The whole party crossed the river, keeping straight forward in the beaten buffalo road. Advanced a little, parties flanked out from the main body, as the irregularity and unevenness of the ground would allow. The whole body moved on in reckless precipitation and disorder, over a surface covered with rocks, laid bare by the trampling of buffaloes, and the washing of the rain of ages. Their course led them in front of the high ridge which extends for some distance to the left of the road. They were decoyed on in the direction of one of the ravines of which we have spoken, by the reappearance of the party of Indians they had first seen.
The termination of this ridge sloped off in a declivity covered with a thick forest of oaks. The ravines were thick set on their banks with small timber, or encumbered with burnt wood, and the whole area before them had been stripped bare of all herbage by the buffaloes that had resorted to the Licks. Clumps of soil here and there on the bare rock supported a few trees, which gave the whole of this spot of evil omen a most singular appearance. The advance of the party was headed by McGary, Harland, and McBride. A party of Indians, as Boone had predicted, that had been ambushed in the woods here met them. A warm and bloody action immediately commenced, and the rifles on either side did fatal execution. It was discovered in a moment that the whole line of the ravine concealed Indians, who, to the number of thrice that of their foes, rushed upon them. Colonels Todd and Trigg, whose position had been on the right, by the movement in crossing, were thrown in the rear. They fell in their places, and the rear was turned. Between twenty and thirty of these brave men had already paid the forfeit of their rashness, when a retreat commenced under the edge of the tomahawk, and the whizzing of Indian bullets. When the party first crossed the river all were mounted. Many had dismounted at the commencement of the action. Others engaged on horseback. On the retreat, some were fortunate enough to recover their horses, and fled on horseback. Others retreated on foot. From the point where the engagement commenced to the Licking river was about a mile's distance. A high and rugged cliff environed either shore of the river, which sloped off to a plain near the Licks. The ford was narrow, and the water above and below it deep. Some were overtaken on the way, and fell under the tomahawk. But the greatest slaughter was at the river. Some were slain in crossing, and some on either shore.
A singular spectacle was here presented in the case of a man by the name of Netherland, who had been derided for his timidity. He was mounted on a fleet and powerful horse, the back of which he had never left for a moment. He was one of the first to recross the Licking. Finding himself safe upon the opposite shore, a sentiment of sympathy came upon him as he looked back and took a survey of the scene of murder going on in the river and on its shore. Many had reached the river in a state of faintness and exhaustion, and the Indians were still cutting them down. Inspired with the feeling of a commander, he cried out in a loud and authoritative voice, "Halt! Fire on the Indians. Protect the men in the river." The call was obeyed. Ten or twelve men instantly turned, fired on the enemy, and checked their pursuit for a moment, thus enabling some of the exhausted and wounded fugitives to evade the tomahawk, already uplifted to destroy them. The brave and benevolent Reynolds, whose reply to Girty has been reported, relinquished his own horse to Colonel Robert Patterson, who was infirm from former wounds, and was retreating on foot. He thus enabled that veteran to escape. While thus signalizing his disinterested intrepidity, he fell himself into the hands of the Indians. The party that took him consisted of three. Two whites passed him on their retreat. Two of the Indians pursued, leaving him under the guard of the third. His captor stooped to tie his moccasin, and he sprang away from him and escaped. It is supposed that one-fourth of the men engaged in this action were commissioned officers. The whole number engaged was one hundred and seventy-six. Of these, sixty were slain, and eight made prisoners. Among the most distinguished names of those who fell, were those of Colonels Todd and Trigg, Majors Harland and Bulger, Captains Gordon and McBride, and a son of Colonel Boone. The loss of the savages has never been ascertained. It could not have equalled that of the assailants, though some supposed it greater. This sanguinary affair took place August 19, 1782.
