Samuel Brady - Brady's Leap

Brady's Leap

Samuel Brady gained his lasting notoriety for his leap over the Cuyahoga River around 1780 in what is now Kent, Ohio. After following a band of Indians into the Ohio country, a failed ambush attempt resulted in the band chasing Brady near the Cuyahoga River. To avoid capture, Brady leaped across a 22-foot (6.7 m) wide gorge of the river (which was widened considerably in the 1830s for construction of the Pennsylvania and Ohio Canal) and fled to a nearby lake where he hid in the water under a fallen tree using a reed for air. The lake, originally known as "Brady's Lake", is now known as Brady Lake and is the location of a village of the same name, Brady Lake, Ohio, which celebrated "Captain Brady Day" each summer from 1972 to 2006. The site of Brady's leap is today a park known as "Brady's Leap Park" just north of downtown Kent, Ohio.

Captain Samuel Brady and his Rangers were in pursuit of a band of Sandusky Indians, in what is now the State of Ohio. He and his Rangers ambushed them close to what is now Brady's Lake, killing most of them. However, a larger force of Indians arrived on the scene when the fight was at its height. After a long battle, Captain Brady’s Rangers were overwhelmed. Some of his men managed to hide and escape death or capture, but most were killed and, of course, scalped. The Indians took Captain Brady prisoner. They did not kill him outright, because they wanted to make the death of their arch enemy an event. They notified other Indian tribes in the area that a “general jubilee of rejoicing” was to be held.

When “the great day dawned and from far and near the chiefs with their tribes assembled, to see the most frightful tortures inflicted on their enemy. The fires were lighted around him but burned low, as he was bound to a stake, while different bodies of savages came riding in on their ponies. To add to his torture too, the flames were kept in check, and his suffering would have been very severe, had the Indians not made such confusion during the arrival of their friends, that the guard was not vigilant, and he cautiously pulled at the withes which bound his wrists, and slowly, surely they broke beneath the strain. Some accounts claim that the heat enabled him to break his bonds, but it was probably due to his wonderful physical strength. Stripped of his clothing, he dashed madly across the flame of fire, according to one writer, seized a squaw, the wife of a noted chief, according to other historians her child, threw her into the fire, and in the attendant turmoil caused by his desperate deed, he made good his escape.”

Even having escaped the stake, Captain Brady’s situation was obviously dire. He was naked and without weapons. He had nothing to eat and there were "hundreds of Indians wildly following with resolute persistence”. The chase went through “a hundred miles of woods” and lasted quite a while. He grabbed berries to eat and had to dig roots to eat, which he washed in the streams he had to splash through.

Finally, his flight brought him to the Cuyahoga River, within the corporate limits of present day Kent, in Portage County, Ohio. At that point, Belle Swope reports:

He made his way to Standing Rock, and intended to cross at that ford, but the Indians were awaiting him, and he ran farther along the bank, to a place where the rocks rose at some points to a height of twenty-five feet. The body of the river at the narrowest part was from twenty-three to thirty feet wide, and was deep and dangerous. There was no other ford than Standing Rock for miles, and the Indians felt assured of their prize, but faint heart was not known to the Captain of the Rangers, and even a rushing torrent of water did not stop him in his course. Gaining a less precipitous edge of the cliff, he ran back into the forest, to get a good start, and was so near the approaching red men, that he heard their shots and exclamations. Across the expanse of water, at a height of probably twenty or twenty-five feet, he bounded, and with the eye of a practiced marksman, struck the bank on the other side, and stood on the cliff, as the wild yell and wilder appearance of the first pursuer denoted his disappointment and rage. He gave way to his wrath in his desperate utterance of sadness, ‘Brady made damn good jump. Indian no try.’ —

Somehow, in this frantic escape and headlong flight, Captain Brady ended up with a leg wound. One report has it that the Indians managed to shoot him in the leg after he made his jump, but did not finish him off, because they still wanted to capture him alive to torture him before they killed him. In any event, the Indians crossed the Cuyahoga at a ford. They followed the blood trail dripping from his leg wound and actually caught up to a place that was close to where he had made it. With even his legendary strength near exhaustion, he slipped into present day Brady Lake, where he hid underwater among the lilies and breathed through a hollow reed. The Indians gathered around the lake, where they waited and listened. In the end, they decided he had drowned. They gave up and returned to their camp. Captain Brady emerged from the lake and was able to make it back to Fort McIntosh, a lot worse for wear, but alive to fight another day.