Departed
Eliza Tuttle waited anxiously
at Forty Fort throughout that hideous night.
As one by one the women learned the fates
of fathers, sons and husbands, any hope
she held out for her Ichabod’s return
was dashed when David Inman told of how
his friend had been pursued by Seneca,
then shot and scalped before he reached the river.
Her husband dead, her home burnt to the ground,
Eliza and her sons fled to the mountains.
John Phillips and his family left their farm
for Fort Brown and the Blanchard garrison.
The settlers’ livestock had been freed or stolen,
crops destroyed, cabins sacked and torched.
One night, Lenape warriors appeared,
commanding all the refugees to leave.
Meschatamen recognized the man
who’d given him his shirt and quarter horse.
He painted John and Mary’s foreheads black,
thus promising safe passage through the woods.
Wilkesbarre lay in ruins. Those who could,
hastily built rafts and poled downstream
to Fort Augusta and beyond. But most
trekked through the Poconos. Some wandered off
and were not seen again. Though many died
of sickness, sheer exhaustion and despair,
Eliza Tuttle, her sons, the Phillipses,
and hundreds more at last attained the fort
at Stroudsburg, with accounts of devastation
almost too harrowing to be believed.
The title of the chapter Departed comes from Eliot’s “The Waste Land” with the repeated phrase, “The nymphs are departed.” (happiness, idyllic life, protection, is gone). Part III, The Fire Sermon
COMING SOON: PART THREE, CHAPTER EIGHT