Colonel Logan, on arriving at Bryant's station, with a force of three hundred men, found the troops had already marched. He made a rapid advance in hopes to join them before they should have met with the Indians. He came up with the survivors, on their retreat from their ill-fated contest, not far from Bryant's station. He determined to pursue his march to the battle ground to bury the dead, if he could not avenge their fall. He was joined by many friends of the killed and missing, from Lexington and Bryant's station. They reached the battle ground on the 25th. It presented a heartrending spectacle. Where so lately had arisen the shouts of the robust and intrepid woodsmen, and the sharp yell of the savages, as they closed in the murderous contest, the silence of the wide forest was now unbroken, except by birds of prey, as they screamed and sailed over the carnage. The heat was so excessive, and the bodies were so changed by it and the hideous gashes and mangling of the Indian tomahawk and knife, that friends could no longer recognize their dearest relatives. They performed the sad rights of sepulture as they might, upon the rocky ground.
The Indian forces that had fought at the Blue Licks, in the exultation of victory and revenge, returned homeward with their scalps. Those from the north—and they constituted the greater numbers—returned quietly. The western bands took their route through Jefferson county, in hopes to add more scalps to the number of their trophies. Colonel Floyd led out a force to protect the country. They marched through the region on Salt river, and saw no traces of Indians. They dispersed on their return. The greater number of them reached their station, and laid down, fatigued and exhausted, without any precaution against a foe. The Indians came upon them in this predicament in the night, and killed several women and children. A few escaped under the cover of the darkness. A woman, taken prisoner that night, escaped from her savage captors by throwing herself into the bushes, while they passed on. She wandered about the woods eighteen days, subsisting only on wild fruits, and was then found and carried to Lynn's station. She survived the extreme state of exhaustion in which she was discovered. Another woman, taken with four children, at the same time, was carried to Detroit.
The terrible blow which the savages had struck at the Blue Licks, excited a general and immediate purpose of retaliation through Kentucky. General Clarke was appointed commander-in-chief, and Colonel Logan next under him in command of the expedition, to be raised for that purpose. The forces were to rendezvous at Licking. The last of September, 1782, General Clarke, with one thousand men, marched from the present site of Cincinnati, for the Indian towns on the Miami. They fell in on their route with the camp of Simon Girty, who would have been completely surprised with his Indians, had not a straggling savage espied the advance, and reported it to them just in season to enable them to scatter in every direction. They soon spread the intelligence that an army from Kentucky was marching upon their towns.
As the army approached the towns on their route, they found that the inhabitants had evacuated them, and fled into the woods. All the cabins at Chillicothe, Piqua, and Willis were burned. Some skirmishing took place, however, in which five Indians were killed, and seven made prisoners, without any loss to the Kentuckians, save the wounding of one man, which afterwards proved mortal. One distinguished Indian surrendered himself, and was afterwards inhumanly murdered by one of the troops, to the deep regret and mortification of General Clarke.
In October, 1785, Mr. McClure and family, in company with a number of other families, were assailed on Skegg's creek. Six of the family were killed, and Mrs. McClure, a child, and a number of other persons made prisoners. The attack took place in the night. The circumstances of the capture of Mrs. McClure, furnish an affecting incident illustrating the invincible force of natural tenderness. She had concealed herself, with her four children, in the brush of a thicket, which, together with the darkness, screened her from observation. Had she chosen to have left her infant behind, she might have escaped. But she grasped it, and held it to her bosom, although aware that its shrieks would betray their covert. The Indians, guided to the spot by its cries, killed the three larger children, and took her and her infant captives. The unfortunate and bereaved mother was obliged to accompany their march on an untamed and unbroken horse.
Intelligence of these massacres and cruelties circulated rapidly. Captain Whitley immediately collected twenty-one men from the adjoining stations, overtook, and killed two of these savages, retook the desolate mother, her babe, and a negro servant, and the scalps of the six persons whom they had killed. Ten days afterwards, another party of immigrants, led by Mr. Moore, were attacked, and nine of their number killed. Captain Whitley pursued the perpetrators of this bloody act, with thirty men. On the sixth day of pursuit through the wilderness, he came up with twenty Indians, clad in the dresses of those whom they had slain. They dismounted and dispersed in the woods though not until three of them were killed. The pursuers recovered eight scalps, and all the plunder which the Indians had collected at the late massacre.
An expedition of General Clarke, with a thousand men, against the Wabash Indians, failed in consequence of the impatience and discouragement of his men from want of provisions. Colonel Logan was more successful in an expedition against the Shawnese Indians on the Scioto. He surprised one of the towns, and killed a number of the warriors, and took some prisoners.