NOTES
[Note 1] ([page 5])
What Sandy said about the extensive boundaries of Virginia was not surprising; for at this early day, just before the breaking out of the Revolutionary War, the colonists had only a vague idea of the next-to-unknown land that lay to the west. Beyond the Alleghanies, extending to the far-away Mississippi, the country was considered to be a part of Fincastle County, Virginia. Beyond that lay the Northwest Territory, a practically unexplored country, still awaiting the coming of the bold adventurer.
[Note 2] ([page 7])
While the flood which the young pioneers witnessed may well have been the greatest that the Indians had ever known, it was probably slight compared with the annual floods of the present day. Every spring the Ohio and its tributaries receive a huge volume of water from the melting snows, and from the torrential rains which occur at that season, and these spring freshets are looked upon as a matter of course, and only commented on when they cause unusual loss of property or of human life. One of the greatest floods that the Valley of the Ohio has ever experienced was that in the latter part of March, 1913, when property valued at hundreds of millions of dollars was destroyed and many hundreds of people were drowned.
As far as possible, disaster is guarded against by an elaborate system of reservoirs and levees, but a year seldom passes in which the river does not break through at some point and flood many miles of the Valley. The increased volume of the annual floods is ascribed to the fact that the forests which originally lined the banks of the Ohio and its tributaries have been cut down, with the result that the excess of water is not absorbed by the soil, but comes pouring down from the hills.
[Note 3] ([page 9])
Pontiac, a powerful chief of the Ottawa Indians, is famous as the one Indian who succeeded in uniting the numerous tribes along the frontier in a well-organized confederacy for the purpose of driving the English from the country. The uprising took place in 1763 and the war continued for three years, during which period the Indians captured practically every frontier fort except Detroit, which was besieged by them for many months, but succeeded in holding out against them. The war is one unending succession of massacres and Indian outrages, but the Indians were finally overcome, chiefly through their inability to persist in an enterprise unless immediately successful, joined to the jealousies among the tribes themselves. Throughout the war Pontiac was a most romantic figure, brave and able, and with all those characteristics which go to make up “the noble Red Man.” Pontiac was assassinated in 1769 by a Delaware brave who had been bribed to do the deed by an English trader who had a personal grudge against the great Chief.
[Note 4] ([page 55])
Every one has heard of Boone and Kenton; but history has but little to tell of James Harrod, surveyor, pioneer and scout. It is known that, even before Boone penetrated into Kentucky, Harrod had built himself a cabin on the site of the present city of Harrodsburg. Under a gentle and mild exterior, he seems to have been one of the bravest and most resourceful of the group of pioneers who contributed so much to the settling of Kentucky and the Valley of the Ohio. About the only anecdote of him which has come down to us is of the time when, single-handed, he tracked five Indian braves who had destroyed a frontiersman’s home and carried off two of his daughters. It seems almost incredible; but, without aid, he killed four and wounded the fifth Indian, and returned the girls to their father. His fate is shrouded in mystery. While in the prime of life he one day disappeared into the forest, and never returned, and just how he met his end will never be known.
[Note 5] ([page 62])
Whatever feeling the frontiersmen had against the hostile Indians, it was as nothing compared with their hatred and loathing for the renegade white men who joined with the Indians against the settlers. These men, fortunately few in number, were usually either desperate criminals whose lives were unsafe in the colonies, or else degenerate brutes who found life among the Indians more to their liking than that in civilized surroundings. The Indians, as a whole, had many noble qualities, such as loyalty to friendship and a strong regard for their word of honor, but the renegades lacked every good quality, being more cruel, more treacherous, more brutalized than the Indians with whom they cast in their lots.
The history of the frontier is full of accounts of these men, and prominent among them was Simon Girty, concerning whom many stories are told. McKee is less well known, but is mentioned occasionally as the companion of the more famous, or, rather, more infamous Girty.
[Note 6] ([page 64])
History tells us that Little Turtle lived and died as the enemy of the settlers who came out from Virginia to people the wilderness. Many years later, when he was sachem of his tribe, and said to be the shrewdest foe the whites had ever known, it was under his leadership that the associated tribes—Wyandots or Hurons, Iroquois, Ottawas, Pottawottomies, Chippewas, Sacs, Delawares, Miamis and Shawanees—came down upon General St. Clair and his army before daylight, and won a most decisive victory over the forces he was leading against their towns of Old Chillicothe, Pecaway, and others.
[Note 7] ([page 81])
The Shawanee invariably shaped his flints after the custom of his people; the Huron, the Wyandot, the Delaware, the Pottawottomie did his in an altogether different way. One arrowhead was long; another rather broad; a third had a small shank that fitted in the crotch made by splitting the end of the shaft; while a fourth needed no such appendage, but was inserted direct, and the two sides of the arrow securely bound, until the whole was as rigid as though forming one piece.
[Note 8] ([page 127])
Boone at this time was held to be the finest borderman west of the Alleghanies. With his calm, resolute bearing he impressed every one he met as few men have the faculty for doing.
Even the hostile Indians felt that he was a real man; and when, several years later, Boone had the misfortune to fall into their hands, instead of putting him to the torture post, or making him run the gauntlet, as ordinary prisoners were treated, they took him a prisoner to one of their villages far away in Ohio, where he was finally adopted into the tribe, and treated with great respect as a brother. Indeed, he had considerable difficulty in escaping later on, when he learned that hundreds of the Shawanee warriors were assembling, with the purpose of surprising his favorite settlement, which he managed to reach in time to prepare it for the defence that has become historic.
[Note 9] ([page 149])
This prophecy of Bob Armstrong really came true, since the name of Blue Jacket figures on many pages of border history. He never loved the whites as a class; it was only the Armstrongs whom he had come to care for; and this explains why, at a later stage of his life, Blue Jacket even led his warriors against the settlements that were encroaching on the hunting grounds of the red men. Those who would know more about this brilliant young brave, who afterwards became so noted a chief, must study the accounts of border warfare, in which his exploits are written.
[Note 10] ([page 209])
This wonderful man of the border, Simon Kenton, seemed to bear a charmed life. Many times was he captured; and on three occasions, at least, made to run the gauntlet of his foes, while the brush was piled up around the stake at which they fully intended to burn him; but he always escaped. He had come to believe that he was never fated to die at the hands of the red foe of the pioneers; and this made him the more rash. Even so valued a friend as Boone was unable to hold him in check, once he allowed this spirit of recklessness to have dominion over him.
Once, it is recorded that, just after his funeral pile of brush had been lighted, there came a furious thunder storm, the rain putting out the fire, and the crash of the elements sending fear to the hearts of the Indians. Then the medicine-man hastened to warn them that the Great Spirit was angry with his red children because they had attempted to put to death a paleface whom the spirits especially favored; and so Kenton had been put back in the prison lodge again, from which in time he made his escape, as usual.
[Note 11] ([page 242])
France and England both claimed this country as their own; but for a long time those who owed allegiance to the lilies of France had held sway here, undisturbed, bargaining with the many Indian tribes, and assuming all the airs of real owners of these woods and waters, which fairly teemed with game or fish.
When they learned that the first bold band of English had braved all the perils that lay in wait for them, and had even established new homesteads on the shore of the mighty Mississippi, they were first amazed, and then furious.