"Near this spot was fought, On the afternoon of Friday, the third day of July, 1778, In which a small band of patriot-Americans, chiefly the undisciplined, the youthful, and the aged, spared by inefficiency from the distant ranks of the republic, led by Col. Zebulon Butler and Col. Nathan Denison, with a courage that deserved success, boldly met and bravely fought a combined British, Tory, and Indian force, Numerical superiority alone gave success to the invader, marked his savage and bloody footsteps through the valley. commemorative of these events, and of the actors in them, has been erected over the bones of the slain, By their descendants, and others who gratefully appreciated It has not been attempted in this compilation of the Romance of the History of Wyoming to include an account of each of the invasions or irruptions that were made upon the early settlers of the valley, or to furnish the details of adventure and suffering and death, in all the horrible and atrocious forms that savage cruelty and vindictiveness could inflict; but merely to indicate a few of the events which have made the valley a shrine to which history and poetry have dedicated some of their noblest efforts. The trouble between the conflicting claimants for jurisdiction, after various attempts to fight them out, was arranged by compromises and agreements. The last of the engagements in this war between the Yankees and the Pennymites, in which lives were lost, took place on the 18th of October, 1784. It was long before the settlers were secured in the quiet possession of their lands. But as time passed, wiser counsels prevailed. A compromise was entered upon, in virtue of which the original settlers were secured the possession of their homes, and the long feud was finally healed. Half a century of peace and prosperity has almost effaced the memory of the troublous years that succeeded, as it will require another half century to efface the memory of the bitter contest from which the country has recently so successfully emerged. Things have moved along quietly in the valley for years; the development of her mineral wealth has brought in crowding ranks from every people and tongue and kindred; but while she has increased in wealth and material prosperity, the romance of her history closed with the century. The shaft and the big tunnel and the drifts have taken the place of stockade and forts and redoubts; the puffing of the steamengines and the locomotives, as they go whirling through the valley, give out sounds other than the war-whoop of the savage and the mingled shouts and screams which followed it, and the light from her mountain sides is not that of the cannon or the wide-spread conflagration. Peace is written on her walls and prosperity in all her palaces. One sad episode will close the Romance of the History of Wyoming, viz.: THE STORY OF FRANCES SLOCUM. [From Stone's "History of Wyoming." New York, 1841.] The Slocum family of Wyoming were distinguished for their sufferings during the war of the Revolution, and have been recently brought more conspicuously before the public in connection with the life of a longlost, but recently discovered sister; the story of the family opens with tragedy, and ends with romance without fiction. Mr. Slocum, the father of the subject of the present narrative, was a non-combatant, being a member of the Society of Friends. Feeling himself, therefore, safe from the hostility even of the savages, he did not join the survivors of the massacre in their flight, but remained quietly in his farm-his house remaining in close proximity to the village of Wilkes-Barre. But the beneficent principles of his faith had little weight with the Indians, notwithstanding the affection with which their race had been treated by the founder of Quakerism in Pennsylvania, the illustrious Penn, and long had the family cause to mourn their imprudence in not retreating from the doomed valley with their neighbors. It was in the autumn of the same year of the invasion by Butler and Gi-en-gwah-toh, at midday, when the men were laboring in a distant field, that the house of Mr. Slocum was suddenly surrounded by a party of Delawares, prowling about the valley in more earnest search, as it seemed, of plunder, than of scalps or prisoners. The inmates of the house, at the moment of the surprise, were Mrs. Slocum and four young children, the eldest of whom was a son, aged thirteen; the second a daughter, aged nine; Frances Slocum, aged five; and a little son, aged two years and a half. Near by the house, engaged in grinding a knife, was a young man named Kingsley, assisted in the operation by a lad. The first hostile act of the Indians was to shoot down Kingsley, and take his scalp with the knife he had been sharpening. The girl nine years old appeared to have had the most presence of mind, for while the mother ran into the edge of the copse of wood near by, Frances at tempted to secret herself behind a staircase, and the former seized her little brother, the youngest above mentioned, and ran off in the direction of the fort. True she could not make rapid progress, for she clung to the child, and not even the pursuit of the savages could induce her to drop her charge. The Indians did not pursue her far, and laughed heartily at the panic of the little girl, while they could not but admire her resolution. Allowing her to make her escape, they returned to the house, and, after helping themselves to such articles as they chose, prepared to depart. But The mother seems to have been unobserved by them, although, with yearning bosom, she had so disposed of herself that while she was screened from observation, she could notice all that occurred. judge of her feelings, at the moment they were about to depart, as she saw little Frances taken from her hiding-place, and preparations made to carry her away into captivity with her brother, already mentioned as being thirteen years old (who, by the way, had been restrained from attempted flight by lameness in one of his feet), and also the lad who a few moments before had been assisting Kingsley at the grindstone. The sight was too much for maternal tenderness to endure. Rushing from her place of concealment, she threw herself upon her knees at the feet of her |