University of Virginia Library

27. CHAPTER XXVII.
SOME ACCOUNT OF A MAN OF QUESTIONABLE MORALITY, BUT WHO, NEVERTHELESS,
WOULD SEEM ENTITLED TO THE ESTEEM OF THAT EMINENT
ENGLISH MORALIST WHO SAID HE LIKED A GOOD HATER.

“Coming to mention the man to whose story all thus
far said was but the introduction, the judge, who, like
you, was a great smoker, would insist upon all the company
taking cigars, and then lighting a fresh one himself,
rise in his place, and, with the solemnest voice, say—
`Gentlemen, let us smoke to the memory of Colonel John
Moredock;' when, after several whiffs taken standing in
deep silence and deeper reverie, he would resume his
seat and his discourse, something in these words:

“`Though Colonel John Moredock was not an Indian-hater
par excellence, he yet cherished a kind of sentiment
towards the red man, and in that degree, and so acted
out his sentiment as sufficiently to merit the tribute
just rendered to his memory.

“`John Moredock was the son of a woman married
thrice, and thrice widowed by a tomahawk. The three
successive husbands of this woman had been pioneers,
and with them she had wandered from wilderness to
wilderness, always on the frontier. With nine children,

she at last found herself at a little clearing, afterwards
Vincennes. There she joined a company about to remove
to the new country of Illinois. On the eastern
side of Illinois there were then no settlements; but on
the west side, the shore of the Mississippi, there were,
near the mouth of the Kaskaskia, some old hamlets
of French. To the vicinity of those hamlets, very innocent
and pleasant places, a new Arcadia, Mrs. Moredock's
party was destined; for thereabouts, among the vines,
they meant to settle. They embarked upon the Wabash
in boats, proposing descending that stream into the
Ohio, and the Ohio into the Mississippi, and so, northwards,
towards the point to be reached. All went well
till they made the rock of the Grand Tower on the Mississippi,
where they had to land and drag their boats
round a point swept by a strong current. Here a party
of Indians, lying in wait, rushed out and murdered
nearly all of them. The widow was among the victims
with her children, John excepted, who, some fifty miles
distant, was following with a second party.

“`He was just entering upon manhood, when thus left
in nature sole survivor of his race. Other youngsters
might have turned mourners; he turned avenger.
His nerves were electric wires—sensitive, but steel. He
was one who, from self-possession, could be made neither
to flush nor pale. It is said that when the tidings
were brought him, he was ashore sitting beneath a hemlock
eating his dinner of venison—and as the tidings
were told him, after the first start he kept on eating,
but slowly and deliberately, chewing the wild news

with the wild meat, as if both together, turned to chyle,
together should sinew him to his intent. From that meal
he rose an Indian-hater. He rose; got his arms, prevailed
upon some comrades to join him, and without delay
started to discover who were the actual transgressors.
They proved to belong to a band of twenty renegades
from various tribes, outlaws even among Indians, and
who had formed themselves into a maurauding crew.
No opportunity for action being at the time presented,
he dismissed his friends; told them to go on, thanking
them, and saying he would ask their aid at some future
day. For upwards of a year, alone in the wilds, he
watched the crew. Once, what he thought a favorable
chance having occurred—it being midwinter, and the
savages encamped, apparently to remain so—he anew
mustered his friends, and marched against them; but,
getting wind of his coming, the enemy fled, and in
such panic that everything was left behind but their
weapons. During the winter, much the same thing
happened upon two subsequent occasions. The next
year he sought them at the head of a party pledged to
serve him for forty days. At last the hour came. It
was on the shore of the Mississippi. From their covert,
Moredock and his men dimly descried the gang of Cains
in the red dusk of evening, paddling over to a jungled
island in mid-stream, there the more securely to lodge;
for Moredock's retributive spirit in the wilderness spoke
ever to their trepidations now, like the voice calling
through the garden. Waiting until dead of night, the
whites swam the river, towing after them a raft laden
with their arms. On landing, Moredock cut the fastenings
of the enemy's canoes, and turned them, with his
own raft, adrift; resolved that there should be neither
escape for the Indians, nor safety, except in victory, for
the whites. Victorious the whites were; but three of
the Indians saved themselves by taking to the stream.
Moredock's band lost not a man.

