In the summer of 1755, a pioneer settlement on the site of what would become Virginia Tech was raided by Shawnee Indians. Several people were killed; 23-year-old Mary Draper Ingles was abducted and taken to a Shawnee camp in Kentucky. Her subsequent escape and trek home through the wilderness is a Southwest Virginia legend.

To commemorate next year's 250th anniversary of the events at Draper's Meadow and Ingles' heroic journey, The Roanoke Times will feature stories about our frontier heritage in the months ahead.

BLACKSBURG - The Virginia Tech Duck Pond is a peaceful place, especially in spring, when students stroll across the bridges or sprawl on the grass to study in the sun. But a half-buried stone marker recalls a day when death issued from the woods:

"The Drapers Meadow Massacre," it reads. "July 8, 1755."

Two hundred fifty years ago, the frontier outpost known as Drapers Meadow ran with blood. As near as anyone can tell, the heart of the settlement was just about here, between the Virginia Tech Drillfield and the Grove, home of the college president. There was no duck pond then - it wasn't built until the 1900s. Instead there was a low-lying meadowland watered by creeks and springs and dotted with cabins.

The attack was a surprise. A band of Shawnee Indians entered the undefended bottomlands, killed at least four people and captured several more. One of the captives, Mary Draper Ingles, later escaped. Her long journey home from a Shawnee village in Kentucky has become a legend. "Follow the River," James Alexander Thom's historical novel based on Ingles' story, has sold more than a million copies.

History was not quite so kind to Drapers Meadow.

No one can say exactly where it was. The survivors fled. The land was uninhabited for a decade or more after the raid. The log cabins, probably burned by the Indians, have disappeared without a trace.

What was this place called Drapers Meadow?

As we approach the 250th anniversary of its end, it seems fitting to ask. But facts about the little 18th-century outpost are hard to come by. What the inhabitants had, they lost, including records.

So it's no surprise that even the marker gets it wrong. Most historians agree that the attack on Drapers Meadow occurred July 30 or 31, 1755 - not July 8.

Here is some of what we know:

The original tract that became Drapers Meadow was awarded by the colony of Virginia to James Patton, a former Irish sea captain turned land speculator. The 7,500-acre tract was roughly bordered by Toms Creek on the north, Stroubles Creek on the south and the Mississippi Watershed (modern-day U.S. 460) on the east; it approached the New River on the west.

Who were these people? We have the names of some of them: Ingles, Draper, Cull, Lenard, Barger. They probably numbered no more than 20, said Ellen Brown of Blacksburg, a historian and descendant of Mary Draper Ingles. There were also Germans who lived on the fringes of the settlement near the river and around Toms Creek in the north.

They were mostly young, but they were also weatherworn and tough, including the women. Bettie Draper was shot in the arm while trying to escape the Indian attack - yet she endured a march of several hundred miles to Kentucky. She lived several years among the Indians before she was successfully ransomed. Mary Draper Ingles endured the same march, possibly while pregnant, then escaped and made it home.

William Ingles and John Draper were cutting barley in the fields when the Indians came; they survived. Patton, the former sea captain, stood 6 feet 4 inches tall and possessed "herculean strength," writes John Hale, author of "Trans-Alleghany Pioneers," a popular 19th-century history. Legend has it that the 63-year-old Patton was doing paperwork when the Indians attacked. He snatched up his broadsword and took several with him before he fell.

Such people were not made of fluff and butter.

Most had come from Pennsylvania, where land was getting crowded, and they had come to the meadow in spite of obvious risks, including the Indians. Virginia was eager to have them as a buffer between Indian lands and more established settlements to the east.

As for the Indians, they had their reasons for what they did. The settlers were encroaching on their hunting grounds. Unlike the Indians' allies, the French, who tended to be hunters and trappers, these new settlers were farmers who were putting down roots as if they meant to stay.

What did Drapers Meadow look like?

In the opening pages of "Follow the River," Thom describes it as an "Eden folded between mountain ranges ... dense with bluegrass and irrigated by never-failing limestone springs."

Thom, who visited the area, said he tried to get the lay of the land in his mind first, and then erase the 20th century. "The fact that it was called a meadow indicates there was a pasture there," he said. "In bottomlands, there are almost always willows." There are willow trees in the grassy fields beside the Duck Pond today.

The cabins may or may not have been clustered; Thom envisioned them so, but Wytheville historian Mary Kegley, co-author of "Early Adventures on the Western Waters," believes that the settlers would have built their cabins relatively far apart. There was probably no stockade, said Thom, because none of the massacre accounts makes mention of one.

The Indians would have found it easy to swoop in.

What was life like in Drapers Meadow, in the brief interval - probably less than five years - between the settlement's beginning and end? Hard, certainly. The men would likely have tended to their horses and cattle and crops, and worked on cabins and roads; frontier women had children to look after - often many children.

They would have kicked up their heels from time to time. "I'm sure there was plenty of booze," said Ellen Brown. "There are descriptions of weddings." The marriage of Mary Draper and William Ingles is described in "Trans-Allegheny Pioneers" as "the first white wedding west of the Alleghenies."

There might have been music, said Brown, with violins. The settlers would have had some knowledge of the European culture they came from. They might have known some music by George Handel, she said, and some jigs and minuets.

In short, it was a little outpost of Western culture, however rough and tumble, and by mid-July of 1755, it was probably doomed. Up in what is now Pennsylvania, the French and Indians had routed the British army under Gen. Edward Braddock and his troops on July 9, leaving all the frontier vulnerable. The Indians killed settlers almost at will.

The storm broke over Drapers Meadow, according to two contemporary newspaper accounts, on July 31, 1755. The Indians apparently entered the meadow unimpeded, killing settlers as they went. They shot Bettie Draper as she ran, then killed her baby. On the way out, they beheaded an old man who lived nearby.

The known dead, as tallied in "Trans-Allegheny Pioneers," were Patton, Mrs. George Draper, Casper Barrier and the Draper baby. Bettie Draper and James Cull were wounded. Bettie Draper, Henry Lenard, Mary Draper Ingles and Ingles' two sons were taken captive. One of them, Thomas Ingles, lived among the Indians for many years and afterward never completely gave up Indian ways.

In the aftermath, Drapers Meadow was abandoned - as was much of the frontier for the duration of the French and Indian War. William Preston, who had been in Drapers Meadow on the morning of the attack but left on an errand and so was saved, eventually obtained the property, which became Smithfield Plantation.

The other survivors picked up their lives and moved on. The Drapers settled in Pulaski County, in what would become Drapers Valley, said Kegley. William and Mary Ingles started Ingles Ferry, which would operate on the New River for almost 200 years.

And Drapers Meadow became a name in stone.