In June 1755, General Edward Braddock was preparing to march into Indian country near what is now Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, following the orderly European fashion of war. The sixty-year-old general was warned that the French and their Indian allies did not fight the way they did in Europe. He was advised to let a group known as Captain Jack’s Rangers serve as scouts for the British army, giving them the freedom to fight the French-allied Indians on their own ground and in their own way. But the arrogant, conceited Braddock said he had no need for these rangers, and left them behind when he marched toward his defeat one month later.
This is the story of that mysterious man known as Captain Jack, or the Black Hunter—a frontier figure who, like so many others of his time, suffered terrible wrongs at the hands of the Indians and swore to spend the rest of his life killing as many of them as he could. Around 1750, along the Pennsylvania border, a notable character called Captain Jack became famous, his reputation extending as far as the Susquehanna River, and he was no less renowned than his recently celebrated Indian counterpart. Although much legend and mystery surrounded this “Jack of the Juniata Valley,” it is certain that a bold hunter and Indian killer went by that name along the Pennsylvania frontier, from the upper Susquehanna to the Potomac River. He is frequently mentioned in the records of Hazard.
Colonel Armstrong, in his reports of his campaign against Captain Jacobs at the Delaware village of Kittanning, described him as “half Indian” due to his dark features. His monument can now be seen in Chambersburg, bearing the inscription: Colonel Patrick Jack, officer in the Colonial and Revolutionary Wars, died January 25, 1821, aged 91 years. Colonel George Croghan, who was busy during Braddock’s preparations gathering a number of Indian and other scouts to serve as guides, stated plainly that Captain Jack led a group of bold hunters, skilled in tracking and fighting Indians, who dressed in Indian clothing like their leader. They offered their services to Braddock on the condition that they be allowed to dress, march, and fight as they pleased, without submitting to the strict regulations of army camps.
Croghan said they were well armed and cared nothing for heat or cold alike. They needed no shelter at night and asked no pay. Of course, this was not to be permitted by someone as strict and self-reliant as Braddock, and the rangers were allowed to leave. It is now futile to speculate what the outcome of the British campaign might have been had these scouts and a larger group of fighting Indians been allowed to accompany Braddock’s army, or rather to advance ahead of it.
However, judging by the recent valuable services of the Warm Springs Indians in tracking the Modocs to their hiding places, attacking their forts in the lava beds, and besieging them in a way that left them no choice but to surrender, it is safe to assume that these Pennsylvania rangers and Indians would have performed the same services for Braddock, making the disastrous defeat that followed completely impossible. The history of Captain Jack is shrouded in mystery, but the prevailing tradition in central Pennsylvania is that he was a frontier settler who returned one evening from a long day of hunting to find his cabin a pile of burning ruins, with the bodies of his murdered family scattered around it. From that time on, he became a bitter hater and killer of Indians. In 1753, he received a kind of roving commission from Governor Hamilton.
His home was in the Juniata Valley, and he was known by the names “Black Rifle,” “Black Hunter,” and “Wild Hunter of the Juniata. ” Some believe Jack’s Mountain in Pennsylvania was named for him, but that is likely a mistake. The mountain and Jack’s Narrows derived their names from an incident that caused a great stir at the time: the shocking murder in 1744 of a famous Indian trader named Jack Armstrong, along with his servants Smith and Woodward, by a Delaware chief named Musamee. In Jones’s “Juniata Valley,” there is a lengthy account of Captain Jack.
He is portrayed as a hunter living in the Juniata near a beautiful spring, surrounded by a mystery no one ever succeeded in unraveling. Jones describes him as a man of huge build, with very dark skin, and as a relentless tracker and killer of Indians. The settlers around Aughwick, now Shirleysburg in Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania, as well as those in Path Valley and along the Juniata, often found dead Indians—some partially decomposed, others torn by bald eagles—at the spot where Jack’s rifle had dropped them. On one occasion, Jones writes, Captain Jack hid in the woods beside the Aughwick path, lying in wait for a stray Indian.
Meanwhile, a painted warrior with a red feather waving above his head came walking down the road, his body covered with goods he had recently bought from a trader. A crack from Captain Jack’s rifle, and the Indian leaped into the air and fell dead without uttering a groan. Three others who had apparently been with him had stopped at a spring, and hearing the shot, thought their companion had killed a bear and raised a loud shout. Captain Jack immediately reloaded his rifle, and when the Indians reached the body, he fired again and killed the second.
The Indians then rushed into the underbrush, and one of them caught sight of Jack and fired at him but missed. The wild hunter saw that the odds were hopeless, so he leaped out and engaged in hand-to-hand combat. The fourth Indian was armed only with a tomahawk. He quickly dispatched the third by smashing his head with his rifle butt.
But the fourth, who was strong, grappled with him, and a long, bloody knife fight ensued that only ended when both were exhausted from loss of blood. The Indian managed to escape, leaving the Black Hunter victorious on the field. Despite his weakness and exhaustion, Jack scalped the three Indians and managed to make his way to the settlements, where his wounds—numbering between eight and ten stab wounds—were treated. It is said, Jones continues, that the family of an Irishman named Moore, living at Aughwick, was awakened one night suddenly by the sound of gunfire.
When they opened the door, they found a dead Indian lying right on the doorstep. By the dim light coming from the door, they made out the outline of the wild hunter, who said only: “I have saved your lives. ” Then he disappeared into the dark valley. With an eye like a hawk’s, unerring aim, and fearless boldness, with a build capable of enduring summer heat and winter frost, he roamed the valley like a loose tiger, the most formidable enemy the red man ever faced.
