Throwing all the recorded incidents and circumstances of the life of Boone, during his captivity among them, together, we shall reserve them for another place, and proceed here to record what befell him among the whites.

He resided as a captive among the Indians until the following March. At that time, he, and ten of the persons who were taken with him at the Blue Licks, were conducted by forty Indians to Detroit, where the party arrived on the thirteenth of the month. The ten men were put into the hands of Governor Hamilton, who, to his infinite credit, treated them with kindness. For each of these they received a moderate ransom. Such was their respect, and even affection for the hunter of Kentucky, and such, perhaps, their estimate of his capability of annoying them, that although Governor Hamilton offered them the large sum of a hundred pounds sterling for his ransom, they utterly refused to part with him. It may easily be imagined, in what a vexatious predicament this circumstance placed him; a circumstance so much the more embarrassing, as he could not express his solicitude for deliverance, without alarming the jealousy and ill feeling of the Indians. Struck with his appearance and development of character, several English gentlemen, generously impressed with a sense of his painful position, offered him a sum of money adequate to the supply of his necessities. Unwilling to accept such favors from the enemies of his country, he refused their kindness, alleging a motive at once conciliating and magnanimous, that it would probably never be in his power to repay them. It will be necessary to contemplate his desolate and forlorn condition, haggard, and without any adequate clothing in that inclement climate, destitute of money or means, and at the same time to realize that these men, who so generously offered him money, were in league with those that were waging war against the United States, fully to appreciate the patriotism and magnanimity of this refusal. It is very probable, too, that these men acted from the interested motive of wishing to bind the hands of this stern border warrior from any further annoyance to them and their red allies, by motives of gratitude and a sense of obligation.

It must have been mortifying to his spirit to leave his captive associates in comfortable habitations and among a civilized people at Detroit, while he, the single white man of the company, was obliged to accompany his red masters through the forest in a long and painful journey of fifteen days, at the close of which he found himself again at Old Chillicothe, as the town was called.

This town was inhabited by the Shawnese, and Boone was placed in a most severe school, in which to learn Indian modes and ceremonies, by being himself the subject of them. On the return of the party that led him to their home, he learned that some superstitious scruple induced them to halt at mid-day when near their village, in order to solemnize their return by entering their town in the evening. A runner was despatched from their halting place to instruct the chief and the village touching the material incidents of their expedition.

Before the expedition made the triumphal entry into their village, they clad their white prisoner in a new dress, of material and fashion like theirs. They proceeded to shave his head and skewer his hair after their own fashion, and then rouged him with a plentiful smearing of vermilion and put into his hand a white staff, gorgeously tasselated with the tails of deer. The war-captain or leader of the expedition gave as many yells as they had taken prisoners and scalps. This operated as effectually as ringing a tocsin, to assemble the whole village round the camp. As soon as the warriors from the village appeared, four young warriors from the camp, the two first carrying each a calumet, approached the prisoner, chanting a song as they went, and taking him by the arm, led him in triumph to the cabin, where he was to remain until the announcement of his doom. The resident in this cabin, by their immemorial usage, had the power of determining his fate, whether to be tortured and burnt at the stake, or adopted into the tribe.

The present occupant of the cabin happened to be a woman, who had lost a son during the war. It is very probable that she was favorably impressed towards him by noting his fine person, and his firm and cheerful visage—circumstances which impress the women of the red people still more strongly than the men. She contemplated him stedfastly for some time, and sympathy and humanity triumphed, and she declared that she adopted him in place of the son she had lost. The two young men, who bore the calumet, instantly unpinioned his hands, treating him with kindness and respect. Food was brought him, and he was informed that he was considered as a son, and she, who had adopted him, as his mother. He was soon made aware, by demonstrations that could not be dissembled or mistaken, that he was actually loved, and trusted, as if he really were, what his adoption purported to make him. In a few days he suffered no other penalty of captivity than inability to return to his family. He was sufficiently instructed in Indian customs to know well, that any discovered purpose or attempt to escape would be punished with instant death.

Strange caprice of inscrutable instincts and results of habit! A circumstance, apparently fortuitous and accidental, placed him in the midst of an Indian family, the female owner of which loved him with the most disinterested tenderness, and lavished upon him all the affectionate sentiments of a mother towards a son. Had the die of his lot been cast otherwise, all the inhabitants of the village would have raised the death song, and each individual would have been as fiercely unfeeling to torment him, as they were now covetous to show him kindness. It is astonishing to see, in their habits of this sort, no interval between friendship and kindness, and the most ingenious and unrelenting barbarity. Placed between two posts, and his arms and feet extended between them, nearly in the form of a person suffering crucifixion, he would have been burnt to death at a slow fire, while men, women, and children would have danced about him, occasionally applying torches and burning splinters to die most exquisitely sensible parts of the frame, prolonging his torture, and exulting in it with the demoniac exhilaration of gratified revenge.

This was the most common fate of prisoners of war at that time. Sometimes they fastened the victim to a single stake, built a fire of green wood about him, and then raising their yell of exultation, marched off into the desert, leaving him to expire unheeded and alone. At other times they killed their prisoners by amputating their limbs joint by joint. Others they destroyed by pouring on them, from time to time, streams of scalding water. At other times they have been seen to hang their victim to a sapling tree by the hands, bending it down until the wretched sufferer has seen himself swinging up and down at the play of the breeze, his feet often, within a foot of the ground. In a word, they seem to have exhausted the invention and ingenuity of all time and all countries in the horrid art of inflicting torture.

The mention of a circumstance equally extraordinary in the Indian character, may be recorded here. If the sufferer in these afflictions be an Indian, during the whole of his agony a strange rivalry passes between them which shall outdo each other, they inflicting, and he in enduring these tortures. Not a groan, not a sigh, not a distortion of countenance is allowed to escape him. He smokes, and looks even cheerful. He occasionally chants a strain of his war song. He vaunts his exploits performed in afflicting death and desolation in their villages. He enumerates the names of their relatives and friends that he has slain. He menaces them with the terrible revenge that his friends will inflict by way of retaliation. He even derides their ignorance in the art of tormenting; assures them that he had afflicted much more ingenious torture upon their people; and indicates more excruciating modes of inflicting pain, and more sensitive parts of the frame to which to apply them.

They are exceedingly dexterous in the horrid surgical operation of taking off the scalp—that is, a considerable surface of the hairy integument of the crown of the cranium. Terrible as the operation is, there are not wanting great numbers of cases of persons who have survived, and recovered from it. The scalps of enemies thus taken, even when not paid for, as has been too often the infamous custom of their white auxiliaries, claiming to be civilized, are valued as badges of family honor, and trophies of the bravery of the warrior. On certain days and occasions, young warriors take a new name, constituting a new claim to honor, according to the number of scalps they have taken, or the bravery and exploits of those from whom they were taken. This name they deem a sufficient compensation for every fatigue and danger. Another ludicrous superstition tends to inspire them with the most heroic sentiments. They believe that all the fame, intelligence, and bravery that appertained to the enemy they have slain is transferred to them, and thenceforward becomes their intellectual property. Hence, they are excited with the most earnest appetite to kill warriors of distinguished fame. This article of Indian faith affords an apt illustration of the ordinary influence of envy, which seems to inspire the person whom it torments with the persuasion, that all the merit it can contract from the envied becomes its own, and that the laurels shorn from another's brow will sprout on its own.

He witnessed also their modes of hardening their children to that prodigious power of unshrinking endurance, of which such astonishing effects have just been recorded. This may be fitly termed the Indian system of gymnastics. The bodies of the children of both sexes are inured to hardships by compelling them to endure prolonged fastings, and to bathe in the coldest water. A child of eight years, fasts half a day; and one of twelve, a whole day without food or drink. The face is blacked during the fast, and is washed immediately before eating. The male face is entirely blacked; that of the female only on the cheeks. The course is discontinued in the case of the male at eighteen, and of the female at fourteen. At eighteen, the boy is instructed by his parents that his education is completed, and that he is old enough to be a man. His face is then blacked for the last time, and he is removed at the distance of some miles from the village, and placed in a temporary cabin. He is there addressed by his parent or guardian to this purport: "My son, it has pleased the Great Spirit that you should live to see this day. We all have noted your conduct since I first blacked your face. They well understand whether you have strictly followed the advice I have given you, and they will conduct themselves towards you according to their knowledge. You must remain here until I, or some of your friends, come for you."

