Concerning Archibald Clendenning

Date: [unknown] [unknown]
Location: [unknown]

Notes

We sometimes forget how dangerous it was to live on the Virginia frontier before the Revolutionary War. Archibald Clendenning, had been killed and scalped by the Indians. We found an account of his death in Memoirs of the Indian Wars by Colonel John Stuart of Greenbrier and we quote as follows:

"From Muddy Creek the Indians passed over into the Levels, (Greenbrier Co.) where some families were collected at Clendenin's--numbering between fifty and one hundred persons, men, women, and children." There says Colonel Stuart, they were entertained as at Muddy Creek in the most hospitable manner. "Clendenin having just arrived from a hunt with three fat elks, they were plentifully feasted. In the meantime, an old woman with a sore leg, was showing her distress to an Indian and inquiring if he could administer to her relief; he said he thought he could, and drawing his tomahawk instantly killed her and all the men almost that were in the house."

"Mrs Clendenin did not fail to abuse the Indians, calling them cowards, etc. although the tomahawk was drawn over her head with threats of instant death, and the scalp of her husband lashed about her jaws."

"The prisoners were all taken over to Muddy Creek and a party of Indians detained them there till the return of the others from Carr's Creek when the whole were taken off together. On the day they started from the foot of Keency's Knob going over the mountain, Mrs. Clendenin gave her infant to a prisoner woman to carry, as the prisoners were in the center of the line with the Indians in front and rear, and she escaped into a thicket and concealed herself. The cries of the child soon made the Indians inquire for the mother, and one of them said he could bring the cow to the calf. Taking the child by the heels he beat its brains out against a tree and throwing it in the path the savages and horses trampled over it. She told me, says Colonel Stuart, that she returned that night in the dark to her own house, a distance of more than ten miles, and covered her husband's corpse with rails which lay in the yard where he was killed in endeavoring to escape over the fence with one of his children in his arms. Mrs. Clendenin seems to have been partially crazed from the beginning of the massacre. That night, after giving what burial she could to her husband's body, she was seized with mortal terror, thinking she saw a murderer standing over her. Upon recovering her reason, she resumed her flight, and reached the settlements in safety. Colonel Stuart states that the Indians continued the war till 1764 making incursions within a few miles of Staunton