Legends of the Shawangunk2 JR.pdf - Friends of the Sabbath ...

The Tories After the Revolution. 105
proceeded to the place as soon as it was night, and attacked them as they were sleeping
around a fire. Several of the Americans were killed, among them a woman. This
woman had a babe which was not injured in the least. “This,” said Kane, “we put to the
breast of its dead mother, and in that manner we left it. Major Hopkins was wounded,
only his thigh-bone being broken. He started up, when I struck him with the butt of my
gun on the side of his head. He fell over but caught on one hand. I then knocked him the
other way, but he caught on the other hand. A third blow, and I laid him dead. These
were all scalped except the infant. In the morning a party of Whigs went over and
brought away the dead, together with one they found alive, though scalped, and the babe
which was hanging and sobbing at the breast of its lifeless mother.”
Whether the massacre of Bryant Kane’s family so wrought upon a nature not
originally bad as to convert him into a fiend, or whether his own crimes against his Whig
neighbors led to the slaughter of his wife and children, is not known. The feelings which
prompted and the motives which actuated the commission of the bloody deeds by the
early settlers against their neighbors, will never be unveiled until the day of final
reckoning.
After the declaration of peace, Bryant Kane wandered from place to place in the
valley of the Delaware. His property was confiscated; and having lost both family and
fortune, he sought for consolation in the intoxicating cup, and finally left the country.
The time and manner of his death no one can tell.
John Land became so obnoxious to the Whigs that he was arrested and sent to the
“New Jersey log jail.” From this he escaped; but was soon retaken, wounded in his head
with a sword, and hanged until his life was nearly gone. He was informed that next time
he would be hanged in earnest, and after being heavily ironed was once more cast into
prison. Subsequently a Whig named Harvey became responsible for his good conduct,
and he was permitted to enjoy the liberties of the town. He lived with Harvey until 1783,
when he returned to Cochecton. He became a respectable citizen of the United States,
although he was stigmatized until the day of his death as “John Land, the Tory.”
THE TORIES AFTER THE REVOLUTION.
THE bitter animosity engendered during the Revolutionary war between the Whigs and
Tories did not subside immediately after the treaty of peace in 1783. The few of the latter
who remained in the country were ever after subjected to social ostracism, and were most
fortunate if they escaped personal violence. The patriotic inhabitants of the frontier could
not so soon forget the manner in which their babes had been taken from the cradle and
from the breasts of their mothers, and their brains dashed out, by the hated and despised