{"id":"01KG8AK7Z8FQGDYT1CHX7VBW14","cid":"bafkreifg2ifpvutass7g6egmptdagrn47egwtkyuvrgpzylmtd27t7f7qe","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":6881,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T20:47:57.725Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 2","source_file":"01KG89J1JMR8XVKPA0G8ADAPC4","start_line":6822,"text":"when, after several whiffs taken standing in deep silence and deeper\r\nreverie, he would resume his seat and his discourse, something in these\r\nwords:\r\n\r\n\"'Though Colonel John Moredock was not an Indian-hater _par excellence_,\r\nhe yet cherished a kind of sentiment towards the red man, and in that\r\ndegree, and so acted out his sentiment as sufficiently to merit the\r\ntribute just rendered to his memory.\r\n\r\n\"'John Moredock was the son of a woman married thrice, and thrice\r\nwidowed by a tomahawk. The three successive husbands of this woman had\r\nbeen pioneers, and with them she had wandered from wilderness to\r\nwilderness, always on the frontier. With nine children, she at last\r\nfound herself at a little clearing, afterwards Vincennes. There she\r\njoined a company about to remove to the new country of Illinois. On the\r\neastern side of Illinois there were then no settlements; but on the west\r\nside, the shore of the Mississippi, there were, near the mouth of the\r\nKaskaskia, some old hamlets of French. To the vicinity of those hamlets,\r\nvery innocent and pleasant places, a new Arcadia, Mrs. Moredock's party\r\nwas destined; for thereabouts, among the vines, they meant to settle.\r\nThey embarked upon the Wabash in boats, proposing descending that stream\r\ninto the Ohio, and the Ohio into the Mississippi, and so, northwards,\r\ntowards the point to be reached. All went well till they made the rock\r\nof the Grand Tower on the Mississippi, where they had to land and drag\r\ntheir boats round a point swept by a strong current. Here a party of\r\nIndians, lying in wait, rushed out and murdered nearly all of them. The\r\nwidow was among the victims with her children, John excepted, who, some\r\nfifty miles distant, was following with a second party.\r\n\r\n\"He was just entering upon manhood, when thus left in nature sole\r\nsurvivor of his race. Other youngsters might have turned mourners; he\r\nturned avenger. His nerves were electric wires--sensitive, but steel. He\r\nwas one who, from self-possession, could be made neither to flush nor\r\npale. It is said that when the tidings were brought him, he was ashore\r\nsitting beneath a hemlock eating his dinner of venison--and as the\r\ntidings were told him, after the first start he kept on eating, but\r\nslowly and deliberately, chewing the wild news with the wild meat, as\r\nif both together, turned to chyle, together should sinew him to his\r\nintent. From that meal he rose an Indian-hater. He rose; got his arms,\r\nprevailed upon some comrades to join him, and without delay started to\r\ndiscover who were the actual transgressors. They proved to belong to a\r\nband of twenty renegades from various tribes, outlaws even among\r\nIndians, and who had formed themselves into a maurauding crew. No\r\nopportunity for action being at the time presented, he dismissed his\r\nfriends; told them to go on, thanking them, and saying he would ask\r\ntheir aid at some future day. For upwards of a year, alone in the wilds,\r\nhe watched the crew. Once, what he thought a favorable chance having\r\noccurred--it being midwinter, and the savages encamped, apparently to\r\nremain so--he anew mustered his friends, and marched against them; but,\r\ngetting wind of his coming, the enemy fled, and in such panic that\r\neverything was left behind but their weapons. During the winter, much\r\nthe same thing happened upon two subsequent occasions. The next year he\r\nsought them at the head of a party pledged to serve him for forty days.\r\nAt last the hour came. It was on the shore of the Mississippi. From\r\ntheir covert, Moredock and his men dimly descried the gang of Cains in\r\nthe red dusk of evening, paddling over to a jungled island in\r\nmid-stream, there the more securely to lodge; for Moredock's retributive\r\nspirit in the wilderness spoke ever to their trepidations now, like the\r\nvoice calling through the garden. Waiting until dead of night, the\r\nwhites swam the river, towing after them a raft laden with their arms.\r","title":"Chunk 2"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG8AJM4YHSXFH86FXQKACGRA","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG89J1JMR8XVKPA0G8ADAPC4","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG8AK7Z8TB6MZHQJWTKCEP99","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"},{"peer":"01KG8AK7ZFENKR0MKJZ6HM1BTT","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T20:47:57.928Z","ts":"2026-01-30T20:48:11.742Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}