. As a result, they knew that Edward and Benjamin were the only ones capable of making any meaningful resistance and that a total of two women and ten children were the potential prizes as captives. Furthermore, the noon meal offered an excellent opportunity to make their approach, as everyone was inside, focused on eating their meals and conversing, while the cabin doors stood wide open. Their plan seems to have been for one warrior to first enter Phebe’s cabin, where they knew no man was present to resist them. Once inside, the warrior could use his rifle to provide cover for the rest of the attackers, as they tried to get inside Edward and Sarah’s cabin before Edward and his son could reach their rifles and close the front door.
As the Cunningham families ate their lunch, the warriors crept out from the woods and hid behind the coverlet drying on the fence. Then, one of the Wyandot, a tall, heavy man painted for war in red, yellow and black, crossed the yard and crept toward Phebe’s cabin. Inside, Phebe sat at the end of the table closest to the cabin door, chatting with her children and eating her meal. Suddenly, her peripheral vision detected movement, and she turned toward the door to see the shadow of a tomahawk crossing its threshold. Before she could move to close the door or cry out the alarm, the Wyandot quickly entered the cabin, closing the door behind him.135
Often described as a handsome, rugged people, this Barbara Kiwak sculpture, The Huron, gives us an idea of what the warriors who came to the Cunningham farm might have looked like. Courtesy of the artist.
As Phebe and her children sat frozen in their chairs, the warrior helped himself to their food, eating a potato, all the pie and drinking down much of the milk. He then asked in halting English how many men were in the cabin next door, and Phebe replied by holding up and extending the fingers of both hands to indicate ten.136 He frowned and said, “Augh Sagh,” which Phebe later learned meant ten.137 Since he almost certainly knew exactly how many men were in the other cabin, he likely found her attempt to trick him brave but somewhat foolish. He then turned to the small window and firing port in the cabin wall that faced Edward and Sarah’s cabin and peered across the yard.
At this point, the Wyandot’s plan for a surprise attack on the other cabin went wrong. Edward had seen the warrior enter Phebe’s cabin and immediately closed their cabin door, grabbed his loaded rifle and moved to the window, where he saw the Wyandot peer through the firing port in Phebe’s cabin wall. Realizing that Edward was watching him and was even now taking aim with his rifle, the warrior quickly raised his musket and fired at Edward. Phebe’s brother-in-law saw this just in time to avoid the shot that quickly followed. Bark from the window frame next to Edward’s head was knocked off by the ball and flew up into his face. He quickly shook off the shards and returned fire as the warrior ducked below his window for cover.
As Edward rushed to reload, another of the raiding party jumped from hiding and ran across the yard toward Edward and Sarah’s cabin. Hearing his war cry, Edward raised the now reloaded musket and took aim on his new target. As soon as the warrior saw the weapon pointed in his direction, he turned and tried to get out of range. However, just as he was about to spring over the fence, Edward fired, and the Wyandot fell forward. The ball hit him in the leg, fracturing his thighbone, and he hobbled over the fence, taking shelter behind the coverlet before Edward could reload and fire again.
Meanwhile, the Wyandot who had fired from Phebe’s cabin saw his comrade’s misfortune and, realizing that their plan had failed, apparently decided to make an escape. Up to this moment, Phebe had not attempted to get away as she feared any attempt to do so would be seen and draw the warrior’s anger. Moreover, even if she managed to escape, the other raiders would likely kill her before she could make it to Edward and Sarah’s cabin. Worst of all, however, she knew that it was impossible for her to take the children with her, and she could not simply leave them alone with the warrior. Phebe held the forlorn hope that he would decide to withdraw without molesting any of them. Tragically, that would not be the case.
The warrior grabbed another potato, shoved it in his mouth and then proceeded to set fire to blankets from the nearby beds. Thick smoke began to fill the room and pour out the doors and windows, masking the view from Edward and Sarah’s cabin. Once he was sure he would not be seen escaping, the Wyandot apparently decided he needed to do something to ensure Phebe’s cooperation. Grabbing her two-year old son, Walter, he raised his tomahawk and swiftly brought it down, smashing the little boy’s skull and killing him before his mother’s horrified eyes. As a scream caught in her throat, he jerked Phebe up from her chair, put the infant, Tommy, in her arms and ordered her and the other two children to leave with him via the front door. The Wyandot, who continued to drag Walter’s lifeless body with him, then led her away from the house with the baby in her arms and Henry and Lydia hanging onto her skirts. Despite the smoke, Edward could see Phebe and her family being led away by the warrior. He took aim, but the smoke was too dense to risk a shot that might hit Phebe or one of the children. Instead, Edward did about the only thing he could. He plaintively called out Phebe’s name across the yard, telling her not to lose hope and that a rescue would be coming soon.