The party then returns, resumes his gun, and seeming to forget the sufferer, goes to his hunting as usual, and the son or ward is left to endure hunger as long as it can be endured, and the party survive. The hunter, meanwhile, has procured the materials for a feast, of which the friends are invited to partake They accompany the father or guardian to the unfortunate starving subject. He then accompanies them home, and is bathed in cold water, and his head shaved after the Indian fashion—all but a small space on the centre of the crown. He is then allowed to take food, which, however, as a consecrated thing, is presented him in a vessel distinct from that used by the rest. After he has eaten, he is presented with a looking-glass, and a bag of vermilion. He is then complimented for the firmness with which he has sustained his fasting, and is told that he is henceforward a man, and to be considered as such. The instance is not known of a boy eating or drinking while under this interdict of the blacked face. They are deterred, not only by the strong sentiments of Indian honor, but by a persuasion that the Great Spirit would severely punish such disobedience of parental authority.

The most honorable mode of marriage, and that generally pursued by the more distinguished warriors, is to assemble the friends and relatives, and consult with them in regard to the person whom it is expedient to marry. The choice being made, the relations of the young man collect such presents as they deem proper for the occasion, go to the parents of the woman selected, make known the wishes of their friend, deposit their presents, and return without waiting for an answer. The relations of the girl assemble and consult on the subject. If they confirm the choice, they also collect presents, dress her in her best clothes, and take her to the friends of the bridegroom who made the application for the match, when it is understood that the marriage is completed. She herself has still a negative; and if she disapprove the match, the presents from the friends of the young man are returned, and this is considered as a refusal. Many of the more northern nations, as the Dacotas, for example, have a custom, that, when the husband deceases, his widow immediately manifests the deepest mourning, by putting off all her finery, and dresses herself in the coarsest Indian attire, the sackcloth of Indian lamentation. Meanwhile she makes up a respectable sized bundle of her clothes into the form of a kind of doll-man, which represents her husband. With this she sleeps. To this she converses and relates the sorrows of her desolate heart. It would be indecorous for any warrior, while she is in this predicament, to show her any attentions of gallantry. She never puts on any habiliments but those of sadness and disfigurement. The only comfort she is permitted in this desolate state is, that her budgetted husband is permitted, when drams are passing, to be considered as a living one, and she is allowed to cheer her depressed spirits with a double dram, that of her budget-husband and her own. After a full year of this penance with the budget-husband, she is allowed to exchange it for a living one, if she can find him.

When an Indian party forms for private revenge the object is accomplished in the following manner. The Indian who seeks revenge, proposes his project to obtain it to some of his more intimate associates, and requests them to accompany him. When the requisite number is obtained, and the plan arranged it is kept a profound secret from all others, and the proposer of the plan is considered the leader. The party leaves the village secretly, and in the night. When they halt for the night, the eldest encamp in front, and the younger in the rear. The foremen hunt for the party, and perform the duty of spies. The latter cook, make the fires, mend the moccasins, and perform the other drudgery of the expedition.

Every war party has a small budget, called the war budget, which contains something belonging to each one of the party, generally representing some animal; for example, the skin of a snake, the tail of a buffalo, the skin of a martin, or the feathers of some extraordinary bird. This budget is considered a sacred deposit, and is carried by some person selected for the purpose, who marches in front, and leads the party against the enemy. When the party halts, the budget is deposited in front, and no person passes it without authority. No one, while such an exhibition is pending, is allowed to lay his pack on a log, converse about women or his home. When they encamp, the heart of whatever beast they have killed on the preceding day is cut into small pieces and burnt. No person is allowed, while it is burning, to step across the fire, but must go round it, and always in the direction of the sun.

When an attack is to be made, the war budget is opened, and each man takes out his budget, or totem, and attaches it to that part of his body which has been indicated by tradition from his ancestors. When the attack is commenced, the body of the fighter is painted, generally black, and is almost naked. After the action, each party returns his totem to the commander of the party, who carefully wraps them all up, and delivers them to the man who has taken the first prisoner or scalp; and he is entitled to the honor of leading the party home in triumph. The war budget is then hung in front of the door of the person who carried it on the march against the enemy, where it remains suspended thirty or forty days, and some one of the party often sings and dances round it.

One mode of Indian burial seems to have prevailed, not only among the Indians of the lakes and of the Ohio valley, but over all the western country. Some lay the dead body on the surface of the ground, make a crib or pen over it, and cover it with bark. Others lay the body in a grave, covering it first with bark, and then with earth. Others make a coffin out of the cloven section of trees, in the form of plank, and suspend it from the top of a tree. Nothing can be more affecting than to see a young mother hanging the coffin that contains the remains of her beloved child to the pendent branches of the flowering maple, and singing her lament over her love and hope, as it waves in the breeze.



CHAPTER IX.

Boone becomes a favorite among the Indians—Anecdotes relating to his captivity—Their mode of tormenting and burning prisoners—Their fortitude under the infliction of torture—Concerted attack on Boonesborough—Boone escapes.

Boone, being now a son in a principal Shawnee family, presents himself in a new light to our observation. We would be glad to be able give a diurnal record of his modes of deportment, and getting along. Unhappily, the records are few and meagre. It will be obvious, that the necessity for a more profound dissimulation of contentment, cheerfulness, and a feeling of loving his home, was stronger than ever. It was a semblance that must be daily and hourly sustained. He would never have acquitted himself successfully, but for a wonderful versatility, which enabled him to enter into the spirit of whatever parts he was called upon to sustain; and a real love for the hunting and pursuits of the Indians, which rendered what was at first assumed, with a little practice, and the influence of habit, easy and natural. He soon became in semblance so thoroughly one of them, and was able in all those points of practice which give them reputation, to conduct himself with so much skill and adroitness, that he gained the entire confidence of the family into which he was adopted, and become as dear to his mother of adoption as her own son.

Trials of Indian strength and skill are among their most common amusements. Boone was soon challenged to competition in these trials. In these rencounters of loud laughter and boisterous merriment, where all that was done seemed to pass into oblivion as fast as it transpired, Boone had too much tact and keen observation not to perceive that jealousy, envy, and the origin of hatred often lay hid under the apparent recklessness of indifference. He was not sorry that some of the Indians could really beat him in the race, though extremely light of foot; and that in the game of ball, at which they had been practised all their lives, he was decidedly inferior. But there was another sport—that of shooting at a mark—a new custom to the Indians but recently habituated to the use of fire arms; a practice which they had learned from the whites, and they were excessively jealous of reputation of great skill in this exercise, so important in hunting and war. Boone was challenged to shoot with them at a mark. It placed him in a most perplexing dilemma. If he shot his best, he could easily and far excel their most practised marksmen. But he was aware, that to display his superiority would never be forgiven him. On the other hand, to fall far short of them in an exercise which had been hitherto peculiar to the whites, would forfeit their respect. In this predicament, he judiciously allowed himself sometimes to be beaten; and when it became prudent to put forth all his skill, a well dissembled humility and carelessness subdued the mortification and envy of the defeated competitor.

He was often permitted to accompany them in their hunting parties; and here their habits and his circumstances alike invoked him to do his best. They applauded his skill and success as a hunter, with no mixture of envy or ill will. He was particularly fortunate in conciliating the good will of the Shawnee chief. To attain this result, Boone not only often presented him with a share of his game, but adopted the more winning deportment of always affecting to treat his opinions and counsels with deference. The chief, on his part, often took occasion to speak of Boone as a most consummate proficient in hunting, and a warrior of great bravery. Not long after his residence among them, he had occasion to witness their manner of celebrating their victories, by being an eye witness to one which commemorated the successful return of a war party with some scalps.

