Fowle's New Hampshire Gazette And General Advertiser

POUGHKEEPSIE, October 4. A correspondent has favoured us with the following affecting narrative, which he had from a credible eye-witness of the whole transaction.

Frederic Manheim was an industrious German, who, with his family, consisting of himself, his wife, a daughter eighteen years of age, and Maria and Christina, his youngest children and twins, about sixteen years old, resided near the river Mohawk, eight miles west of Johnstown.--It was on the 19th day of October, 1779,--the father being at work at some distance from his cottage, and the mother and eldest daughter on a visit at a neighbour's when two hostile Canada Indians rushed into the house and captured the twin sisters. The party to which these savages belonged, consisted of 20 warriors, who, after securing 23 of the inhabitants and firing their houses, retired for four days with the utmost precipitancy, till they were quite safe from pursuit. The place where they halted, the evening of that day, was a thick pine swamp, which rendered the darkness of an uncommon gloomy night still more dreadful. They kindled a fire, which they had not done before, and directed their prisoners, whom they kept together, to refresh themselves with some provisions; and the Indians eat by themselves. Instead of retiring to rest after supping, as usual, the appalled captives observed their enemies busied in operations which boded nothing good. Two saplings were pruned clear of branches up to the very top, and all the brush cleared away for several rods around them. While this was doing, others were splitting pitch-pine billets into small splinters about five inches in length, and as small as one's little finger, sharpening one end, and dipping the other in melted turpentine. At length, with countenances distorted by instant fury, and with hideous yells, the two savages who had captured the unfortunate Maria and Christina, leaped into the midst of their circle, and dragged those ill fated maidens, shrieking, from the embraces of their companions, among whom were their parents and sister. These warriors had disagreed about whose property the girls should be, as they jointly had seized them; and to terminate the dispute, agreeable to the abominable usage of the savages, it was determined, by the chiefs of the party, that the prisoners who gave rise to the contention should be destroyed; and that their captors should be the principal agents in the execrable business. These furies, assisted by their comrades, stripped the forlorn girls, already convulsed with apprehension, and tied each to a sapling, with their hands as high extended above their heads as possible; and then pitched them from their knees to their shoulders, with upwards of six hundred of the sharpened splinters above described, which at every puncture was attended with a scream of distress which echoed and re-echoed through the wilderness. And then, to complete the infernal tragedy, the splinters, all standing erect on the bleeding victims, were every one set on fire, and exhibited a scene of monstrous misery, beyond the power of speech to describe, or even the imagination to conceive. It was not until near three hours had elapsed from the commencing of their torments, and that they had lost almost every resemblance of the human form, that these helpless virgins sunk down in the arms of their deliverer, death.