Joshua Fleehart.
Extraordinary strength and activity, with the most daring courage and a thorough knowledge of life in the woods, won for Joshua Fleehart a high reputation among the first settler’s of Western Virginia and Ohio. When the Ohio Company founded its settlement at Marietta, in April, 1778, Fleehart was employed as a scout and a hunter. In this service he had no superior north of the Ohio. At periods of the greatest danger, when the Indians were known to be much incensed against the whites, he would start from the settlement with no companion but his dog, and ranging within about twenty miles of an Indian town, would build his cabin and trap and hunt during nearly the whole season. On one occasion this reckless contempt of danger almost cost the hunter his life.
JOSHUA FLEEHART.
Having became tired of the sameness of garrison life, and panting for that freedom among the woods and hills to which he had always been accustomed, late in the fall of 1795, he took his canoe, rifle, traps, and blanket, with no one to accompany him, leaving even his faithful dog in the garrison with his family. As he was going into a dangerous neighborhood, he was fearful lest the voice of his dog might betray him. With a daring and intrepidity which few men possess, he pushed his canoe up the Sciota river a distance of fifteen or twenty miles, into the Indian country, amidst their best hunting-grounds for the bear and the beaver, where no white man had dared to venture. These two were the main object of his pursuit, and the hills of Brush creek were said to abound in bear, and the small streams that fell into the Sciota were well suited to the haunts of the beaver.
The spot chosen for his winter’s residence was within twenty-five or thirty miles of the Indian town of Chillicothe, but as they seldom go far to hunt in the winter, he had little to fear from their interruption. For ten or twelve weeks he trapped and hunted in this solitary region unmolested; luxuriating on the roasted tails of the beaver, and drinking the oil of the bear, an article of diet which is considered by the children of the forest as giving health to the body, with strength and activity to the limbs. His success had equalled his most sanguine expectations, and the winter passed away so quietly and so pleasantly, that he was hardly aware of its progress. About the middle of February, he began to make up the peltry he had captured into packages, and to load his canoe with the proceeds of his winter’s hunt, which for safety had been secreted in the willows, a few miles below the little bark hut in which he had lived. The day before that which he had fixed on for his departure, as he was returning to his camp, just at evening, Fleehart’s acute ear caught the report of a rifle in the direction of the Indian towns, but at so remote a distance, that none but a backwoodsman could have distinguished the sound. This hastened his preparations for decamping. Nevertheless he slept quietly, but rose the following morning before the dawn; cooked and ate his last meal in the little hut to which he had become quite attached.