Within a day's march of the village, the party dispatched a runner with the joyful intelligence of their success, achieved without loss. Every cabin in the village was immediately ordered to be swept perfectly clean, with the religious intention to banish every source of pollution that might mar the ceremony. The women, exceedingly fearful of contributing in any way to this pollution, commenced an inveterate sweeping, gathering up the collected dirt, and carefully placing it in a heap behind the door. There it remained until the medicine man, or priest, who presides over the powow, ordered them to remove it, and at the same time every savage implement and utensil upon which the women had laid their hands during the absence of the expedition.

Next day the party came in sight of the village, painted in alternate compartments of red and black, their heads enveloped in swan's down, and the centre of their crown, surmounted with long white feathers. They advanced, singing their war song, and bearing the scalps on a verdant branch of evergreen.

Arrived at the village, the chief who had led the party advanced before his warriors to his winter cabin, encircling it in an order of march contrary to the course of the sun, singing the war song after a particular mode, sometimes on the ten or and sometimes on the bass key, sometimes in high and shrill, and sometimes in deep and guttural notes. The waiter, or servant of the leader, called Etissu, placed a couple of blocks of wood near the war-pole, opposite the door of a circular cabin, called the hot-house, in the centre of which was the council fire. On these blocks he rested a kind of ark, deemed among their most sacred things. While this was transacting the party were profoundly silent. The chief bade all set down, and then inquired whether his cabin was prepared and every thing unpolluted, according to the custom of their fathers? After the answer, they rose up in concert and began the war-whoop, walking slowly round the war-pole as they sung. All the consecrated things were then carried, with no small show of solemnity, into the hot-house. Here they remained three whole days and nights, in separation from the rest of the people, applying warm ablutions to their bodies, and sprinkling themselves with a decoction of snake root. During a part of the time, the female relations of each of the consecrated company, after having bathed, anointed, and drest themselves in their finest apparel, stood, in two lines opposite the door, and facing each other. This observance they kept up through the night, uttering a peculiar, monotonous song, in a shrill voice for a minute; then intermitting it about ten minutes, and resuming it again. When not singing their silence was profound.

The chief, meanwhile, at intervals of about three hours, came out at the head of his company, raised the war-whoop, and marched round the red war-pole, holding in his right hand the pine or cedar boughs, on which the scalps were attached, waving them backward and forward, and then returned again. To these ceremonies they conformed without the slightest interruption, during the whole three days' purification. To proceed with the whole details of the ceremony to its close, would be tedious. We close it, only adding, that a small twig of the evergreen was fixed upon the roof of each one of their cabins, with a fragment of the scalps attached to it, and this, as it appeared, to appease the ghosts of their dead. When Boone asked them the meaning of all these long and tedious ceremonies, they answered him by a word which literally imports "holy." The leader and his waiter kept apart and continued the purification three days longer, and the ceremony closed.

He observed, that when their war-parties returned from an expedition, and had arrived near their village, they followed their file leader, in what is called Indian file, one by one, each a few yards behind the other, to give the procession an appearance of greater length and dignity. If the expedition had been unsuccessful, and they had lost any of their warriors, they returned without ceremony and in noiseless sadness. But if they had been successful, they fired their guns in platoons, yelling, whooping, and insulting their prisoners, if they had made any. Near their town was a large square area, with a war-pole in the centre, expressly prepared for such purposes. To this they fasten their prisoners. They then advance to the house of their leader, remaining without, and standing round his red war-pole, until they determine concerning the fate of their prisoner. If any prisoner should be fortunate enough to break from his pinions, and escape into the house of the chief medicine man, or conductor of the powow, it is an inviolable asylum, and by immemorial usage, the refugee is saved from the fire.

Captives far advanced in life, or such as had been known to have shed the blood of their tribe, were sure to atone for their decrepitude, or past activity in shedding blood, by being burnt to death. They readily know those Indians who have killed many, by the blue marks on their breasts and arms, which indicate the number they have slain. These hieroglyphics are to them as significant as our alphabetical characters. The ink with which these characters are impressed, is a sort of lampblack, prepared from the soot of burning pine, which they catch by causing it to pass through a sort of greased funnel. Having prepared this lampblack, they tattoo it into the skin, by punctures made with thorns or the teeth of fish. The young prisoners, if they seem capable of activity and service, and if they preserve an intrepid and unmoved countenance, are generally spared, unless condemned to death by the party, while undergoing the purification specified above. As soon as their case is so decided, they are tied to the stake, one at a time. A pair of bear-skin moccasins, with the hair outwards, are put on their feet. They are stripped naked to the loins, and are pinioned firmly to the stake.

Their subsequent punishment, in addition to the suffering of slow fire, is left to the women. Such are the influences of their training, that although the female nature, in all races of men, is generally found to be more susceptible of pity than the male, in this case they appear to surpass the men in the fury of their merciless rage, and the industrious ingenuity of their torments. Each is prepared with a bundle of long, dry, reed cane, or other poles, to which are attached splinters of burning pine. As the victim is led to the stake, the women and children begin their sufferings by beating them with switches and clubs; and as they reel and recoil from the blows, these fiendish imps show their gratification by unremitting peals of laughter; too happy, if their tortures ended here, or if the merciful tomahawk brought them to an immediate close.

The signal for a more terrible infliction being given—the arms of the victim are pinioned, and he is disengaged from the pole, and a grapevine passed round his neck, allowing him a circle of about fifteen yards in circumference, in which he can he made to march round his pole. They knead tough clay on his head to secure the cranium from the effects of the blaze, that it may not inflict immediate death. Under the excitement of ineffable and horrid joy, they whip him round the circle, that he may expose each part of his body to the flame, while the other part is fanned by the cool air, that he may thus undergo the literal operation of slow roasting. During this abhorrent process, the children fill the circle in convulsions of laughter; and the women begin to thrust their burning torches into his body, lacerating the quick of the flesh, that the flame may inflict more exquisite anguish. The warrior, in these cases; goaded to fury, sweeps round the extent of his circle, kicking, biting, and stamping with inconceivable fury. The throng of women and children laugh, and fly from the circle, and fresh tormentors fill it again. At other times the humor takes him to show them, that he can bear all this, without a grimace, a spasm, or indication of suffering. In this case, as we have seen, he smokes, derides, menaces, sings, and shows his contempt, by calling them by the most reproachful of all epithets—old women. When he falls insensible, they scalp and dismember him, and the remainder of his body is consumed.

We have omitted many of these revolting details, many of the atrocious features of this spectacle, as witnessed by Boone. While we read with indignation and horror, let us not forget that savages have not alone inflicted these detestable cruelties. Let us not forget that the professed followers of Jesus Christ have given examples of a barbarity equally unrelenting and horrible, in the form of religious persecution, and avowedly to glorify God.

During Boone's captivity among the Shawnese, they took prisoner a noted warrior of a western tribe, with which they were then at war. He was condemned to the stake with the usual solemnities. Having endured the preliminary tortures with the most fearless unconcern, he told them, when preparing to commence a new series, with a countenance of scorn, he could teach them how to make an enemy eat fire to some purpose; and begged that they would give him an opportunity, together with a pipe and tobacco. In respectful astonishment, at an unwonted demonstration of invincible endurance, they granted his request. He lighted his pipe, began to smoke, and sat down, all naked as he was, upon the burning torches, which were blazing within his circle. Every muscle of his countenance retained its composure. On viewing this, a noted warrior sprang up, exclaiming, that this was a true warrior; that though his nation was treacherous, and he had caused them many deaths, yet such was their respect for true courage, that if the fire had not already spoiled him, he should be spared. That being now impossible, he promised him the merciful release of the tomahawk. He then held the terrible instrument suspended some moments over his head, during all which time he was seen neither to change his posture, move a muscle, or his countenance to blench. The tomahawk fell, and the impassable warrior ceased to suffer.



