United States or Bouvet Island ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Blount had met Gordon socially a number of times, and in the intervals allowed him by Mrs. Weatherford he was silently studying the face of the big man who, singularly enough, as the student thought, was thus identifying himself publicly as a friend of the boss.
Coming to the edge of the precipice with headlong speed, the animal could not draw back but plunged over with Sam sitting bolt upright on his back. Riding back to the top of the bank Weatherford met his warriors. "Where is he?" asked the foremost. "His body is down there in the creek. I drove him over the precipice," said the chief with well-feigned delight.
On the morning of August 30, 1813, Beasley was writing to his superior, General Claiborne, that he could hold the fort against any number of the enemy. At that very moment a thousand warriors lay hidden in a ravine but a few hundred yards from the open gate of the stockade. Their principal leader was William Weatherford, "the Red Eagle," a half-breed of much intelligence and dauntless courage.
Weatherford hearing of this, although he was safe beyond the borders and might have easily made his escape to Florida, as his comrade Peter McQueen did, rode straightway to Jackson's head-quarters, where he said to the commander who had set a price upon his head: "I am Weatherford. I have come to ask peace for my people. I am in your power. Do with me as you please. I am a soldier.
A shudder ran over the whole country. The Southwest turned from the remoter events of the war in Canada to the disaster at home. "The Creeks!" "Weatherford!" "Fort Mims!" were the words on everybody's lips, while the major-general of the Tennessee militia still lay helpless from his shameful wound.
Approaching a government station was generally looked upon as an audacious act of the redskins, but the contempt of the Comanche and his ally for citizen and soldier alike was well known on the Texas frontier and excited little comment. Several years later, in broad daylight, they raided the town of Weatherford, untied every horse from the hitching racks, and defiantly rode away with their spoil.
Such were King Philip of the Wampanoags; Pontiac, the great Ottawa; Cornplanter of the Senecas, in the eighteenth century; while in the first half of the nineteenth we have Weatherford of the Creeks, Tecumseh of the Shawnees, Little Turtle of the Miamis, Wabashaw and Wanatan of the Sioux, Black Hawk of the Foxes, Osceola of the Seminoles.
Hathaway," he said, speaking slowly and quite distinctly "am I right in inferring that it is not confined strictly to points within the State boundaries?" At this the lumberman repeated a phrase which he had used in the anxious conference in the Weatherford herbarium. "If I thought you didn't know, I'd go a long time without telling you, Mr. Blount. But of course you do know.
Whether or not there is nobleness enough in the Indian character to make the savage remember a benefit received, I am sure I cannot say, but Weatherford was three-fourths white, and with all his ferocity in war, history credits him with more than one generous impulse like that by which Sam was now profiting.
It is not the natural Indian who is mean and tricky; not Massasoit but King Philip; not Attackullakulla but Weatherford; not Wabashaw but Little Crow; not Jumping Buffalo but Sitting Bull! These men lifted their hands against the white man, while their fathers held theirs out to him with gifts.
Word Of The Day