CHAPTER X.

THE CRUELTIES OF GIRTY.

OR the traitor there has been erected in every age and country a pillar of historic infamy. By whatever name he is known, apostate, renegade, turncoat, or Tory, mankind have for him one universal expression of contempt. His name, of all historic characters, is buried the deepest in the mire. He becomes a by-word, a hissing, a reproach among the nations of the earth. For him no curse is bitter enough, no oblivion black enough. He lives in the midst of the fiercest passions which darken the human heart. He is a hater and the hated. The rage which he excites among the followers of the cause which he has deserted is only equaled by the disgust and secret loathing which he inspires among the partisans of the cause which he has joined.

Of all enmities, that of the apostate is most bitter. Of all hatreds, that of the renegade is most bloody. Within him rage storms of wrath, without him storm tempests of calumny. When the occasion for his shame has passed, and he is no longer useful to the ranks of which he became the dishonored recruit, he is sent without the camp. He is spurned as a viper. He is shunned as a leper. He is despised as a devil.

Another man fights and falls in the cause of wrong, yet to him mankind accords the laurels of heroism. Upon his tomb the historian inscribes the legend, "He was mistaken, but he was great." From that time on his error is forgotten. His

name is inscribed among those of the heroes and the martyrs. The philosopher moralizes upon his career. He points out the fact that the dead was in the grasp of immutable laws; that he was not his own master; that ancestry, birth, place, temperament, surroundings, fortune, accident, and circumstances are the powers which have controlled him, in whose Titanic grasp he was but a puppet. This is the charity of history. This is the kindness of philosophy. This is the imperial task to which the human mind of after ages devotes herself, the task of preserving and immortalizing Truth, Heroism, and Honor, whereever found.

Not so with the renegade. He is the abhorrence of all future generations. He may have fallen fighting in the ranks No matter. Above his grave rises the He may have made fearful sacrifices.

of the brave and true. black shaft of shame.

For him men He is disowned

His virtues pass

He may have deserted one cause and joined another from an honest intellectual conviction. It is nothing. have but epithets of shame, sneers of derision. and dishonored. For him there is no charity. into oblivion. His solitary crime of apostasy becomes overshadowing and colossal. Philosophy refuses to inquire into the origin and reasons of his infamy. He, too, may have been a puppet, moved by invisible wires from remote agencies. Yet for his sin there is no atonement, no mercy-seat. His name is inscribed with those of Benedict Arnold and Brutus, of Julian and Judas Iscariot.

Concerning such characters the real truth is never known. The whirlwinds of abuse which overwhelm their lives throw dust in the eyes of the historian. He sees only a vast mass of slanders, invectives, reproaches, and vilifications. There seems to have been no good in the man. Passion, it may be, has exaggerated his vices. Enmity may have lied about his virtues. But the exact truth can never be obtained. He may have been worse than he seems; he may have been better than he seems. Concerning these things it is impossible to judge

To the ranks of traitors of which we have been speaking belongs Simon Girty, the Renegade, or the White Savage. It is not impossible that he has been slandered. We can not tell. The story of his life is certainly a black one.

Among all the Tories of the Revolution Simon Girty was the most notorious. He was born in north-western Pennsylvania. His father was an Irishman. "The old man was beastly intemperate. A jug of whisky was the extent of his ambition. Grog was his song, and grog would he have. His sottishness turned his wife's affection. Ready for seduction, she yielded her heart to a neighboring rustic, who, to remove all obstacles to their wishes, knocked old Girty on the head, and bore off the trophy of his prowess."

The murdered man had been an Indian trader. He left four boys, Thomas, Simon, George, and James. During the Old French war the three younger boys were taken captive by the Indians. Inheriting the nature of savages, their surroundings only developed them. Each was adopted into an Indian tribe. Each became a blood-thirsty ruffian, and during long careers of violence inflicted every cruelty upon the persons and families of the white settlers.

