[Note 3] ([page 9])
Pontiac, a powerful chief of the Ottawa Indians, is famous as the one Indian who succeeded in uniting the numerous tribes along the frontier in a well-organized confederacy for the purpose of driving the English from the country. The uprising took place in 1763 and the war continued for three years, during which period the Indians captured practically every frontier fort except Detroit, which was besieged by them for many months, but succeeded in holding out against them. The war is one unending succession of massacres and Indian outrages, but the Indians were finally overcome, chiefly through their inability to persist in an enterprise unless immediately successful, joined to the jealousies among the tribes themselves. Throughout the war Pontiac was a most romantic figure, brave and able, and with all those characteristics which go to make up “the noble Red Man.” Pontiac was assassinated in 1769 by a Delaware brave who had been bribed to do the deed by an English trader who had a personal grudge against the great Chief.
[Note 4] ([page 55])
Every one has heard of Boone and Kenton; but history has but little to tell of James Harrod, surveyor, pioneer and scout. It is known that, even before Boone penetrated into Kentucky, Harrod had built himself a cabin on the site of the present city of Harrodsburg. Under a gentle and mild exterior, he seems to have been one of the bravest and most resourceful of the group of pioneers who contributed so much to the settling of Kentucky and the Valley of the Ohio. About the only anecdote of him which has come down to us is of the time when, single-handed, he tracked five Indian braves who had destroyed a frontiersman’s home and carried off two of his daughters. It seems almost incredible; but, without aid, he killed four and wounded the fifth Indian, and returned the girls to their father. His fate is shrouded in mystery. While in the prime of life he one day disappeared into the forest, and never returned, and just how he met his end will never be known.
[Note 5] ([page 62])
Whatever feeling the frontiersmen had against the hostile Indians, it was as nothing compared with their hatred and loathing for the renegade white men who joined with the Indians against the settlers. These men, fortunately few in number, were usually either desperate criminals whose lives were unsafe in the colonies, or else degenerate brutes who found life among the Indians more to their liking than that in civilized surroundings. The Indians, as a whole, had many noble qualities, such as loyalty to friendship and a strong regard for their word of honor, but the renegades lacked every good quality, being more cruel, more treacherous, more brutalized than the Indians with whom they cast in their lots.
The history of the frontier is full of accounts of these men, and prominent among them was Simon Girty, concerning whom many stories are told. McKee is less well known, but is mentioned occasionally as the companion of the more famous, or, rather, more infamous Girty.
[Note 6] ([page 64])
History tells us that Little Turtle lived and died as the enemy of the settlers who came out from Virginia to people the wilderness. Many years later, when he was sachem of his tribe, and said to be the shrewdest foe the whites had ever known, it was under his leadership that the associated tribes—Wyandots or Hurons, Iroquois, Ottawas, Pottawottomies, Chippewas, Sacs, Delawares, Miamis and Shawanees—came down upon General St. Clair and his army before daylight, and won a most decisive victory over the forces he was leading against their towns of Old Chillicothe, Pecaway, and others.