By this time Kenton was acknowledged as the leader in the frontier settlement. He possessed a great deal of valuable land, was a master of woodcraft, and in all the troubles with the Indians was looked to for protection and assistance.
During the half-dozen years following, his services in the latter respect were beyond estimate. He demonstrated his skill in the ways of the woods by ambushing a party of dusky marauders who had come down to devastate the border, and by inflicting such severe loss that the others fled in terror and never attempted to molest the settlement again.
But this period will be recognized by the reader as the eventful one of General Anthony Wayne's expedition against the combined Indian tribes of the West. Disaster had followed disaster, until the United States Government saw the necessity of ending the troubles by a campaign which should be resistless, and crushing in its effects.
Simon Kenton, at the time of Wayne's expedition, was a major, and with his battalion he joined the forces at Greenville. It may be said that his reputation at that time was national, and he was recognized as one of the most skillful and intrepid pioneers of the West. His bravery, activity and knowledge of "wood lore," inspired confidence everywhere, and linked his name inseparably with the settlement of the West.
His foresight in taking up the valuable lands was now shown by the results. They appreciated so rapidly in value with the settlement and development of the country, that he became one of the wealthiest settlers in Kentucky.
But singularly (and yet perhaps it was not singular either), the same misfortune overtook him that befell Daniel Boone and so many others of the pioneers.
The rapacious speculators, by their superior cunning, got all his land away from him, until he was not worth a farthing. Worse than that they brought him in debt, and his body was taken upon the covenants in deeds to lands, which he had in point of fact given away. He was imprisoned for a full year on the very spot where he built his cabin in 1775, and planted the first corn planted north of the Kentucky River by a white man, and where for many a time he had braved hunger, death, and undergone suffering in its most frightful forms.
He was literally reduced to beggary by the cruel rapacity of the land sharks, and in 1802 he removed to Ohio and settled in Urbana. Kenton's remarkable sweetness of character, despite the fact that he was one of the most terrible of Indian fighters, was such that he scarcely ever uttered a word of complaint. No man had endured more than he for Kentucky and Ohio, and no one had ever been treated more shabbily; yet he loved the "Dark and Bloody Ground" none the less.
His services and his ability were appreciated to that extent in Ohio that he was elected a brigadier-general of militia, three years after his removal to the State. Five years later, that is, in 1810, he was converted and joined the Methodist Episcopal Church.
Reverend J. B. Finley, the well known missionary of the West, relates that his father and Kenton met at a camp meeting on the Mad River. They were old friends and the interview was a most pleasant one. The meeting was accompanied by a great awakening, during which Kenton took the elder Finley aside and told him how deeply his heart had been touched, how much he was impressed with his own sinfulness, and how desirous he was of obtaining divine pardon.