* Cresap returned to Maryland after the conclusion of Dunmore's expedition, and early in the spring he again went to the Ohio, and penetrated the wilderness of Kentucky. On his return, he was informed that he had been appointed to the command of a company of Maryland riflemen, raised by a resolution of Congress. Although suffering from ill health, he immediately went to Boston with his company, and joined the continental army under Washington. His sickness continuing, he left the army for his home among the mountains. At New York he sunk, exhausted, where he died on the 18th of October, 1775, at the age of thirty-three years. His remains were buried in Trinity church yard with military honors, in the presence of a vast concourse of people, where they yet rest.—See Mayer's Discourse; also Jacob's Life of Cresap. In the appendix to his Discourse, Mr. Mayer presents the results of patient investigation, concerning the authenticity of Logan's speech. It appears probable that the sentiment was Logan's, delivered, not as a speech or message, but as the natural expressions of the feelings of a man who felt that he had been greatly injured; the composition was evidently the work of some hand in Dunmore's camp.
Treaty with the Indians.—Sentiments of Dunmore's Officers.—Indian Wars in the West.—Daniel Boone.
At the conclusion of the treaty, Dunmore and his troops returned to Virginia, by the way of Fort Gower. At that place, the officers held a meeting on the fifth of November1774 for the purpose of considering the "grievances of British America." The proceedings
were not at all palatable to Lord Dunmore, notwithstanding one of the resolutions highly complimented him personally. The speech of one of the officers, and the resolution which followed, notwithstanding the attestations of loyalty freely expressed, evidently implied a determination no longer to submit to royal rule. Dunmore was offended, and both parties returned home dissatisfied.
Before resuming our record of events in the progress of the Virginia colony toward independence, let us take a brief survey of succeeding Indian hostilities on the Virginia frontier, until the close of the war. It is a wide and romantic field, but we must not be tempted into minute details. We will note the most prominent features of those events, and refer the reader to fuller details drawn by other pens. I briefly referred to the Indian war in this region on page 264, volume i., and promised a more extended notice. Here I will fulfill that promise.
For a while after the treaty on the Seiota, the western Indians made no concerted attacks upon the white settlements on the frontiers; but small parties continually harassed those civil heroes who went over the Alleghany ranges and explored the broad forests which stretched between the Cherokees, Creeks, and Catawbas of the south, and the Shawnees Delawares, and Wyandols, of the north, now the state of Kentucky. The first of these bold pioneers was Daniel Boone, * a hero in the truest sense of the term. He explored a portion of the wilderness west of the Blue Ridge as early as 1769, and for two years dwelt among the solitudes of the forests. Accustomed to the woods from earliest childhood, he found his highest' happiness in the excitements of forest life, and in 1773 his own and a few other families accompanied him to the paradise lying among the rich valleys south of the Ohio From that time, until the power of the western tribes was broken by the expedition under Major George Rogers Clark, Boone's life was an almost continual conflict with the Indians. Engaged in Dunmore's expedition in 1774, he was marked for vengeance by the savages; and when he built his little fort at Boonsborough,1775 a few miles from Lexington, they viewed his labors with jealousy, and resolved to drive him from his foothold. Already the Indians had killed his eldest son, and now his wife
* Daniel Boone was born about the year 1730. His parents, who came from Bridgenorth, in England, went from Pennsylvania to the banks of the Yadkin River, in North Carolina, and his childhood was spent in the forest. In 1769, he was induced to accompany John Finley in the wilds west of the mountains, within the limits of the present state of Kentucky. From that period his own history is identified with that of the state. During his first visit there, he was captured by the Indians, but escaped within a week or ten days afterward. He look his family to Kentucky in 1775, and settled on the Clericle River. In 1774, at the request of Lord Dunmore, he accompanied a party of surveyors to the Falls of the Ohio (Louisville), and was active in expeditions against the Indians during that year. He removed to the locality of the present Boonsborough, and built a fort there in 1775. In the course of three or four years, many other settlers came to his vicinity. While at the Blue Lick, on the Licking River, making salt for his garrison, in February, 1778, he and his companions were captured by a party of Indians, and taken to Chillicothe. The Indians became much attached to him. A family adopted him as a son, according to the Indian custom, and an offer of §500 for his ransom, made by Governor Hamilton of Canada, was refused. Four months after his capture, he learned that five hundred warriors were preparing to march against Boonsborough. He effected his escape on the 16th of June, and arrived home on the 20th, having traveled one hundred and sixty miles, and eaten only one meal, during four days. He arrived in time to assist in preparing the fort for the expected attack mentioned in the text. Boone's wife, with his children, in the mean while, had returned to the house of her father, on the Yadkin, where Boone visited them in 1779. He remained there until the next year, when he returned to Kentucky. He subsequently accompanied George Rogers Clarke in his expeditions against the Indians on the Ohio, and was an active partisan until the close of the war. From that time, until 1798. he resided alternately in Kentucky and Virginia. In consequence of a defect, in his title to lands in Kentucky, he was dispossessed of what was an ample estate, and made poor. The region he had explored, and helped to defend, now contained a population of half a million. Indignant because of being dispossessed, he shouldered his rifle, left Kentucky forever, and, with some followers, plunged into the interminable forests of Missouri, west of the Mississippi.