We shall close these details of the Shawnese customs, at the time when Boone was prisoner among them, by giving his account of their ceremonies at making peace. The chief warriors, who arrange the conditions of the peace and subsequent friendship, first mutually eat and smoke together. They then pledge each other in the sacred drink called Cussena. The Shawnese then wave large fans of eagles' tails, and conclude with a dance. The stranger warriors, who have come to receive the peace, select half a dozen of their most active young men, surmounting their crowns with swan's feathers, and painting their bodies with white clay. They then place their file leader on the consecrated seat of what imports in their language, the "beloved cabin." Afterwards they commence singing the peace song, with an air of great solemnity. They begin to dance, first in a prone or bowing posture. They then raise themselves erect, look upwards, and wave their eagles' tails towards the sky, first with a slow, and then with a quick and jerky motion. At the same time, they strike their breast with a calabash fastened to a stick about a foot in length, which they hold in their left hand, while they wave the eagles' feathers with the right, and keep time by rattling pebbles in a gourd. These ceremonies of peace-making they consider among their most solemn duties; and to be perfectly accomplished in all the notes and gestures is an indispensable acquirement to a thorough trained warrior.

Boone has related, at different times, many oral details of his private and domestic life, and his modes of getting along in the family, of which he was considered a member. He was perfectly trained to their ways, could prepare their food, and perform any of their common domestic operations with the best of them. He often accompanied them in their hunting excursions, wandering with them over the extent of forest between Chillicothe and lake Erie. These conversations presented curious and most vivid pictures of their interior modes; their tasks of diurnal labor and supply; their long and severe fasts; their gluttonous indulgence, when they had food; and their reckless generosity and hospitality, when they had any thing to bestow to travelling visitants.

To become, during this tedious captivity, perfectly acquainted with their most interior domestic and diurnal manners, was not without interest for a mind constituted like his. To make himself master of their language, and to become familiarly acquainted with their customs, he considered acquisitions of the highest utility in the future operations, in which, notwithstanding his present duress, he hoped yet to be beneficial to his beloved settlement of Kentucky.

Although the indulgence with which he was treated in the family, in which he was adopted, and these acquisitions, uniting interest with utility, tended to beguile the time of his captivity, it cannot be doubted, that his sleeping and waking thoughts were incessantly occupied with the chances of making his escape. An expedition was in contemplation, by the tribe, to the salt licks on the Scioto, to make salt. Boone dissembled indifference whether they took him with them, or left him behind, with so much success, that, to his extreme joy, they determined that he should accompany them. The expedition started on the first day of June, 1778, and was occupied ten days in making salt.

During this expedition, he was frequently sent out to hunt, to furnish provisions for the party; but always under such circumstances, that, much as he had hoped to escape on this expedition, no opportunity occurred, which he thought it prudent to embrace. He returned with the party to Chillicothe, having derived only one advantage from the journey, that of furnishing, by his making no attempt to escape, and by his apparently cheerful return, new motives to convince the Indians, that he was thoroughly domesticated among them, and had voluntarily renounced his own race; a persuasion, which, by taking as much apparent interest as any of them, in all their diurnal movements and plans, he constantly labored to establish.

Soon after his return he attended a warrior-council, at which, in virtue of being a member of one of the principal families, he had a right of usage and prescription, to be present. It was composed of a hundred and fifty of their bravest men, all painted and armed for an expedition, which he found was intended against Boonesborough. It instantly occurred to him, as a most fortunate circumstance, that he had not escaped on the expedition to Scioto. Higher and more imperious motives, than merely personal considerations, now determined him at every risk to make the effort to escape, and prepare, if he might reach it, the station for a vigorous defence, by forewarning it of what was in preparation among the Indians.

The religious ceremonies of the council and preparation for the expedition were as follow. One of the principal war chiefs announced the intention of a party to commence an expedition against Boonesborough. This he did by beating their drum, and marching with their war standard three times round the council-house. On this the council dissolved, and a sufficient number of warriors supplied themselves with arms, and a quantity of parched corn flour, as a supply of food for the expedition. All who had volunteered to join in it, then adjourned to their "winter house," and drank the war-drink, a decoction of bitter herbs and roots, for three days—preserving in other respects an almost unbroken fast. This is considered to be an act tending to propitiate the Great Spirit to prosper their expedition. During this period of purifying themselves, they were not allowed to sit down, or even lean upon a tree, however fatigued, until after sun-set. If a bear or deer even passed in sight, custom forbade them from killing it for refreshment. The more rigidly punctual they are in the observance of these rights, the more confidently they expect success.

While the young warriors were under this probation, the aged ones, experienced in the usages of their ancestors, watched them most narrowly to see that, from irreligion, or hunger, or recklessness, they did not violate any of the transmitted religious rites, and thus bring the wrath of the Great Spirit upon the expedition. Boone himself, as a person naturally under suspicion of having a swerving of inclination towards the station to be assailed, was obliged to observe the fast with the most rigorous exactness. During the three days' process of purification, he was not once allowed to go out of the medicine or sanctified ground, without a trusty guard, lest hunger or indifference to their laws should tempt him to violate them.

When the fast and purification was complete, they were compelled to set forth, prepared or unprepared, be the weather fair or foul. Accordingly, when the time arrived, they fired their guns, whooped, and danced, and sung—and continued firing their guns before them on the commencement of their route. The leading war-chief marched first, carrying their medicine bag, or budget of holy things. The rest followed in Indian file, at intervals of three or four paces behind each other, now and then chiming the war-whoop in concert.

They advanced in this order until they were out of sight and hearing of the village. As soon as they reached the deep woods, all became as silent as death. This silence they inculcate, that their ears may be quick to catch the least portent of danger.

Every one acquainted with the race, has remarked their intense keenness of vision. Their eyes, for acuteness, and capability of discerning distant objects, resemble those of the eagle or the lynx; and their cat-like tread among the grass and leaves, seems so light as scarcely to shake off the dew drops. Thus they advance on their expedition rapidly and in profound silence, unless some one of the party should relate that he has had an unpropitious dream When this happens, an immediate arrest is put upon the expedition, and the whole party face about, and return without any sense of shame or mortification. A whole party is thus often arrested by a single person; and their return is applauded by the tribe, as a respectful docility to the divine impulse, as they deem it, from the Great Spirit. These dreams are universally reverenced, as the warnings of the guardian spirits of the tribe. There is in that country a sparrow, of an uncommon species, and not often seen. This bird is called in the Shawnese dialect by a name importing "kind messenger," which they deem always a true omen, whenever it appears, of bad news. They are exceedingly intimidated whenever this bird sings near them; and were it to perch and sing over their war-camp, the whole party would instantly disperse in consternation and dismay.

Every chief has his warrior, Etissu, or waiter, to attend on him and his party. This confidential personage has charge of every thing that is eaten or drank during the expedition. He parcels it out by rules of rigid abstemiousness. Though each warrior carries on his back all his travelling conveniences, and his food among the rest, yet, however keen the appetite sharpened by hunger, however burning the thirst, no one dares relieve his hunger or thirst, until his rations are dispensed to him by the Etissu.

Boone had occasion to have all these rites most painfully impressed on his memory; for he was obliged to conform to them with the rest. One single thought occupied his mind—to seize the right occasion to escape.

It was sometime before it offered. At length a deer came in sight. He had a portion of his unfinished breakfast in his hand. He expressed a desire to pursue the deer. The party consented. As soon as he was out of sight, he instantly turned his course towards Boonesborough. Aware that he should be pursued by enemies as keen on the scent as bloodhounds, he put forth his whole amount of backwoods skill, in doubling in his track, walking in the water, and availing himself of every imaginable expedient to throw them off his trail. His unfinished fragment of his breakfast was his only food, except roots and berries, during this escape for his life, through unknown forests and pathless swamps, and across numerous rivers, spreading in an extent of more than two hundred miles. Every forest sound must have struck his ear, as a harbinger of the approaching Indians.

