Early next morning the soldiers started in pursuit in one direction, and the people of the settlement formed into a strong party and went in another, and in this manner the entire country was scoured. Toward evening a bonnet belonging to one of the children was found in a rye-field, near where the Maguire farm now stands, which indicated the direction the savages had taken.
Next day the search was resumed and continued until night; but no tidings whatever could be obtained of the route the savages had taken, and they were finally obliged to give them up as lost.
Several years elapsed before their fate was known. Thomas Johnston and Peter Crum, while hunting up Spruce Creek, probably a mile and a half from its mouth, came upon the camp of a friendly Indian family, near whose wigwam an old woman was engaged in boiling sugar, and who informed them that she had long been waiting for some white hunters to come up, as she had something to show them. She then led the way, and, half a mile off, showed them the skeletons of a grown person and two children. This news was communicated to Mr. Donaldson, and he had the skeletons taken to Shaver's Creek, with a view of interring them. But here a new difficulty arose. Mr. Eaton had not yet recovered his family, abducted from Kishicoquillas Valley, and there was no reason why these skeletons might not be those of his family. The matter was finally determined by a weaver, who testified to a piece of Mrs. Donaldson's short-gown, found near her remains.
When we reflect over this act of savage atrocity, we are free to confess that we look upon it as one of the most inhuman and revolting on record. The woman, with her two children, taken to a neighboring wood, and there, in all probability, tomahawked and scalped in succession,--the children witnessing the agony of the dying mother, or perhaps the mother a witness to the butchery of her helpless offspring,--the very recital chills the blood.
The son, who accompanied his father to Anderson's, died at a very advanced age, at or near Lock Haven, a year or two ago.
William Donaldson, of Hollidaysburg, is a son of Moses Donaldson by a second wife.
DEPREDATIONS AT THE MOUTH OF SPRUCE CREEK--MURDER OF LEVI HICKS-- SCALPING OF HIS CHILD.