“`Three of the murderers survived. He knew their
names and persons. In the course of three years each
successively fell by his own hand. All were now dead.
But this did not suffice. He made no avowal, but to
kill Indians had become his passion. As an athlete, he
had few equals; as a shot, none; in single combat, not
to be beaten. Master of that woodland-cunning enabling
the adept to subsist where the tyro would perish, and
expert in all those arts by which an enemy is pursued
for weeks, perhaps months, without once suspecting it,
he kept to the forest. The solitary Indian that met him,
died. When a murder was descried, he would either
secretly pursue their track for some chance to strike at
least one blow; or if, while thus engaged, he himself
was discovered, he would elude them by superior skill.

“`Many years he spent thus; and though after a time
he was, in a degree, restored to the ordinary life of the
region and period, yet it is believed that John Moredock
never let pass an opportunity of quenching an Indian.
Sins of commission in that kind may have been his, but
none of omission.

“`It were to err to suppose,' the judge would say, `that
this gentleman was naturally ferocious, or peculiarly

possessed of those qualities, which, unhelped by provocation
of events, tend to withdraw man from social life.
On the contrary, Moredock was an example of something
apparently self-contradicting, certainly curious, but, at
the same time, undeniable: namely, that nearly all Indian-haters
have at bottom loving hearts; at any rate,
hearts, if anything, more generous than the average.
Certain it is, that, to the degree in which he mingled in
the life of the settlements, Moredock showed himself
not without humane feelings. No cold husband or colder
father, he; and, though often and long away from his
household, bore its needs in mind, and provided for them.
He could be very convivial; told a good story (though
never of his more private exploits), and sung a capital
song. Hospitable, not backward to help a neighbor; by
report, benevolent, as retributive, in secret; while, in a
general manner, though sometimes grave—as is not unusual
with men of his complexion, a sultry and tragical
brown—yet with nobody, Indians excepted, otherwise
than courteous in a manly fashion; a moccasined
gentleman, admired and loved. In fact, no one more
popular, as an incident to follow may prove.

“`His bravery, whether in Indian fight or any other,
was unquestionable. An officer in the ranging service
during the war of 1812, he acquitted himself with more
than credit. Of his soldierly character, this anecdote is
told: Not long after Hull's dubious surrender at Detroit,
Moredock with some of his rangers rode up at night to a
log-house, there to rest till morning. The horses being
attended to, supper over, and sleeping-places assigned

the troop, the host showed the colonel his best bed,
not on the ground like the rest, but a bed that stood on
legs. But out of delicacy, the guest declined to monopolize
it, or, indeed, to occupy it at all; when, to increase
the inducement, as the host thought, he was told that a
general officer had once slept in that bed. “Who, pray?”
asked the colonel. “General Hull.” “Then you must
not take offense,” said the colonel, buttoning up his coat,
“but, really, no coward's bed, for me, however comfortable.”
Accordingly he took up with valor's bed—a cold
one on the ground.

“`At one time the colonel was a member of the territorial
council of Illinois, ands at the formation of the
state government, was pressed to become candidate for
governor, but begged to be excused. And, though he
declined to give his reasons for declining, yet by those
who best knew him the cause was not wholly unsurmised.
In his official capacity he might be called upon
to enter into friendly treaties with Indian tribes, a thing
not to be thought of. And even did no such contingency
arise, yet he felt there would be an impropriety in
the Governor of Illinois stealing out now and then,
during a recess of the legislative bodies, for a few days'
shooting at human beings, within the limits of his paternal
chief-magistracy. If the governorship offered large
honors, from Moredock it demanded larger sacrifices.
These were incompatibles. In short, he was not unaware
that to be a consistent Indian-hater involves the
renunciation of ambition, with its objects—the pomps
and glories of the world; and since religion, pronouncing

such things vanities, accounts it merit to renounce them,
therefore, so far as this goes, Indian-hating, whatever
may be thought of it in other respects, may be regarded
as not wholly without the efficacy of a devout sentiment.'”

Here the narrator paused. Then, after his long and
irksome sitting, started to his feet, and regulating his
disordered shirt-frill, and at the same time adjustingly
shaking his legs down in his rumpled pantaloons, concluded:
“There, I have done; having given you, not
my story, mind, or my thoughts, but another's. And
now, for your friend Coonskins, I doubt not, that, if the
judge were here, he would pronounce him a sort of
comprehensive Colonel Moredock, who, too much spreading
his passion, shallows it.”