No spirit but such an one as his, could have sustained the apprehension and fatigue. No mind but one guided by the intuition of instinctive sagacity, could have so enabled him to conceal his trail, and find his way. But he evaded their pursuit. He discovered his way. He found in roots, in barks, and berries, together with what a single shot of his rifle afforded, wherewith to sustain the cravings of nature. Travelling night and day, in an incredible short space of time he was in the arms of his friends at Boonesborough, experiencing a reception, after such a long and hopeless absence, as words would in vain attempt to portray.



CHAPTER X.

Six hundred Indians attack Boonesborough—Boone and Captain Smith go out to treat with the enemy under a flag of truce, and are extricated from a treacherous attempt to detain them as prisoners—Defence of the fort—The Indians defeated—Boone goes to North Carolina to bring bark his family.

It will naturally be supposed that foes less wary and intelligent, than those from whom Boone had escaped, after they had abandoned the hope of recapturing him, would calculate to find Boonesborough in readiness for their reception.

Boonesborough, though the most populous and important station in Kentucky, had been left by the abstraction of so many of the select inhabitants in the captivity of the Blue Licks, by the absence of Colonel Clarke in Illinois, and by the actual decay of the pickets, almost defenceless. Not long before the return of Boone, this important post had been put under the care of Major Smith, an active and intelligent officer. He repaired thither, and put the station, with great labor and fatigue, in a competent state of defence. Learning from the return of some of the prisoners, captured at the Blue Licks, the great blow which the Shawnese meditated against this station, he deemed it advisable to anticipate their movements, and to fit out an expedition to meet them on their own ground.—Leaving twenty young men to defend the place, he marched with thirty chosen men towards the Shawnese towns.

At the Blue Licks, a place of evil omen to Kentucky, eleven of the men, anxious for the safety of the families they had left behind and deeming their force too small for the object contemplated, abandoned the enterprise and retreated to the fort. The remaining nineteen, not discouraged by the desertion of their companions, heroically persevered. They crossed the Ohio to the present site of Cincinnati, on rafts. They then painted their faces, and in other respects assumed the guise and garb of savages, and marched upon the Indian towns.

When arrived within twenty miles of these towns they met the force with which Boone had set out. Discouraged by his escape, the original party had returned, had been rejoined by a considerable reinforcement, the whole amounting to two hundred and fifty men on horse-back, and were again on their march against Boonesborough. Fortunately, Major Smith and his small party discovered this formidable body before they were themselves observed. But instead of endeavoring to make good their retreat from an enemy so superior in numbers, and mounted upon horses, they fired upon them and killed two of their number. An assault so unexpected alarmed the Indians; and without any effort to ascertain the number of their assailants, they commenced a precipitate retreat. If these rash adventurers had stopped here, they might have escaped unmolested. But, flushed with this partial success, they rushed upon the retreating foe, and repeated their fire. The savages, restored to self-possession, halted in their turn, deliberated a moment, and turned upon the assailants. Major Smith, perceiving the imprudence of having thus put the enemy at bay, and the certainty of the destruction of his little force, if the Indians should perceive its weakness, ordered a retreat in time; and being considerably in advance of the foe, succeeded in effecting it without loss. By a rapid march during the night, in the course of the next morning they reached Boonesborough in safety.

Scarcely an hour after the last of their number had entered the fort, a body of six hundred Indians, in three divisions of two hundred each, appeared with standards and much show of warlike array, and took their station opposite the fort. The whole was commanded by a Frenchman named Duquesne. They immediately sent a flag requesting the surrender of the place, in the name of the king of Great Britain. A council was held, and contrary to the opinion of Major Smith, it was decided to pay no attention to the proposal. They repeated their flag of truce, stating that they had letters from the commander at Detroit to Colonel Boone. On this, it was resolved that Colonel Boone and Major Smith should venture out, and hear what they had to propose.

Fifty yards from the fort three chiefs met them with great parade, and conducted them to the spot designated for their reception, and spread a panther's skin for their seat, while two other Indians held branches over their heads to protect them from the fervor of the sun. The chiefs then commenced an address five minutes in length, abounding in friendly assurances, and the avowal of kind sentiments. A part of the advanced warriors grounded their arms, and came forward to shake hands with them.

The letter from Governor Hamilton of Detroit was then produced, and read. It proposed the most favorable terms of surrender, provided the garrison would repair to Detroit. Major Smith assured them that the proposition seemed a kind one; but that it was impossible, in their circumstances, to remove their women and children to Detroit. The reply was that this difficulty should be removed, for that they had brought forty horses with them, expressly prepared for such a contingency.

In a long and apparently amicable interview, during which the Indians smoked with them, and vaunted their abstinence in not having killed the swine and cattle of the settlement, Boone and Smith arose to return to the fort, and make known these proposals, and to deliberate upon their decision. Twenty Indians accompanied their return as far as the limits stipulated between the parties allowed. The negotiators having returned, and satisfied the garrison that the Indians had no cannon, advised to listen to no terms, but to defend the fort to the last extremity. The inmates of the station resolved to follow this counsel.

In a short time the Indians sent in another flag, with a view, as they stated, to ascertain the result of the deliberations of the fort. Word was sent them, that if they wished to settle a treaty, a place of conference must be assigned intermediate between their camp and the fort. The Indians consented to this stipulation, and deputed thirty chiefs to arrange the articles, though such appeared to be their distrust, that they could not be induced to come nearer than eighty yards from the fort. Smith and Boone with four others were deputed to confer with them. After a close conference of two days, an arrangement was agreed upon, which contained a stipulation, that neither party should cross the Ohio, until after the terms had been decided upon by the respective authorities on either side. The wary heads of this negotiation considered these terms of the Indians as mere lures to beguile confidence.

When the treaty was at last ready for signature, an aged chief, who had seemed to regulate all the proceedings, remarked that he must first go to his people, and that he would immediately return, and sign the instrument. He was observed to step aside in conference with some young warriors. On his return the negotiators from the garrison asked the chief why he had brought young men in place of those who had just been assisting at the council? His answer was prompt and ingenious. It was, that he wished to gratify his young warriors, who desired to become acquainted with the ways of the whites. It was then proposed, according to the custom of both races, that the parties should shake hands. As the two chief negotiators, Smith and Boone, arose to depart, they were both seized from behind.

Suspicious of treachery, they had posted twenty-five men in a bastion, with orders to fire upon the council, as soon as they should see any marks of treachery or violence. The instant the negotiators were seized, the whole besieging force fired upon them, and the fire was as promptly returned by the men in the bastion. The powerful savages who had grasped Boone and Smith, attempted to drag them off as prisoners. The one who held Smith was compelled to release his grasp by being shot dead. Colonel Boone was slightly wounded. A second tomahawk, by which his skull would have been cleft asunder, he evaded, and it partially fell on Major Smith; but being in a measure spent, it did not inflict a dangerous wound. The negotiators escaped to the fort without receiving any other injury. The almost providential escape of Boone and Smith can only be accounted for by the confusion into which the Indians were thrown, as soon as these men were seized, and by the prompt fire of the men concealed in the bastion. Added to this, the two Indians who seized them were both shot dead, by marksmen who knew how to kill the Indians, and at the same time spare the whites, in whose grasp they were held.

The firing on both sides now commenced in earnest, and was kept up without intermission from morning dawn until dark. The garrison, at once exasperated and cheered by the meditated treachery of the negotiation and its result, derided the furious Indians, and thanked them for the stratagem of the negotiation, which had given them time to prepare the fort for their reception. Goaded to desperation by these taunts, and by Duquesne, who harangued them to the onset, they often rushed up to the fort, as if they purposed to storm it. Dropping dead under the cool and deliberate aim of the besieged, the remainder of the forlorn hope, raising a yell of fury and despair, fell back. Other infuriated bands took their place; and these scenes were often repeated, invariably with the same success, until both parties were incapable of taking aim on account of the darkness.

