Col. Graham rescues Elizabeth from the Indians

The exchange took place at Lime­stone creek, where is now Maysville, Ky. It is said that af- [97] ter the exchange was made that the res­cu­ing par­ty con­sist­ing of Colonel Gra­ham and some of his friends, who had accom­pa­nied him, reversed the shoes on their hors­es, so if pur­sued by the Indi­ans, the hors­es’ tracks would seem to be trav­el­ing in an oppo­site direc­tion. This pre­cau­tion was doubt­less tak­en on account of a fail­ure to secure his daugh­ter on a for­mer trip, at which time every nec­es­sary arrange­ment for her ran­som seems to have been made, when he was coun­seled by the Indi­an agent to go with­out her, as he saw in the con­duct of the young war­riors that they were deter­mined to fol­low him and either recap­ture or kill his daugh­ter.

Upon the return of Eliz­a­beth to her home, the cus­toms she met there were new and strange to her. On one occa­sion when her moth­er asked her to “soak the bread” and after­wards asked her how it was get­ting on, she replied, “very well” that she had tak­en two loaves and “thrown them in the riv­er and put a rock on them”. To this new mode of life she could not eas­i­ly be [98] rec­on­ciled and ever and anon would clam­or for the wild life of the wig­wam. At one time when she threat­ened to return to the Indi­ans, her moth­er told her sis­ter, Jane, to pre­tend as if she would go with her to see whether or not she would actu­al­ly make the attempt. She read­i­ly accept­ed Jane’s pro­pos­al to accom­pa­ny her to the Shawnee towns and the two sis­ters crossed the riv­er in a canoe and pro­ceed­ed but a short dis­tance, when Jane inquired of her what they would eat on their jour­ney, to which she replied by pulling up some bulb root herbs from the ground and eat­ing them say­ing they could find plen­ty of the same kind along the way to keep them from starv­ing. Jane remon­strat­ed with her, say­ing that she had not been accus­tomed to eat­ing herbs and would starve and final­ly suc­ceed­ed in per­suad­ing her to return home. This account was giv­en the writer sub­stan­tial­ly as stat­ed by David W. Jar­rett, who is a son of Elizabeth’s sis­ter, Jane, and he says he has it from the lips of his moth­er.

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