"I presume," said I, "that having so long resided in Kentucky, you must have had some acquaintance with Indian warfare."
"I had no occasion," he replied, "to come to Kentucky to learn that. I may say, that I have had something to do with it all my life, and it had to do with me before I was born."
The speaker was a tall, handsome man, uncommonly stout, with an appearance of great strength, perfect health, and a quiet good humor, which disposed him to be communicative, merely by way of obliging. Though by no means garrulous, I had discovered that he was ready to tell whatever another might be desirous of hearing. He spoke with that strong accent, and deliberate tone, which characterize the Scotch Irish race, and which always, to my ear, conveys a promise that what is said will be said distinctly and clearly.
Here then was the very man I wanted. I had left the peaceful scenes of the Atlantic coast, expecting, not indeed to "roam through anters vast and deserts wild," in my western tour, (for my maps and gazetteer had taught me better,) but to find some traces of the scenes, which but a few years before, had made it dangerous for a white man to set his foot where we now rode along securely. My eye had eagerly scanned every object which afforded promise of food to my young and eager imagination; but as yet I had found none. The soft beauty and exuberant fertility of the country, need only the touch of civilization to take from it every appearance of wildness, and I could hardly bring myself to believe that it had been so lately the haunt of the prowling savage. My enthusiasm was consequently much damped; but it was not extinguished, and these last words of my companion blew it into a flame. A well directed question soon drew him out.
"I was born," said he, "among the mountains of Virginia. I never saw my father. He was killed at the battle of Point Pleasant, just before I came into the world. That is the reason why I said that Indian fighting had to do with me before I was born. But that was not all; many years before that, the Indians made a break on our settlement, and carried off my oldest brother, and kept him."
"Did you never see him again?"
"I suppose I have, but I did not know it at the time." As he said this, a gloom came over his countenance, which checked my inquisitiveness, and he rode on, perhaps a mile, in moody silence. At length his brow cleared, and he again spoke, but in a somewhat saddened tone.
"It is something strange; I am not superstitious, and yet it seems to me, as if at times, when people are in great distress of mind, they are apt to say things that turn out almost like a prophecy. It was a great grief to my mother, the loss of her child, and the longer she lived the more she mourned after him. He was quite small when they took him; and they carried him away over the lakes, so far, that they never heard where he was, until he was almost grown up, a perfect wild man. My mother was a religious woman; and the thought of his being brought up among savages, where the word of God could never reach him, went to her heart. She said, it was always borne upon her mind that he was not dead, and that he would grow up among those vile wretches, to be the death of his own father, and perhaps to die at last by the hand of one of his own brothers. When they raised a party to follow the Indians, she would go with them, and all the way, she said, she looked and looked, in hopes to see where they had dashed out her poor child's brains against a tree. It was the only comfort she hoped for, and that was denied her.
"As I told you, they never heard of him till he was near or quite a man; and that was just before Dunmore's war. There was no chance to do any thing towards getting him home at that time, for it was dangerous to go near the Ohio. Indeed, all they knew was, that there was a white man of about his age among the Indians, who answered to his name. It was not until after the peace that we knew certainly all about him.
"Well! he was at the battle of the Point, fighting among the Shawanees; and there my father was killed. When my mother heard that he had been there, you may be sure her own words came back to her. No body knew who killed my father. But why not he as well as another? Flesh and blood could not have made her believe that it was not he.