They then procured a quantity of combustible matter, set fire to it, and approached under covert of the darkness, so near the palisades as to throw the burning materials into the fort. But the inmates had availed themselves of the two days' consultation, granted them by the treacherous foe, to procure an ample supply of water; and they had the means of extinguishing the burning faggots as they fell.

Finding their efforts to fire the fort ineffectual, they returned again to their arms, and continued to fire upon the station for some days. Taught a lesson of prudence, however, by what had already befallen them, they kept at such a cautious distance, as that their fire took little effect. A project to gain the place, more wisely conceived, and promising better success, was happily discovered by Colonel Boone. The walls of the fort were distant sixty yards from the Kentucky river. The bosom of the current was easily discernible by the people within. Boone discovered in the morning that the stream near the shore was extremely turbid. He immediately divined the cause.

The Indians had commenced a trench at the water level of the river bank, mining upwards towards the station, and intending to reach the interior by a passage under the wall. He took measures to render their project ineffectual, by ordering a trench to be cut inside the fort, across the line of their subterraneous passage. They were probably apprised of the countermine that was digging within, by the quantity of earth thrown over the wall. But, stimulated by the encouragement of their French engineer, they continued to advance their mine towards the wall, until, from the friability of the soil through which it passed, it fell in, and all their labor was lost. With a perseverance that in a good cause would have done them honor, in no wise discouraged by this failure to intermit their exertions, they returned again to their fire arms, and kept up a furious and incessant firing for some days, but producing no more impression upon the station than before.

During the siege, which lasted eight days, they proposed frequent parleys, requesting the surrender of the place, and professing to treat the garrison with the utmost kindness. They were answered, that they must deem the garrison to be still more brutally fools than themselves, to expect that they would place any confidence in the proposals of wretches who had already manifested such base and stupid treachery. They were bidden to fire on, for that their waste of powder and lead gave the garrison little uneasiness, and were assured that they could not hope the surrender of the place, while there was a man left within it. On the morning of the ninth day from the commencement of the siege, after having, as usual, wreaked their disappointed fury upon the cattle and swine, they decamped, and commenced a retreat.

No Indian expedition against the whites had been known to have had such a disastrous issue for them. During the siege, their loss was estimated by the garrison at two hundred killed, beside a great number wounded. The garrison, on the contrary, protected by the palisades, behind which they could fire in safety, and deliberately prostrate every foe that exposed himself near enough to become a mark, lost but two killed, and had six wounded.

After the siege, the people of the fort, to whom lead was a great object, began to collect the balls that the Indians had fired upon them. They gathered in the logs of the fort, beside those that had fallen to the ground, a hundred and twenty-five pounds. The failure of this desperate attempt, with such a powerful force, seems to have discouraged the Indians and their Canadian allies from making any further effort against Boonesborough. In the autumn of this season, Colonel Boone returned to North Carolina to visit his wife and family.

When he was taken at the Blue Licks, with his associates, who had returned, while he was left behind in a long captivity, during which no more news of him transpired than as if he were actually among the dead, the people of the garrison naturally concluded that he had been killed. His wife and family numbered him as among the dead; and often had they shuddered on the bare recurrence of some one to the probability of the tortures he had undergone. Deeply attached to him, and inconsolable, they could no longer endure a residence which so painfully reminded them of their loss. As soon as they had settled their minds to the conviction that their head would return to them no more, they resolved to leave these forests that had been so fatal to them, and return to the banks of the Yadkin, where were all their surviving connections. A family so respectable and dear to the settlement would not be likely to leave without having to overcome many tender and pressing solicitations to remain, and many promises that if they would, their temporal wants should be provided for.

To all this Mrs. Boone could only object, that Kentucky had indeed been to her, as its name imported, a dark and Bloody Ground. She had lost her eldest son by the savage fire before they had reached the country. Her daughter had been made a captive, and had experienced a forbearance from the Indians to her inexplicable. She would have been carried away to the savage towns, and there would have been forcibly married to some warrior, but for the perilous attempt, and improbable success of her father in recapturing her. Now the father himself, her affectionate husband, and the heroic defender of the family, had fallen a sacrifice, probably in the endurance of tortures on which the imagination dared not to dwell. Under the influence of griefs like these, next to the unfailing resource of religion, the heart naturally turns to the sympathy and society of those bound to it by the ties of nature and affinity. They returned to their friends in North Carolina.

It was nearly five years since this now desolate family had started in company with the first emigrating party of families, in high hopes and spirits, for Kentucky. We have narrated their disastrous rencounter with the Indians in Powell's valley, and their desponding return to Clinch river. We have seen their subsequent return to Boonesborough, on Kentucky river. Tidings of the party thus far had reached the relatives of Mrs. Boone's family in North Carolina; but no news from the country west of the Alleghanies had subsequently reached them. All was uncertain conjecture, whether they still lived, or had perished by famine, wild beasts, or the Indians.

At the close of the summer of 1778, the settlement on the Yadkin saw a company on pack horses approaching in the direction from the western wilderness. They had often seen parties of emigrants departing in that direction, but it was a novel spectacle to see one return from that quarter. At the head of that company was a blooming youth, scarcely yet arrived at the age of manhood. It was the eldest surviving son of Daniel Boone. Next behind him was a matronly woman, in weeds, and with a countenance of deep dejection. It was Mrs. Boone. Still behind was the daughter who had been a captive with the Indians. The remaining children were too young to feel deeply. The whole group was respectable in appearance, though clad in skins, and the primitive habiliments of the wilderness. It might almost have been mistaken for a funeral procession. It stopped at the house of Mr. Bryan, the father of Mrs. Boone.

The people of the settlement were not long in collecting to hear news from the west, and learn the fate of their former favorite, Boone, and his family. As Mrs. Boone, in simple and backwood's phrase, related the thrilling story of their adventures, which needed no trick of venal eloquence to convey it to the heart, an abundant tribute of tears from the hearers convinced the bereaved narrator that true sympathy is natural to the human heart. As they shuddered at the dark character of many of the incidents related, it was an hour of triumph, notwithstanding their pity, for those wiser ones, who took care, in an under tone, to whisper that it might be remembered that they had predicted all that had happened.



CHAPTER XI.

A sketch of the character and adventures of several other pioneers—Harrod, Kenton, Logan, Ray, McAffee, and others.

Colonel Boone having seen the formidable invasion of Boonesborough successfully repelled, and with such a loss as would not be likely to tempt the Indians to repeat such assaults—and having thus disengaged his mind from public duties, resigned it to the influence of domestic sympathies. The affectionate husband and father, concealing the tenderest heart under a sun-burnt and care-worn visage, was soon seen crossing the Alleghanies in pursuit of his wife and children. The bright star of his morning promise had been long under eclipse; for this journey was one of continued difficulties, vexations, and dangers—so like many of his sufferings already recounted, that we pass them by, fearing the effect of incidents of so much monotony upon the reader's patience. The frame and spirit of the western adventurer were of iron. He surmounted all, and was once more in the bosom of his family on the Yadkin, who, in the language of the Bible, hailed him as one who had been dead and was alive again; who had been lost and was found.

Many incidents of moment and interest in the early annals of Kentucky occurred during this reunion of Boone with his family. As his name is forever identified with these annals, we hope it will not be deemed altogether an episode if we introduce here a brief chronicle of those incidents—though not directly associated with the subject of our memoir. In presenting those incidents, we shall be naturally led to speak of some of the other patriarchs of Kentucky—all Boones in their way—all strangely endowed with that peculiar character which fitted them for the time, place, and achievements. We thus discover the foresight of Providence in the arrangement of means to ends. This is no where seen more conspicuously than in the characters of the founders of states and institutions.

During the absence of Colonel Boone, there was a general disposition in Kentucky to retaliate upon the Shawnese some of the injuries and losses which they had so often inflicted upon the infant settlement. Colonel Bowman, with a force of a hundred and sixty men, was selected to command the expedition; and it was destined against Old Chillicothe—the den where the red northern savages had so long concentrated their expeditions against the settlements south of the Ohio.

