Mrs. Frances Scott
Archibald Loudon

A Narrative of the Captivity and Escape of Mrs. Frances Scott, an Inhabitant of Washington County, Virginia.

On Wednesday the 29th day of June, 1785, late in the evening, a large company of armed men passed the house, on their way to Kentucky: Some part of whom encamped within two miles. Mr. Scott living on a frontier part, generally made the family watchful; but on this calamitous day, after so large a body of men had passed, shortly after night he lay down in his bed, and imprudently left one of the doors of the house open; the children were also in bed, and asleep. Mrs. Scott was nearly undressed, when, to her unutterable astonishment and horror, she saw rushing in through the door that was left open, painted savages with presented arms, raising a hideous shriek - Mr. Scott being awake, instantly jumped out of his bed, but was immediately fired at; he forced his way through the middle of the enemy and got out of the door, but fell a few paces from thence. An Indian seized Mrs. Scott, and ordered her to a particular spot, and not to move: others stabbed and cut the throats of the three youngest children in their bed, and afterwards lifted them up and dashed them down on the floor, near the mother; the eldest a beautiful girl of eight years old, awoke, escaped out of the bed, ran to her parent, and with the most plaintive accents, cried, "Oh mama! mama! save me;" - the mother, in the deepest anguish of spirit, and with a flood of tears, entreated the savages to spare her child; but, with a brutal fierceness, they tomahawked and stabbed her in her mother's arms.

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A Selection, of Some of the Most Interesting Narratives, of Outrages, Committed by the Indians in Their Wars with the White People by Archibald Loudon From the Press of A. Loudon, (Whitehall), 1808, Volume I, page 33.
Loudon's Indian Narratives Reprint, Harrisburg Publishing Company, 1888.
Reprint Edition by Arno Press a New York Times Company distributed by Crown Publishers, New York, 1971.