As for the end of Captain Jack, Jones concludes, we have nothing certain. One account says he went west, another that he died in 1772. It is said his bones lie near the spring at the base of the mountain that bears his name, and this is what we are inclined to believe. The early settlers in the neighborhood believed that Captain Jack came down from the mountain every night at twelve o’clock to quench his thirst from the spring of his favorite water.
Half a century ago, we could easily have produced written testimony from twenty respectable men who saw the Black Hunter as a wandering spirit over the land that was once his when he was alive. The towering mountain that extends a hundred miles and bears his name will remain an enduring monument to his memory. Captain Jack was among the early settlers of the Aughwick Valley. He was certainly one of the most famous characters of his time.
His life flourished around Aughwick between 1750 and 1755, when he went with two or three companions to the Juniata and built himself a cabin near a beautiful spring. His only apparent interest was hunting on land and water, by which he provided a living for his family. There was a mystery surrounding him that no one ever penetrated, and even his companions never knew his history or his real name. He was a man of huge stature approaching legendary strength, with very dark skin.
Indeed, some thought he was of mixed ancestry, while others believed he was part Indian. Colonel Armstrong described him in a letter to the governor as half Indian. The truth, however, is that he was a white man with more intelligence than was usual for backwoodsmen. But his early history remains completely shrouded in mystery.
It seems that in the summer of 1752, Captain Jack and his companions were on a hunting expedition. Returning late in the evening, Jack found his cabin destroyed and his wife and two children killed. From that moment, he became a different man. He abandoned the places where humans gathered and wandered the forests alone, sleeping in caves, hollow logs, or wherever he could find shelter.
There is no doubt that the loss of his family weighed on him for some time, as he did not appear among the settlers until the fall of 1753. In the meantime, the Indians saw him often, and it can be said they suffered greatly from his actions, but he deliberately avoided any dealings with his own kind. Judging from his later career, there is every reason to believe that when he discovered the wrongs the Indians had done to him, he swore an oath to devote the rest of his life to killing them. If he did, he kept his oath faithfully and honestly; his fame spread among the Indians everywhere, and many of them fell dead from his trusted rifle and unerring aim.
The settlers, who at that time were merely squatters, cared nothing for the loss of Indians; they considered it Captain Jack’s right to take revenge on any Indian that circumstances put in his path, and since they did not care to inform the landowners of their whereabouts, no report of these encounters was ever made to the government. The Indians devised many plans and tricks to capture him, but they all failed. He fought them in their own territory and with their own weapons, following their own cruel, savage method of warfare. He was skilled in cunning, and in marksmanship perhaps no one of his time or generation could match him.
These qualities made him not only a terror to the Indians but also earned him fame among the settlers, who formed, for their own protection, a company of scouts or rangers and offered Captain Jack its command, which he accepted. This company wore a uniform similar to the Indians—hunting shirts, leather breeches, and moccasins—and because they did not operate with government approval, they called themselves Captain Jack’s Hunters. However, all their hunting, after securing what food they needed, was most likely limited to hunting Indian scalps; and since occupying the hunting grounds of the Juniata Valley was a crime punishable by law at that time, not to mention the shedding of Indian blood, it is unlikely the hunters gave the Quaker landowners an official list of their killed and wounded. On one occasion, he tracked a band of raiding Indians with his company to the Canocox area and defeated them.
This deed reached the authorities in Philadelphia, and Governor Hamilton gave him a kind of informal, roving commission to curb the hostile Indians on the frontier. Under this commission, he drove the Indians from the Cove and from several other places, and no doubt the general fear he instilled in them prevented much damage in the Juniata Valley. In early June 1755, Captain Jack offered his services and those of his company of hunters to the government to accompany Braddock on his campaign against Fort Duquesne. Braddock had already accepted the services of a company of Indians led by George Croghan.
Since he wished to gain glory for himself and his troops by achieving a victory over the French and Indians through the open European style of warfare, his selfishness led him to refuse the help of anyone else who adopted the Indian method of stealthy warfare. However, he did not live long to discover his mistake. Hazard, in his record of Pennsylvania, speaking of the rejection of Captain Jack’s offer, wrote: “It was a great misfortune for Braddock that he neglected to secure the services of such an assistant. ”
This is entirely true, for men like Jack’s Hunters would never have allowed themselves to be shot by an enemy lying in ambush or hiding in a valley.
They would not have marched over the hill with drums beating and flags flying in all their pride and pomp, as if celebrating a victory not yet achieved. Rather, they would have sent out their scouts, learned where the enemy was and his position, and fought the battle without either side having an advantage over the other. In such a case, it is very likely that victory would have crowned the campaign. There is no record of what Captain Jack did during the remaining years of the French and Indian War, and there are disagreements about his real name.
At the beginning of this story from “Our Western Border,” he was identified as Colonel Patrick Jack, who died in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania in 1821 at the age of 90. However, in the second book read from, it was mentioned that it is unclear what happened to Captain Jack after about 1755, and that he either went west or perhaps died in the early 1770s. It is reasonable that his true identity was Patrick Jack and that he simply started a family after that period from 1750 to 1755, after the murder of his first family, and gradually stopped working as a scout or ranger. He then later served as a colonel in the Revolutionary War.
The first child of Patrick Jack, listed on his Find a Grave page, was born in 1762. So it is possible that he continued roaming the forests as a ranger and Indian killer until near the end of the French and Indian War. Then he settled down and started another family. The settlers needed men like him in Braddock’s army.
Had Braddock employed him and his men, perhaps the outcome of that battle and the entire course of the French and Indian War might have changed. Instead, the English suffered a disastrous defeat, Braddock himself died, and the English continued to suffer massacres and defeats for several years until they finally managed to turn the tide of war around 1759. The towering mountain that stretches a hundred miles and bears his name remains an enduring monument to his memory.
