|
(Source: History of Jackson County, Ohio
by D. W. Williams - Vol. I.
The Scioto Salt Springs - Jackson, Ohio 1900)
JONATHAN ALDER
- The wars and revolutions of the whites, however, great in
results, affected the Indian inhabitants of Ohio but slightly at the
time. They still roamed at will through its forests, hunted
the buffalo, made salt at the Scioto licks, went on their regular
manhunts into the mountains and brought back white captives.
Among the latter was Johnathan Alder, who was captured in
1782, when a lad of nine years. He was out in the woods in
company with an older brother, David, looking for a mare and
colt that had strayed away, when the Indians surprised them, killed
his brother and took him prisoner. The same band had captured
other prisoners in the same neighborhood, among whom were a Mrs.
Martin and her four-year-old daughter. The latter failed
to keep up with her captors in their rapid march down to the Ohio,
and they killed and scalped her. Alder remained
with the Indians until 1795, but it was ten years later before he
returned to his kindred in Virginia. In after life he wrote an
account of his sojourn among the Indians, in which they may be found
the following reference to a visit to the Scioto licks: It was
now better than a year after I was taken prisoner, when the Indians
started off to the Scioto salt springs, near Chillicothe, to make
salt, and took me along with them. Here I got to see Mrs.
Martin, who was taken prisoner at the same time I was, and this
was the first time I had seen her since we were separated at the
council house. When she saw me she came smiling, and asked if
it was me. I told her it was. She asked me how I had
been. I told her I had been very unwell, for I had the fever
and ague for a long time. So she took me off to a log, and
there we sat down, and she combed my head and asked me a great many
questions about how I lived, and if I did not want to see my mother
and little brothers. I told her that I should be glad to see
them, but never expected to again. She then pulled out some
pieces of her daughter's scalp that she said were some trimmings
they had trimmed off the night after she was killed, and that she
meant to keep them as long as she lived. She then talked and
cried about her family, that was all destroyed and gone, except the
remaining bits of her daughter's scalp. We stayed here a
considerable time, and meanwhile took many a cry together, and when
we parted again took our last and final farewell, for I never saw
her again.
< BACK TO HISTORY TABLE OF
CONTENTS >
|
