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Updated: June 29, 2025
Other refugees from the battle-field had brought the alarming news. He was asked many questions about Colonel Crawford, and Doctor Knight, and John Slover, and the score who were missing with them. He could tell little. All he knew, was, that he had escaped, and that he wished to get word to his mother, down in Virginia. He did not stay.
By ten o'clock in the forenoon he had reached the Scioto fifty miles away. He allowed his horse to breathe here; then he remounted, crossed the river, and galloped half as far again. At three o'clock his horse gave out, and Slover left him and ran forward afoot, spurred on by the yells of the pursuers close behind him.
Not till Slover had given him the names of many men in Crawford's army, as well as his own name, did the man come to his rescue and ferry him over to the fort, where he was safe at last.
He was then carried to the blockhouse and left bound with two guards, who entertained themselves, but did not amuse Slover, by talking over his probable behavior under the torture that awaited him. They fell asleep, worn out, about daybreak, when Slover made a desperate effort to free himself, and to his own astonishment, succeeded. He stepped across his snoring guards out into the open air.
They bombarded Tutelu with broad jokes, and the best he could do was to go off to get his head dressed. John Slover had been captured. He and James Paull and four others were threading homeward from the battle trail when several Indians had ambushed them; with one volley killed two, then had summoned the rest to surrender. He and young James were the only men with guns.
The words of John Slover, that the British army had surrendered and that the Americans were victors in the great war, were proved to be true. Now there arose much excitement among the Indians, in their towns and villages beyond the Ohio. Their British father had been laid upon his back, and they did not know exactly what to do.
The council listened keenly. Some of the chiefs believed, and softened. The speech rang true; it came from the heart. The sentence was postponed and John Slover was released and kindly treated. He took up quarters with an old squaw, who called him her son. He went to the dances. He was an Indian again. All this might mean little, but he took hope.
A man, opposite, saw him, and ventured part way over in a canoe. The man was afraid. "Who are you? Who do you aim to be?" "I am John Slover. Take me to Fort Henry." "You're an Injun. You're no John Slover. He's dead. I've a notion to shoot you, myself." "I'm Slover. I am Slover. I've escaped from the Shawnees. I'll name you some of the officers who were with Crawford." So he did.
In June of this year 1782, while Scout Slover was a captive, a grand council of the Northern Confederacy and their allies had been called at the Shawnee town of Wakatomica, to talk matters over. Delegates arrived from the Ottawas, Chippewas, Delawares, the southern Cherokees, Potawatomis, Wyandot Hurons, Mingo Iroquois, and from the other Shawnee towns.
The year after their escape Slover dictated, and Knight wrote, narratives of their adventures, which were together published in book form at Philadelphia in 1783. Slover's Escape. At last he was condemned to be burned, and was actually tied to the stake. But a heavy shower came on, so wetting the wood that it was determined to reprieve him till the morrow.
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