Once hidden among the trees, the warrior promptly took Walter’s scalp and tossed his body aside, and the raiding party watched as the flames from Phebe’s cabin jumped to the roof of Edward and Sarah’s home.138 The Wyandots hoped that the flames would drive the family from the house, but soon they could see that Edward and Benjamin had climbed up to the loft, thrown off the loose boards that covered it and were attempting to extinguish the fire. The raiding party began to take shots at them in an attempt to stop them from putting out the fire, but this effort failed. Edward and Benjamin quickly extinguished the blaze and began to return the warriors’ shots. Seeing that this particular target was going to be too hard to take, the raiding party elected to withdraw, taking their wounded comrade and new captives with them. However, before they traveled more than a few yards, the warriors decided to lighten their load.
Although the goal of the raid was most likely to take captives, events had turned against the Wyandot. If their plan had succeeded, they would have eliminated Edward and Benjamin and, with them, any chance of an alarm being raised in the countryside. Then they could have easily retired from the area and made their way home, despite being slowed by the presence of twelve captives. Now, however, they knew it was only a matter of hours before armed militiamen would be dispatched in pursuit, and they had a badly wounded warrior to care for. Given that, military expediency made their captives excess baggage they could ill afford. While Phebe could probably keep up with them as they marched westward and carry little Tommy, four-year-old Henry and three-year-old Lydia were too great a liability. The warriors quickly killed both children with tomahawk blows as Phebe watched in motionless horror, probably expecting to receive the same fate, along with Tommy.
With their wounded comrade carried on a rough litter, the raiding party and their two surviving captives crossed the nearby ridge to Bingamon Creek and then made their way to a smaller stream known today as Little Indian Run. There, they took shelter for the night in a cave formed by a large sandstone rock with a projecting roof, which was located about two miles from the Cunningham farm.139 After nightfall, the raiding party returned to the farm, and seeing that the rest of the Cunningham family had fled, they plundered the cabin before setting it ablaze.
This monument along County Route 8 west of Peora, West Virginia, marks the location of the Cunningham farm. The sandstone rock comes from the cave in which the Wyandot hid with Phebe and her infant son. Photo by the author.
Edward, Sarah, and their children were actually hiding in the neighboring woods, watching helplessly as their home burned to the ground. In the morning, they made their way to the nearest farm and gave the alarm. As the Wyandots had anticipated, a company of men was quickly raised to go in pursuit of the raiding party. When they arrived at the Cunningham’s farm, they found both houses now in ashes, and before long, they discovered the bodies of Phebe’s three children. After a quick burial, they set off in an attempt to find the Wyandots’ trail. Unfortunately, the raiders had covered their tracks well, and initially, no traces of them were uncovered.
However, the next day, evidence of the warriors’ trail was finally discovered. The militia followed their path to within a short distance of the cave in which the Wyandot were hiding but could track them no further. As they searched the area, the militia came so close to the cave that Phebe could hear their voices clearly. She later told Lucullus McWhorter, “Not only were their voices plainly audible, and I recognized some of them, but the slightest rustle of their shot pouches was borne to my ear.”140 However, the warriors stood over her with rifles and tomahawks at the ready, indicating that she and her infant must remain silent and that any attempt to cry out would bring a swift death. Phebe crouched in the cave with her captors, holding Tommy close to her breast so he would not cry and give them away.141
Finding nothing, the searchers returned to the Cunningham farm that evening. During the night, one of the search party who was familiar with the area remembered the presence of a cave along Little Indian Run and led the group to it, reaching the cave just after dawn the next morning. However, having heard the militia so close the day before, the raiding party had elected to leave during the night, taking Phebe and Tommy with them.
Thomas returned a few days later to find his home in ashes, three of his children dead and his wife and infant son missing. His grief must have been almost unimaginable. As time passed, many would try to convince him that Phebe and Tommy were likely dead, as well, and that he needed to relinquish whatever hope he might harbor in his heart. Nevertheless, Thomas would never give up.
Officially, Phebe was reported as being killed in the attack by Colonel John P. Duval, the County Lieutenant of Harrison County, in a dispatch to Governor Patrick Henry of Virginia, dated September 5, 1785:
The Indians have again repeated their barbarities in Harrison County on the 31st of August by killing the wife and four children of Thomas Cunningham and burning his house and that of Edward Cunningham. The people are terrified. Expresses are arriving with intelligence of traces of Indians being nearby. He would do all he could to keep the people together until succor should arrive, but the Militia were not organized, and ammunition very scarce. He had sent out fifty men and six spies. The effective force in county being only about two hundred and fifteen men and about one hundred and thirty guns. He is about to send for the powder and lead agreeable to directions, but adds in case there are any rifles belonging to the State in any of the back magazines at Alexandria, Winchester or Fredericksburg should acknowledge it as a singular favor to send an order for about two hundred of them.142
As Duval’s report made its way to Governor Patrick Henry in Richmond, Phebe continued marching to the west with her captors, unaware of just how long this journey would eventually be in terms of both distance and time.