Produced by David Widger
By
Charles M. Skinner
Vol. 6.
An Averted Peril
The Obstinacy of Saint Clair
The Hundredth Skull
The Crime of Black Swamp
The House Accursed
Marquette's Man-Eater
Michel de Coucy's Troubles
Wallen's Ridge
The Sky Walker of Huron
The Coffin of Snakes
Mackinack
Lake Superior Water Gods
The Witch of Pictured Rocks
The Origin of White Fish
The Spirit of Cloudy
The Sun Fire at Sault Sainte Marie
The Snake God of Belle Isle
Were-Wolves of Detroit
The Escape of Francois Navarre
The Old Lodger
The Nain Rouge
Two Revenges
Hiawatha
The Indian Messiah
The Vision of Rescue
Devil's Lake
The Keusca Elopement
Pipestone
The Virgins' Feast
Falls of St. Anthony
Flying Shadow and Track Maker
Saved by a Lightning-Stroke
The Killing of Cloudy Sky
Providence Hole
The Scare Cure
Twelfth Night at Cahokia
The Spell of Creve Coeur Lake
How the Crime was Revealed
Banshee of the Bad Lands
Standing Rock
The Salt Witch
In 1786 a little building stood at North Bend, Ohio, near the junction ofthe Miami and Ohio Rivers, from which building the stars and stripes wereflying. It was one of a series of blockhouses built for the protecting ofcleared land while the settlers were coming in, yet it was a tradingstation rather than a fort, for the attitude of government toward the redmen was pacific. The French of the Mississippi Valley were notreconciled, however, to the extension of power by a Saxon people, and theEnglish in Canada were equally jealous of the prosperity of thoseprovinces they had so lately lost. Both French and English had emissariesamong the Shawnees when it had become known that the United Statesintended to negotiate a treaty with them.
It was the mild weather that comes for a time in October, whenCantantowit blesses the land from his home in the southwest with richcolors, plaintive perfumes of decay, soft airs, and tender lights a timefor peace; but the garrison at the fort realized that the situation wasprecarious. The Shawnees had camped about them, and the air was filledwith the neighing of their ponies and the barking of their dogs. To letthem into the fort was to invite massacre; to keep them out after theyhad been summoned was to declare war.
Colonel George Rogers Clarke, of Virginia, who was in command, scoffed atthe fears of his men, and would not give ear to their appeals for anadjournment of the meeting or a change of the place of it. At theappointed hour the doors were opened and the Indians came in. The pipe ofpeace was smoked in the usual form, but the red men were sullen andinsolent, and seemed to be seeking a cause of quarrel. Clarke explainedthat the whites desired only peace, and he asked the wise men to speakfor their tribe. A stalwart chief arose, glanced contemptuously at theofficer and his little guard, and, striding to the table where Clarke wasseated, threw upon it two girdles of wampum—the peace-belt and thewar-belt. "We offer