NEW YORK: 118 WILLIAM STREET.
LONDON: 44 PATERNOSTER ROW.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1863, by
BEADLE AND COMPANY,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for
the Southern District of New York.
SIMON KENTON,
AND HIS
INDIAN TORTURE-RIDE.
Foremost among the wild and terrific scenes which arise before our startled eyes when we turn the pages of border warfare, is the ride of Simon Kenton—not that the cruelty of its devisers was so atrocious, nor the final results so dreadful, as in many other instances; but the novelty, the unique savageness of the affair, strikes upon the imagination, as if it were one of those thrilling stories related of ages and people which never were, instead of an event that actually occurred to one of our own countrymen in one of our own territories.
In the early light of morning breaking through the trees which surround them, a group of Indians are preparing to resume their march, after a night of repose. They have with them a solitary prisoner. Corraled about them are numbers of horses, the recovery of which has been the object of the expedition. Before these are released and the day's march resumed, the prisoner must be disposed of. While his captors are deciding this important matter, we will discover who he is and what has brought him into his present state.
About the first of September, 1778, Simon Kenton—the friend and younger coadjutor of Boone, who had been with the latter for some time at Boonesborough Station, employed in protecting the surrounding country, and engaging in occasional skirmishes with the Indians—becoming tired of a temporary inactivity which his habits of life rendered insupportable, determined to have another adventure with the Indians. For this purpose he associated with Alex. Montgomery and George Clark, to go on an expedition for stealing horses from the Shawnees.