The force marched in the month of July, 1779, and reached its destination undiscovered by the Indians. A contest commenced with the Indians at early dawn, which lasted until ten in the morning. But, although Colonel Bowman's force sustained itself with great gallantry, the numbers and concealment of the enemy precluded the chance of a victory. He retreated, with an inconsiderable loss, a distance of thirty miles. The Indians, collecting all their forces, pursued and overtook him. Another engagement of two hours ensued, more to the disadvantage of the Kentuckians than the former. Colonel Harrod proposed to mount a number of horse, and make a charge upon the Indians, who continued the fight with great fury. This apparently desperate measure was followed by the happiest results. The Indian front was broken, and their force thrown into irreparable confusion. Colonel Bowman, having sustained a loss of nine killed and one wounded, afterwards continued an unmolested retreat.

In June of the next year, 1780, six hundred Indians and Canadians, commanded by Colonel Bird, a British officer, attacked Riddle's and Martin's stations, at the forks of the Licking, with six pieces of cannon. They conducted this expedition with so much secrecy, that the first intimation of it which the unsuspecting inhabitants had, was being fired upon. Unprepared to resist so formidable a force, provided moreover with cannon, against which their palisade walls would not stand, they were obliged to surrender at discretion. The savages immediately prostrated one man and two women with the tomahawk. All the other prisoners, many of whom were sick, were loaded with baggage and forced to accompany their return march to the Indian towns. Whoever, whether male or female, infant or aged, became unable, from sickness or exhaustion, to proceed, was immediately dispatched with the tomahawk.

The inhabitants, exasperated by the recital of cruelties to the children and women, too horrible to be named, put themselves under the standard of the intrepid and successful General Clarke, who commanded a regiment of United States' troops at the falls of Ohio. He was joined by a number of volunteers from the country, and they marched against Pickaway, one of the principal towns of the Shawnese, on the Great Miami. He conducted this expedition with his accustomed good fortune. He burnt their town to ashes. Beside the dead, which, according to their custom, the Indians carried off, seventeen bodies were left behind. The loss of General Clarke was seventeen killed.

We here present brief outlines of some of the other more prominent western pioneers, the kindred spirits, the Boones of Kentucky. High spirited intelligent, intrepid as they were, they can never supplant the reckless hero of Kentucky and Missouri in our thoughts. It is true, these men deserve to have their memories perpetuated in monumental brass, and the more enduring page of history. But there is a sad interest attached to the memory of Daniel Boone, which can never belong, in an equal degree, to theirs. They foresaw what this beautiful country would become in the hands of its new possessors. Extending their thoughts beyond the ken of a hunter's calculations, they anticipated the consequences of buts and bounds, officers of registry and record, and courts of justice. In due time, they secured a fair and adequate reversion in the soil which they had planted and so nobly defended. Hence, their posterity, with the inheritance of their name and renown, enter into the heritage of their possessions, and find an honorable and an abundant residence in the country which their fathers settled. Boone, on the contrary, was too simple-minded, too little given to prospective calculations, and his heart in too much what was passing under his eye, to make this thrifty forecast. In age, in penury, landless, and without a home, he is seen leaving Kentucky, then an opulent and flourishing country, for a new wilderness and new scenes of adventure.

Among the names of the conspicuous backwoodsmen who settled the west, we cannot fail to recognize that of James Harrod. He was from the banks of the Monongahela, and among the earliest immigrants to the "Bloody Ground." He descended the Great Kenhawa, and returned to Pennsylvania in 1774. He made himself conspicuous with a party of his friends at the famous contest with the Indians at the "Point," Next year he returned to Kentucky with a party of immigrants, fixing himself at one of the earliest settlements in the country, which, in honor of him, was called Harrodsburgh.

Nature had moulded him of a form and temperament to look the formidable red man in the face. He was six feet, muscular, broad chested, of a firm and animated countenance, keen and piercing eyes, and sparing of speech. He gained himself an imperishable name in the annals of Kentucky, under the extreme disadvantage of not knowing how to read or write! Obliging and benevolent to his neighbors, he was brave and active in their defence. A successful, because a persevering and intelligent hunter, he was liberal to profuseness in the distribution of the spoils. Vigilant and unerring with his rifle, it was at one time directed against the abundant game for the sake of his friends rather than himself; and at others, against the enemies of his country. Guided by the inexplicable instinct of forest skill, he could conduct the wanderer in the woods from point to point through the wilderness, as the needle guides the mariner upon the ocean. So endowed, others equally illiterate, and less gifted, naturally, and from instinct, arranged themselves under his banner, and fearlessly followed such a leader.

If it was reported, that a family, recently arrived in the country, and not yet acquainted with the backwood's modes of supply, was in want of food, Harrod was seen at the cabin door, offering the body of a deer or buffalo, which he had just killed. The commencing farmer, who had lost his oxen, or plough horse, in the range, and unused to the vocation of hunting them, or fearful of the Indian rifle, felt no hesitancy, from his known character, in applying to Harrod. He would disappear in the woods, and in the exercise of his own wonderful tact, the lost beast was soon seen driving to the door.

But the precincts of a station, or the field of a farm, were too uncongenial a range for such a spirit as his. To breathe the fresh forest air—to range deserts where man was not to be seen—to pursue the wild deer and buffalo—to trap the bear and the wolf, or beside the still pond, or the unexplored stream, to catch otters and beavers—to bring down the wild turkey from the summit of the highest trees; such were the congenial pursuits in which he delighted.

But, in a higher sphere, and in the service of his country, he united the instinctive tact and dexterity of a huntsman with the bravery of a soldier. No labor was too severe for his hardihood; no enterprise too daring and forlorn for his adventure; no course too intricate and complicated for his judgment, so far as native talent could guide it. As a Colonel of the militia, he conducted expeditions against the Indians with uncommon success. After the country had become populous, and he a husband and a father, in the midst of an affectionate family, possessed of every comfort—such was the effect of temperament, operating upon habit, that he became often silent and thoughtful in the midst of the social circle, and was seen in that frame to wander away into remote forests, and to bury himself amidst the unpeopled knobs, where, in a few weeks, he would reacquire his cheerfulness. In one of these excursions he disappeared, and was seen no more, leaving no trace to determine whether he died a natural death, was slain by wild beasts, or the tomahawk of the savage.

Among the names of many of the first settlers of Harrodsburgh, are those that are found most prominent in the early annals of Kentucky. In the first list of these we find the names of McGary, Harland, McBride, and Chaplain. Among the young settlers, none were more conspicuous for active, daring, and meritorious service, than James Ray. Prompt at his post at the first moment of alarm, brave in the field, fearless and persevering in the pursuit of the enemy, scarcely a battle, skirmish, or expedition took place in which he had not a distinguished part. Equally expert as a woodsman, and skilful and successful as a hunter, he was often employed as a spy. It is recorded of him that he left his garrison, when short of provisions, by night marched to a forest at the distance of six miles, killed a buffalo, and, loaded with the choice parts of the flesh, returned to regale the hungry inhabitants in the morning. He achieved this enterprise, too, when it was well known that the vicinity was thronged with Indians, lurking for an opportunity to kill. These are the positions which try the daring and skill, the usefulness and value of men, furnishing a criterion which cannot be counterfeited between reality and resemblance.

