The Indians, whooping defiance, retired; while McGarry halted a moment to allow the rescued settlers to bridle their horses—saddles were not thought of. The pursuit was then begun at full speed. At the ford of a small creek near by, the rearmost Indians turned and fired at the horsemen, killing one and wounding another, while a third had his horse mired down, and was left behind. The main body was overtaken at the corn-crib, and a running fight followed; the whites leaving their horses and both sides taking shelter behind the tree-trunks. Soon two Indians were killed, and the others scattered in every direction, while the victors returned in triumph to the station.
Slight Losses of the Indians.
It is worthy of notice that though the Indians were defeated, and though they were pitted against first-class rifle shots, they yet had but five men killed and a very few wounded. They rarely suffered a heavy loss in battle with the whites, even when beaten in the open or repulsed from a fort. They would not stand heavy punishment, and in attacking a fort generally relied upon a single headlong rush, made under cover of darkness or as a surprise; they tried to unnerve their antagonists by the sudden fury of their onslaught and the deafening accompaniment of whoops and yells. If they began to suffer much loss they gave up at once, and if pursued scattered in every direction, each man for himself, and owing to their endurance, woodcraft, and skill in hiding, usually got off with marvellously little damage. At the outside a dozen of their men might be killed in the pursuit by such of the vengeful backwoodsmen as were exceptionally fleet of foot. The northwestern tribes at this time appreciated thoroughly that their marvellous fighting qualities were shown to best advantage in the woods, and neither in the defence nor in the assault of fortified places. They never cooped themselves in stockades to receive an attack from the whites, as was done by the Massachusetts Algonquins in the seventeenth century, and by the Creeks at the beginning of the nineteenth; and it was only when behind defensive works from which they could not retreat that the forest Indians ever suffered heavily when defeated by the whites. On the other hand, the defeat of the average white force was usually followed by a merciless slaughter. Skilled backwoodsmen scattered out, Indian fashion, but their less skilful or more panic-struck brethren, and all regulars or ordinary militia, kept together from a kind of blind feeling of safety in companionship, and in consequence their nimble and ruthless antagonists destroyed them at their ease.
Indian War Parties Repulsed.
Still, the Indian war parties were often checked, or scattered; and occasionally one of them received some signal discomfiture. Such was the case with a band that went up the Kanawha valley just as Clark was descending the Ohio on his way to the Illinois. Finding the fort at the mouth of the Kanawha too strong to be carried, they moved on up the river towards the Greenbriar settlements, their chiefs shouting threateningly to the people in the fort, and taunting them with the impending destruction of their friends and kindred. But two young men in the stockade forthwith dressed and painted themselves like Indians, that they might escape notice even if seen, and speeding through the woods reached the settlements first and gave warning. The settlers took refuge on a farm where there was a block-house with a stockaded yard. The Indians attacked in a body at daybreak when the door was opened, thinking to rush into the house; but they were beaten off, and paid dear for their boldness, for seventeen of them were left dead in the yard, besides the killed and wounded whom they carried away. [Footnote: McKee was the commander at the fort; the block-house was owned by Col. Andrew Donelly; Hanlon and Prior were the names of the two young men. This happened in May, 1778. For the anecdotes of personal prowess in this chapter see De Haas, or else Kercheval, McClung, Doddridge, and the fifty other annalists of those western wars, who repeat many of the same stories. All relate facts of undoubted authenticity and wildly improbable tales, resting solely on tradition, with exactly the same faith. The chronological order of these anecdotes being unimportant, I have grouped them here. It must always be remembered that both the men and the incidents described are interesting chiefly as examples; the old annalists give many hundreds of such anecdotes, and there must have been thousands more that they did not relate.] In the same year a block-house was attacked while the children were playing outside. The Indians in their sudden rush killed one settler, wounded four, and actually got inside the house; yet three were killed or disabled, and they were driven out by the despairing fury of the remaining whites, the women fighting together with the men. Then the savages instantly fled, but they had killed and scalped, or carried off, ten of the children. Be it remembered that these instances are taken at random from among hundreds of others, extending over a series of years longer than the average life of a generation.
The Indians warred with the odds immeasurably in their favor. The Ohio was the boundary between their remaining hunting-grounds and the lands where the whites had settled. In Kentucky alone this frontier was already seventy miles in length. [Footnote: Virginia State Papers, I., 437. Letter of Col. John Floyd. The Kentuckians, he notices, trust militia more than they do regulars.] Beyond the river stretched the frowning forest, to the Indians a sure shield in battle, a secure haven in disaster, an impenetrable mask from behind which to plan attack.
Nature of the Indian Forays.
Clark, from his post at the Falls, sent out spies and scouts along the banks of the river, and patrolled its waters with his gun-boat; but it was absolutely impossible to stop all the forays or to tell the point likely to be next struck. A war party starting from the wigwam-towns would move silently down through the woods, cross the Ohio at any point, and stealthily and rapidly traverse the settlements, its presence undiscovered until the deeds of murder and rapine were done, and its track marked by charred cabins and the ghastly, mutilated bodies of men, women, and children.
If themselves assailed, the warriors fought desperately and effectively. They sometimes attacked bodies of troops, but always by ambush or surprise; and they much preferred to pounce on unprepared and unsuspecting surveyors, farmers, or wayfarers, or to creep up to solitary, outlying cabins. They valued the scalps of women and children as highly as those of men. Striking a sudden blow, where there was hardly any possibility of loss to themselves, they instantly moved on to the next settlement, repeating the process again and again. Tireless, watchful, cautious, and rapid, they covered great distances, and their stealth and the mystery of their coming and going added to the terror produced by the horrible nature of their ravages. When pursued they dextrously covered their trail, and started homewards across a hundred leagues of trackless wilderness. The pursuers almost of necessity went slower, for they had to puzzle out the tracks; and after a certain number of days either their food gave out or they found themselves too far from home, and were obliged to return. In most instances the pursuit was vain. Thus a party of twenty savages might make a war-trail some hundreds of miles in length, taking forty or fifty scalps, carrying off a dozen women and children, and throwing a number of settlements, with perhaps a total population of a thousand souls, into a rage of terror and fury, with a loss to themselves of but one or two men killed and wounded.
A Great War Band Threatens Kentucky