On the 9th the Indian army, consisting of four hundred and forty-four men, under the command of Captain Duquesne, and eleven other Frenchmen and their own chiefs, arrived and summoned the fort to surrender. I requested two days’ consideration, which was granted. During this we brought in through the posterns all the horses and other cattle we could collect.
On the 9th, in the evening, I informed their commander that we were determined to defend the fort while a man was living. They then proposed a treaty, they would withdraw. The treaty was held within sixty yards of the fort, as we suspected the savages. The articles were agreed to and signed; when the Indians told us it was their-custom for two Indians to shake hands with every white man in the treaty, as an evidence of friendship. We agreed to this also. They immediately grappled us to take us prisoners, but we cleared ourselves of them, though surrounded by hundreds, and gained the fort safe, except one man, who was wounded by a heavy fire from the enemy.
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The savages now began to undermine the fort, beginning at the water mark of the Kentucky river, which is sixty yards from the fort; this we discovered by the water being muddy by the clay. We countermined them by cutting a trench across their subterraneous passage. The enemy discovering this by the clay we threw out of the fort, desisted. On the 20th of August, they raised the siege, during which we had two men killed and four wounded. We lost a number of cattle. The enemy had thirty-seven killed, and a much larger number wounded. We picked up one hundred and twenty-five pounds of their bullets, besides what stuck in the logs of the fort.
In July, 1779, during my absence, Colonel Bowman, with one hundred and sixty men, went against the Shawanese of Old Chilicothe. He arrived undiscovered. A battle ensued which lasted until ten in the morning, when Colonel Bowman retreated thirty miles. The Indians collected all their strength and pursued him, when another engagement ensued for two hours, not to Colonel Bowman’s advantage. Colonel Harrod proposed to mount a number of horses, and break the enemy’s line, who at this time fought with remarkable fury. This desperate measure had a happy effect, and the savages fled on all sides. In these two engagements we had nine men killed and one wounded. The enemy’s loss uncertain. Only two scalps were taken.
June 23d, 1780, five hundred Indians and Canadians, under Colonel Bird, attacked Riddle and Martin’s station, on the forks of Licking river, with six pieces of artillery. They took all the inhabitants captives, and killed one man and two women, loading the others with the heavy baggage, and such as failed in the journey were tomahawked.
The hostile disposition of the savages caused General Clark, the commandant at the Falls of Ohio, to march with his regiment and the armed force of the country against Peccaway, the principal town of the Shawa-nese, on a branch of the Great Miami, which he attacked with great success, took seventy scalps, and reduced the town to ashes, with the loss of seventeen men.
About this time I returned to Kentucky with my family; for during my captivity, my wife thinking me killed by the Indians, had transported my family and goods on horses through the wilderness, amidst many dangers, to her father’s house in North Carolina.