About this time a new element began to exasperate and extend the ravages of Indian warfare, along the whole line of the frontier settlements. The war of Independence had already begun to rage. The influence and resources of Great Britain extended along the immense chain of our frontier, from the north-eastern part of Vermont and New York, all the way to the Mississippi. Nor did this nation, to her everlasting infamy, hesitate to engage these infuriate allies of the wilderness, whose known rule of warfare was indiscriminate vengeance; without reference to the age or sex of the foe, as auxiliaries in the war.
As this biographical sketch of the life of Boone is inseparably interwoven with this border scene of massacres, plunderings, burnings, and captivities, which swept the incipient northern and western settlements with desolation, it may not be amiss to take a brief retrospect of the state of these settlements at this conjuncture in the life of Boone.
CHAPTER VII.
Settlement of Harrodsburgh—Indian mode of besieging and
warfare—Fortitude and privation of the Pioneers—The Indians attack
Harrodsburgh and Boonesborough—Description of a Station—Attack of
Bryant's Station.
A road sufficient for the passage of pack horses in single file, had been opened from the settlements already commenced on Holston river to Boonesborough in Kentucky. It was an avenue which soon brought other adventurers, with their families to the settlement. On the northern frontier of the country, the broad and unbroken bosom of the Ohio opened an easy liquid highway of access to the country. The first spots selected as landing places and points of ingress into the country, were Limestone—now Maysville—at the mouth of Limestone creek, and Beargrass creek, where Louisville now stands. Boonesborough and Harrodsburgh were the only stations in Kentucky sufficiently strong to be safe from the incursions of the Indians; and even these places afforded no security a foot beyond the palisades. These two places were the central points towards which emigrants directed their course from Limestone and Louisville. The routes from these two places were often ambushed by the Indians. But notwithstanding the danger of approach to the new country, and the incessant exposure during the residence there, immigrants continued to arrive at the stations.
The first female white settlers of Harrodsburgh, were Mrs. Denton, McGary, and Hogan, who came with their husbands and families. A number of other families soon followed, among whom, in 1776, came Benjamin Logan, with his wife and family. These were all families of respectability and standing, and noted in the subsequent history of the country.
Hordes of savages were soon afterwards ascertained to have crossed the Ohio, with the purpose to extirpate these germs of social establishments in Kentucky. According to their usual mode of warfare, they separated into numerous detachments, and dispersed in all directions through the forests. This gave them the aspect of numbers and strength beyond reality. It tended to increase the apprehensions of the recent immigrants, inspiring the natural impressions, that the woods in all directions were full of Indians. It enabled them to fight in detail,—to assail different settlements at the same time, and to fill the whole country with consternation.
Their mode of besieging these places, though not at all conformable to the notions of a siege derived from the tactics of a civilized people, was dictated by the most profound practical observation, operating upon existing circumstances. Without cannon or scaling ladders, their hope of carrying a station, or fortified place, was founded upon starving the inmates, cutting off their supplies of water, killing them, as they exposed themselves, in detail, or getting possession of the station by some of the arts of dissimulation. Caution in their tactics is still more strongly inculcated than bravery. Their first object is to secure themselves; their next, to kill their enemy. This is the universal Indian maxim from Nova Zembla to Cape Horn. In besieging a place, they are seldom seen in force upon any particular quarter. Acting in small parties, they disperse themselves, and lie concealed among bushes or weeds, behind trees or stumps. They ambush the paths to the barn, spring, or field. They discharge their rifle or let fly their arrow, and glide away without being seen, content that their revenge should issue from an invisible source. They kill the cattle, watch the watering places, and cut off all supplies. During the night, they creep, with the inaudible and stealthy step dictated by the animal instinct, to a concealed position near one of the gates, and patiently pass many sleepless nights, so that they may finally cut off some ill-fated person, who incautiously comes forth in the morning. During the day, if there be near the station grass, weeds, bushes, or any distinct elevation of the soil, however small, they crawl, as prone as reptiles, to the place of concealment, and whoever exposes the smallest part of his body through any part or chasm, receives their shot, behind the smoke of which they instantly cower back to their retreat. When they find their foe abroad, they boldly rush upon him, and make him prisoner, or take his scalp. At times they approach the walls or palisades with the most audacious daring, and attempt to fire them, or beat down the gate. They practice, with the utmost adroitness, the stratagem of a false alarm on one side when the real assault is intended for the other. With untiring perseverance, when their stock of provisions is exhausted, they set forth to hunt, as on common occasions, resuming their station near the besieged place as soon as they are supplied.
It must he confessed, that they had many motives to this persevering and deadly hostility, apart from their natural propensity to war. They saw this new and hated race of pale faces gradually getting possession of their hunting grounds, and cutting down their forests. They reasoned forcibly and justly, that the time, when to oppose these new intruders with success, was to do it before they had become numerous and strong in diffused population and resources. Had they possessed the skill of corporate union, combining individual effort with a general concert of attack, and directed their united force against each settlement in succession, there is little doubt, that at this time they might have extirpated the new inhabitants from Kentucky, and have restored it to the empire of the wild beasts and the red men. But in the order of events it was otherwise arranged. They massacred, they burnt, and plundered, and destroyed. They killed cattle, and carried off the horses;—inflicting terror, poverty, and every species of distress; but were not able to make themselves absolute masters of a single station.
It has been found by experiment, that the settlers in such predicaments of danger and apprehension, act under a most spirit-stirring excitement, which, notwithstanding its alarms, is not without its pleasures. They acquired fortitude, dexterity, and that kind of courage which results from becoming familiar with exposure.