Of the three brothers Simon became the most notorious, as he was the most wicked. At the close of Pontiac's war, Girty was delivered to Bouquet as a hostage for the good behavior of the Senecas, of which tribe he was a member. The savage propensities of the young ruffian were so strong that he escaped from his civilized companions, and sought again the wild and wicked life of the wigwams. Strangely enough his appetite for barbarism was at this time forced to remain unsatisfied. The Senecas, being bound by the condition in the treaty of peace, deliberately took Mr. Girty by force, and dragged him back to Pittsburgh.

Of course, when Dunmore's war broke out in 1774, Girty's natural taste for scenes of violence led him to take an active part. Here he met Simon Kenton, for whose life he afterwards

interceded with the Wyandots. Here, too, he met Colonel Crawford, at whose hospitable cabin on the Youghiogheny he was a frequent guest. In attempting to account for his subsequent treachery and desertion, the border writers mention several incidents, which tradition reports as having transpired about this time.

One story goes that he aspired to the hand of one of Colonel Crawford's daughters. The refusal, with which his advances were met, poisoned his malignant heart with a sleepless longing for revenge. This account is supposed to furnish some reason for Girty's awful inhumanity to Colonel Crawford some years later.

Another story runs to the effect that Girty and another scout, having rendered some two or three months' service in the militia, without receiving their pay, repaired to the headquarters of General Lewis, and insolently demanded that the arrears of salary be made up. The military discipline of the time seems to have been a little singular, for General Lewis not only received the application with a storm of curses, but proceeded to exercise himself in bloodying the heads of the two scouts with several severe blows from his cane. Strangely enough this style of reception and military etiquette displeased the untutored scouts. Girty picked himself up, and shaking his fist at the general, with a fearful oath, threateningly said, "Sir, for this your quarters shall swim in blood."

On the 22d of February, 1775, a day which, at that time, was not yet celebrated as the birthday of the Father of his country, Girty became a commissioned officer in the militia at Pittsburgh. In accordance with English laws, he took the necessary oaths of allegiance to the king and his abhorrence of papacy.

Here, again, the ingenious border writers find a reason for Girty's faithlessness. They say he aspired to a captaincy, but was only made an orderly-sergeant. This affront his sensitive soul could by no means endure. He remained, however, in the

service at Fort Pitt until the early part of 1778. That his real sympathies, if such his inclinations might be called, were with the Indians, among whom he had been raised, and not with the struggling cause of the colonial patriots, is natural, and easy to believe.

A savage seeks the society of savages, just as surely as a gentleman seeks that of gentlemen. Accordingly we find Girty, together with a pair of precious scoundrels, McKee and Elliott, and twelve followers, one day making up their packs and deserting from Fort Pitt. The news spread far and wide over the agitated frontiers. Wherever the ruffians went, they spread lies about the defeat of the American forces, the triumph of the British, and the intention of the colonists to avenge their defeat by the murder of every Indian in the Ohio valley. The settlers trembled for the safety of their families. The mischief which the white scoundrels might work among credulous and excitable savages was incalculable. Their evil designs were looked upon as a matter of certainty.

Nor did the fears of the settlers exaggerate the real dangers of the situation. The Indians were made to believe that George Washington was killed, and that the members of Congress were hung in the very chambers where they had been accustomed to deliberate. As poor Heckewelder said, speaking of the renegade's visit to Gnadenhutten: "It was enough to break the hearts of the missionaries."

Girty started for Detroit. On the way he was captured by the Wyandots. Some Senecas demanded that he be delivered up to them, on the ground that he was an adopted member of their tribe, and had taken arms against them. In fact, Girty's national allegiance was a little mixed. Was he a traitor to the Senecas, or to the Americans, or to both, or to neither? For this enigma, the Wyandot chief had a solution. "He is our prisoner." Such logic won the day. By shrewd explanations that he was now devoted to their cause Girty procured himself to be set at liberty, and proceeded to Detroit. Here the com