The First White Man of the West / Life and Exploits of Col. Dan'l. Boone, the First Settler of Kentucky; / Interspersed with Incidents in the Early Annals of the Country.

by Timothy Flint

CHAPTER XI.

A sketch of the character and adventures of several other pioneers—Harrod, Kenton, Logan, Ray, McAffee, and others.

Colonel Boone having seen the formidable invasion of Boonesborough successfully repelled, and with such a loss as would not be likely to tempt the Indians to repeat such assaults—and having thus disengaged his mind from public duties, resigned it to the influence of domestic sympathies. The affectionate husband and father, concealing the tenderest heart under a sun-burnt and care-worn visage, was soon seen crossing the Alleghanies in pursuit of his wife and children. The bright star of his morning promise had been long under eclipse; for this journey was one of continued difficulties, vexations, and dangers—so like many of his sufferings already recounted, that we pass them by, fearing the effect of incidents of so much monotony upon the reader's patience. The frame and spirit of the western adventurer were of iron. He surmounted all, and was once more in the bosom of his family on the Yadkin, who, in the language of the Bible, hailed him as one who had been dead and was alive again; who had been lost and was found.

Many incidents of moment and interest in the early annals of Kentucky occurred during this reunion of Boone with his family. As his name is forever identified with these annals, we hope it will not be deemed altogether an episode if we introduce here a brief chronicle of those incidents—though not directly associated with the subject of our memoir. In presenting those incidents, we shall be naturally led to speak of some of the other patriarchs of Kentucky—all Boones in their way—all strangely endowed with that peculiar character which fitted them for the time, place, and achievements. We thus discover the foresight of Providence in the arrangement of means to ends. This is no where seen more conspicuously than in the characters of the founders of states and institutions.

During the absence of Colonel Boone, there was a general disposition in Kentucky to retaliate upon the Shawnese some of the injuries and losses which they had so often inflicted upon the infant settlement. Colonel Bowman, with a force of a hundred and sixty men, was selected to command the expedition; and it was destined against Old Chillicothe—the den where the red northern savages had so long concentrated their expeditions against the settlements south of the Ohio.

The force marched in the month of July, 1779, and reached its destination undiscovered by the Indians. A contest commenced with the Indians at early dawn, which lasted until ten in the morning. But, although Colonel Bowman's force sustained itself with great gallantry, the numbers and concealment of the enemy precluded the chance of a victory. He retreated, with an inconsiderable loss, a distance of thirty miles. The Indians, collecting all their forces, pursued and overtook him. Another engagement of two hours ensued, more to the disadvantage of the Kentuckians than the former. Colonel Harrod proposed to mount a number of horse, and make a charge upon the Indians, who continued the fight with great fury. This apparently desperate measure was followed by the happiest results. The Indian front was broken, and their force thrown into irreparable confusion. Colonel Bowman, having sustained a loss of nine killed and one wounded, afterwards continued an unmolested retreat.

In June of the next year, 1780, six hundred Indians and Canadians, commanded by Colonel Bird, a British officer, attacked Riddle's and Martin's stations, at the forks of the Licking, with six pieces of cannon. They conducted this expedition with so much secrecy, that the first intimation of it which the unsuspecting inhabitants had, was being fired upon. Unprepared to resist so formidable a force, provided moreover with cannon, against which their palisade walls would not stand, they were obliged to surrender at discretion. The savages immediately prostrated one man and two women with the tomahawk. All the other prisoners, many of whom were sick, were loaded with baggage and forced to accompany their return march to the Indian towns. Whoever, whether male or female, infant or aged, became unable, from sickness or exhaustion, to proceed, was immediately dispatched with the tomahawk.

The inhabitants, exasperated by the recital of cruelties to the children and women, too horrible to be named, put themselves under the standard of the intrepid and successful General Clarke, who commanded a regiment of United States' troops at the falls of Ohio. He was joined by a number of volunteers from the country, and they marched against Pickaway, one of the principal towns of the Shawnese, on the Great Miami. He conducted this expedition with his accustomed good fortune. He burnt their town to ashes. Beside the dead, which, according to their custom, the Indians carried off, seventeen bodies were left behind. The loss of General Clarke was seventeen killed.

We here present brief outlines of some of the other more prominent western pioneers, the kindred spirits, the Boones of Kentucky. High spirited intelligent, intrepid as they were, they can never supplant the reckless hero of Kentucky and Missouri in our thoughts. It is true, these men deserve to have their memories perpetuated in monumental brass, and the more enduring page of history. But there is a sad interest attached to the memory of Daniel Boone, which can never belong, in an equal degree, to theirs. They foresaw what this beautiful country would become in the hands of its new possessors. Extending their thoughts beyond the ken of a hunter's calculations, they anticipated the consequences of buts and bounds, officers of registry and record, and courts of justice. In due time, they secured a fair and adequate reversion in the soil which they had planted and so nobly defended. Hence, their posterity, with the inheritance of their name and renown, enter into the heritage of their possessions, and find an honorable and an abundant residence in the country which their fathers settled. Boone, on the contrary, was too simple-minded, too little given to prospective calculations, and his heart in too much what was passing under his eye, to make this thrifty forecast. In age, in penury, landless, and without a home, he is seen leaving Kentucky, then an opulent and flourishing country, for a new wilderness and new scenes of adventure.

Among the names of the conspicuous backwoodsmen who settled the west, we cannot fail to recognize that of James Harrod. He was from the banks of the Monongahela, and among the earliest immigrants to the "Bloody Ground." He descended the Great Kenhawa, and returned to Pennsylvania in 1774. He made himself conspicuous with a party of his friends at the famous contest with the Indians at the "Point," Next year he returned to Kentucky with a party of immigrants, fixing himself at one of the earliest settlements in the country, which, in honor of him, was called Harrodsburgh.