The Cross and the Tomahawk: Rescued by the Catholic Faith

Two early American stories in the lands evangelized by the missionaries

This story is an excerpt from Martin J. Spalding’s 1844 “Sketches of the Early Catholic Missions in Kentucky,” included in our own book, “The History of the Kentucky Holy Land; or the Triumph of Catholicism in America”

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The following testimony of a distinguished contemporary, Judge Innes of Kentucky, may serve to show us how great were the dangers encountered by those who attempted to emigrate to Kentucky, during the time of which we are speaking. In a letter to Secretary Knox, written on the 7th July, 1790, he says:

"He had been intimately acquainted with this district (Kentucky) from November 1783, to the time of writing; and that fifteen hundred souls had been killed and taken in the district, and migrating to it; that upwards of twenty thousand horses had been taken and carried off; and other property, to the amount of at least fifteen thousand pounds." [1]

Nor were the emigrants more safe after they had reached their destination in Kentucky.

Daniel Boone explores Kentucky. Public Domain art.

The Indians continually prowled about in the vicinity of the new settlements, attacking them if they seemed left defenceless, and murdering women and children, or dragging them into captivity. In the spring of 1788, the house of Col. Isaac Cox, about eleven miles from Bardstown, was attacked by them, and he was slain, his body being left in a dreadfully mutilated and mangled condition. In the year 1794, a Catholic man, named Buckman, was likewise killed, on Cloyd's creek, near the Rolling Fork. In the panic which followed this murder, many Catholics left that settlement, and removed for a time to Bardstown, around which the people were more densely settled. One who remained at his home, is said to have made a large cross with charcoal, on the outside of his cabin door; and it is farther reported, that the Indians, seeing this sign, passed the house by unharmed. They probably belonged to those tribes of the northwest, which, many years before, had been taught Christianity by the Jesuit missionaries; and they may have still retained some remembrance of the principles they or their fathers had then imbibed. This may explain to us their respect for the cross; if indeed the story be thought worthy of credit.

A sketch of Fort Harrod, from Zachariah F. Smith’s History of Kentucky, 1886

This reminds us of another anecdote of a similar nature, which rests on the most respectable authority, and which we will briefly relate, though it does not properly belong to the history which we are attempting to sketch.

In the late war, an Irish Catholic, a deserter from the British army, had enlisted in the American service. The regiment to which he was attached marched to the northern frontier, near which, about the year 1812 or 1813, it encountered a formidable body of British and Indians. The Americans were defeated and fled precipitately, the Irishman flying with the rest. The Indians pursued with the deafening war-whoop, and with up-lifted tomahawks.

The Irishman finding that he was about to be overtaken by a stout warrior, fell on his knees, and made the sign of the cross, and endeavored, as well as he could, to prepare himself for death.

The warrior suddenly stopped, dropped his tomahawk, and falling likewise on his knees, embraced the white man, exclaiming: "You are my brother!" Meantime, other Indians came up and witnessed the affecting scene. The warrior told them of the treasure of a brother he had been so fortunate as to find; and, after a brief consultation, they determined to take the Irishman to their camp, and to constitute him their "father prayer."

The Irish Catholic gladly accepted the proposition, and remained with them for a few days, saying prayers for them, and teaching them the principles of the Catholic faith, as best he could. But knowing the fate which awaited him, if he should fall into the hands of the British, he told his Indian brethren that he was not a real "father prayer;" but that if they would permit him to go to New York, he would exert himself to procure for them a Catholic priest, who would teach them their prayers. The Indians assented to the proposal; and, on his arrival in New York, the Irishman related the whole adventure to the Rev. Benedict Fenwick, S. J.—the present distinguished Bishop of Boston—who was then stationed in New York. [2]

These Indians probably belonged to the tribe of the Penobscotts or the Abenakis of Maine, whose forefathers had learned the Catholic faith from the Franciscan and Jesuit missionaries. This incident, and that previously mentioned, in which the sign of the cross was the means of warding off danger and saving life, remind us of the blood of the lamb, sprinkled on the lintels of the doors, by the Israelites in Egypt, to avert the scourge of the destroying angel.

Public Domain

]1] Political Transactions, p. 58— and Mann Butler’s A History of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, p. 195.

[2] We are indebted for this anecdote, to the Very Rev. Stephen Theodore Badin.