We may perhaps in this place most properly introduce another of the famous partisans in savage warfare, Simon Kenton, alias Butler, who, from humble beginnings, made himself conspicuous by distinguished services and achievements in the first settlements of this country, and ought to be recorded as one of the patriarchs of Kentucky. He was born in Virginia, in 1753. He grew to maturity without being able to read or write; but from his early exploits he seems to have been endowed with feelings which the educated and those born in the upper walks of life, appear to suppose a monopoly reserved for themselves. It is recorded of him, that at the age of nineteen, he had a violent contest with another competitor for the favor of the lady of his love. She refused to make an election between them, and the subject of this notice indignantly exiled himself from his native place. After various peregrinations on the long rivers of the west, he fixed himself in Kentucky, and soon became a distinguished partisan against the savages. In 1774, he joined himself to Lord Dunmore, and was appointed one of his spies. He made various excursions, and performed important services in this employ. He finally selected a place for improvement on the site where Washington now is. Returning one day from hunting, he found one of his companions slain by the Indians, and his body thrown into the fire. He left Washington in consequence, and joined himself to Colonel Clarke in his fortunate and gallant expedition against Vincennes and Kaskaskia. He was sent by that commander with despatches for Kentucky. He passed through the streets of Vincennes, then in possession of the British and Indians, without discovery. Arriving at White river, he and his party made a raft on which to cross with their guns and baggage, driving their horses into the river and compelling them to swim it. A party of Indians was concealed on the opposite bank, who took possession of the horses as they mounted the bank from crossing the river. Butler and his party seeing this, continued to float down the river on their raft without coming to land. They concealed themselves in the bushes until night, when they crossed the river, pursued their journey, and delivered their despatches.

After this, Butler made a journey of discovery to the northern regions of the Ohio country, and was made prisoner by the Indians. They painted him black, as is their custom when a victim is destined for their torture, and informed him that he was to be burned at Chillicothe. Meanwhile, for their own amusement, and as a prelude of his torture, they manacled him hand and foot, and placed him on an unbridled and unbroken horse, and turned the animal loose, driving it off at its utmost speed, with shouts, delighted at witnessing its mode of managing with its living burden. The horse unable to shake off this new and strange encumbrance, made for the thickest covert of the woods and brambles, with the speed of the winds. It is easy to conjecture the position and suffering of the victim. The terrified animal exhausted itself in fruitless efforts to shake off its burden, and worn down and subdued, brought Butler back amidst the yells of the exulting savages to the camp.

Arrived within a mile of Chillicothe, they halted, took Butler from his horse and tied him to a stake, where he remained twenty-four hours in one position. He was taken from the stake to "run the gauntlet." The Indian mode of managing this kind of torture was as follows: The inhabitants of the tribe, old and young, were placed in parallel lines, armed with clubs and switches. The victim was to make his way to the council house through these files, every member of which struggled to beat him as he passed as severely as possible. If he reached the council house alive, he was to be spared. In the lines were nearly six hundred Indians, and Butler had to make his way almost a mile in the endurance of this infernal sport. He was started by a blow; but soon broke through the files, and had almost reached the council house, when a stout warrior knocked him down with a club. He was severely beaten in this position, and taken back again into custody.

It seems incredible that they sometimes adopted their prisoners, and treated them with the utmost lenity and even kindness. At other times, ingenuity was exhausted to invent tortures, and every renewed endurance of the victim seemed to stimulate their vengeance to new discoveries of cruelty. Butler was one of these ill-fated subjects. No way satisfied with what they had done, they marched him from village to village to give all a spectacle of his sufferings. He run the gauntlet thirteen times. He made various attempts to escape; and in one instance would have effected it, had he not been arrested by some savages who were accidentally returning to the village from which he was escaping. It was finally determined to burn him at the Lower Sandusky, but an apparent accident changed his destiny.

In passing to the stake, the procession went by the cabin of Girty, of whom we have already spoken. This renegado white man lived among these Indians, and had just returned from an unsuccessful expedition against the whites on the frontiers of Pennsylvania. The wretch burned with disappointment and revenge, and hearing that there was a white man going to the torture, determined to wreak his vengeance on him. He found the unfortunate Butler, threw him to the ground, and began to beat him. Butler, who instantly recognized in Girty the quondam companion and playmate of youth, at once made himself known to him. This sacramental tie of friendship, on recognition, caused the savage heart of Girty to relent. He raised him up, and promised to save him. He procured the assemblage of a council, and persuaded the savages to relinquish Butler to him. He took the unfortunate man home, fed, and clothed him, and Butler began to recruit from his wounds and torture. But the relenting of the savages was only transient and momentary. After five days they repented of their relaxation in his favor, reclaimed him, and marched him to Lower Sandusky to be burned there, according to their original purpose. By a fortunate coincidence, he there met the Indian agent from Detroit, who, from motives of humanity, exerted his influence with the savages for his release, and took him with him to Detroit. Here he was paroled by the Governor. He escaped; and being endowed, like Daniel Boone, to be at home in the woods, by a march of thirty days through the wilderness, he reached Kentucky.

In 1784, Simon Kenton reoccupied the settlement, near Washington, which he had commenced in 1775. Associated with a number of people, he erected a block-house, and made a station here. This became an important point of covering and defence for the interior country. Immigrants felt more confidence in landing at Limestone. To render this confidence more complete, Kenton and his associates built a block-house at Limestone. Two men, of the name of Tanner, had made a small settlement the year preceding at Blue Lick, and were now making salt there. The route from Limestone to Lexington became one of the most general travel for immigrants, and many stations sprang up upon it. Travellers to the country had hitherto been compelled to sleep under the open canopy, exposed to the rains and dews of the night. But cabins were now so common, that they might generally repose under a roof that sheltered them from the weather, and find a bright fire, plenty of wood, and with the rustic fare, a most cheerful and cordial welcome. The people of these new regions were hospitable from native inclination. They were hospitable from circumstances. None but those who dwell in a wilderness, where the savages roam and the wolves howl, can understand all the pleasant associations connected with the sight of a stranger of the same race. The entertainer felt himself stronger from the presence of his guest. His offered food and fare were the spoils of the chase. He heard news from the old settlements and the great World; and he saw in the accession of every stranger a new guaranty of the security, wealth, and improvement of the infant country where he had chosen his resting place.

Among other worthy associates of Boone, we may mention the family of McAffee. Two brothers, James and Robert, emigrated from the county of Botetourt, Virginia, and settled on Salt river, six miles from Harrodsburgh. Having revisited their parent country, on their return they brought with them William and George McAffee. In 1777, the Indians destroyed the whole of their valuable stock of cattle, while they were absent from Kentucky. In 1779 they returned, and settled McAffee's station, which was subsequently compelled to take its full share in the sufferings and dangers of Indian hostilities.

Benjamin Logan immigrated to the country in 1775, as a private citizen. But he was a man of too much character to remain unnoted. As his character developed, he was successively appointed a magistrate, elected a member of the legislature and rose, as a military character, to the rank of general. His parents were natives of Ireland, who emigrated, while young, to Pennsylvania, where they married, and soon afterwards removed to Augusta county, Virginia.

Benjamin, their oldest son, was born there; and at the age of fourteen, lost his father. Charged, at this early age, with the care of a widowed mother, and children still younger than himself, neither the circumstances of his family, of the country, or his peculiar condition, allowed him the chances of education. Almost as unlettered as James Harrod, he was a memorable example of a self-formed man. Great natural acuteness, and strong intellectual powers, were, however, adorned by a disposition of uncommon benevolence. Under the eye of an excellent father, he commenced with the rudiments of common instruction, the soundest lessons of Christian piety and morality, which were continued by the guidance and example of an admirable mother, with whom he resided until he was turned of twenty-one.

His father had deceased intestate, and, in virtue of the laws then in force, the whole extensive inheritance of his father's lands descended to him, to the exclusion of his brothers and sisters. His example ought to be recorded for the benefit of those grasping children in these days, who, dead to all natural affection, and every sentiment but avarice, seize all that the law will grant, whether equity will sanction it or not. Disregarding this claim of primogeniture, he insisted that the whole inheritance should be parceled into equal shares, of which he accepted only his own. But the generous impulses of his noble nature, were not limited to the domestic circle. His heart was warm with the more enlarged sentiments of patriotism. At the age of twenty-one, he accompanied Colonel Beauquette, as a serjeant, in a hostile expedition against the Indians of the north. Having provided for the comfortable settlement of his mother and family on James River, Virginia, he moved to the Holston, where he settled and married.