The savages were unharmed, but one of the bullets mortally wounded their fair captive. She fell and expired, as tradition relates, near a pine-tree, which remained as a memorial of the tragedy until a few years ago. Having lost their prisoner, they secured her scalp, and, with her black tresses wet with her warm blood, they hastened to the camp. The friend of Jenny had just arrived, and the locks of the maiden, which were of great length and beauty, were recognised by her. She c'harged the Indians with her murder, which they denied, and told the story substantially as it is here related.

This appears, from corroborating circumstances, to be the simple truth of a story which, as it went from lip to lip, became magnified into a tale of darkest horror, and produced wide-spread indignation. General Gates, who had just superseded General Schuyler in the command of the northern army, took advantage of the excitement which it produced, to increase the hatred of the British in the hearts of the people, and he charged Burgoyne with crimes utterly foreign to that gentleman's nature. In a published letter, he accused him of hiring savages to "scalp Europeans and the descendants of Europeans;" spoke of Jenny as having been " dressed to meet her promised husband, but met her murderers," employed by Burgoyne ; asserted that she, with several women and children, had been taken "from the house into the woods, and there scalped and mangled in a most shocking manner;" and alleged that he had "paid the price of blood!" This letter, so untruthful and ungenerous, was condemned by Gates's friends in the army. But it had the desired effect ; and the sad story of Jenny's death was used witli power against the ministry by the opposition in the British parliament.