Dr. Knight was now removed from the spot, and placed under the charge of a Shawanee warrior to be taken to Chillicothe, where he was to share in the terrible fate of his late companion. The Doctor, however, was fortunate enough to effect his escape; and after wandering through the wilderness for three weeks, in a state bordering on starvation, he reached Pittsburg. He had been an eye-witness of all the tortures inflicted upon the Colonel, and subsequently published a journal of the expedition; and it is from this that the particulars have been derived of the several accounts which have been published of the Burning of Crawford.[[48]]
It was not to be expected that such a man as Simon Girty could, for a great many years, maintain his influence among a people headed by chiefs and warriors like Black-Hoof, Buckongahelas, Little Turtle, Tarhé, and so forth. Accordingly we find the ascendancy of the renegade at its height about the period of the expedition against Bryant's Station, already described; and not long after this it began to wane, when, discontent and disappointment inducing him to give way to his natural appetites, he partook freely of all intoxicating liquors, and in the course of a few years became a beastly drunkard. It is believed that he at one time seriously meditated an abandonment of the Indians, and a return to the whites; and an anecdote related by McClung, in his notice of the emigration to Kentucky, by way of the Ohio River, in the year 1785, would seem to give color to this opinion. But if the intention ever was seriously indulged, it is most likely that fear of the treatment he would receive on being recognized in the frontier settlements, on account of his many bloody enormities, prevented him from carrying it into effect. He remained with the Indians in Ohio till Wayne's victory, when he forsook the scenes of his former influence and savage greatness, and established himself somewhere in Upper Canada. He fought in the bloody engagement which terminated in the defeat and butchery of St. Clair's army in 1791, and was at the battle of the Fallen Timbers in 1794; but he had no command in either of those engagements, and was not at this time a man of any particular influence.
In Canada, Girty was something of a trader, but gave himself up almost wholly to intoxicating drinks, and became a perfect sot. At this time he suffered much from rheumatism and other diseases; but he had grown a great braggart, and amidst his severest pains he would entertain his associates, and all who were willing to listen, with stories of his past pranks and cruelty. He had now the most exaggerated notions of the honor attaching to the character of a great warrior; and for some years before his death his constantly-expressed wish was, that he might find an opportunity of signalizing his last years by some daring action, and die upon the field of battle. Whether sincere in this wish or not, the opportunity was afforded him. He fought with the Indians at Proctor's defeat on the Thames in 1814, and was among those who were here cut down and trodden under foot by Colonel Johnson's regiment of mounted Kentuckians.
Of the birth-place and family of Simon Girty we have not been able to procure any satisfactory information. It is generally supposed, from the fact that nearly all of his early companions were Virginians, that he was a native of the Old Dominion; but one of the early pioneers, (yet living in Franklin County,) who knew Girty at Pittsburg before his defection, thinks that his native State was Pennsylvania. This venerable gentleman is likewise of the opinion, that it was the disappointment of not getting an office to which he aspired that first filled Girty's breast with hatred of the whites, and roused in him those dark thoughts and bitter feelings which subsequently, on the occurrence of the first good opportunity, induced him to desert his countrymen and league himself with the Indians. That Girty was an applicant or candidate for some office, and was defeated in his efforts to obtain it by an individual who was generally considered less deserving of it than he, my informant has distinct recollections; and also remembers that his defeat was occasioned principally through the exertions, in behalf of his opponent, of Colonel William Crawford. This affords a key to the cause of Girty's fiend-like conduct toward the Colonel when, some ten years afterward, the latter was bound to the stake at one of the Wyandot towns, and in the extremity of his agony besought the renegade to put an end to his misery by shooting him through the heart: it offers no apology, however, for Girty's brutality on that occasion.
The career of the renegade, commenced by treason and pursued through blood to the knee, affords a good lesson, which might well receive some remark; but this narrative has already extended to an unexpected length, and must here close. It is a dark record; but the histories of all new countries contain somewhat similar passages, and their preservation in this form may not be altogether without usefulness.[[49]]
CHAPTER XVIII.
Season of repose—Colonel Boone buys land—Builds a log house and goes to farming—Kentucky organized on a new basis—Colonel Boone surprised by Indians—Escapes—Manners and customs of the settlers—The autumn hunt—The house-warming.
After the series of Indian hostilities recorded in the chapters immediately preceding this, Kentucky enjoyed a season of comparative repose. The cessation of hostilities between the United States and Great Britain in 1783, and the probable speedy cession of the British posts on the Northwestern frontier, discouraged the Indians, stopped their customary incursions on the Kentuckians, and gave them leisure to acquire and cultivate new tracts of land.