young; and a wedding was an event so important that every one in the
entire community felt a personal interest in the affair. The ceremony
was usually performed just before noon.
On the morning of the appointed day the groom and his attendants met at
the home of his father and proceeded to the home of the bride. The
gentlemen wore only clothes that were homemade; linsey shirts, leather
breeches and leggins, moccasins or shoepacks, and caps of mink or
raccoon skin with the tail hanging down the back completed their
costume.
The ladies were beautiful in linsey-woolsey, coarse shoes, or moccasins
embroidered with beads and quills, and buckskin gloves. Just after the
ceremony there was a feast of venison and bear, beef and pork, turkeys
and geese, potatoes and cabbage, cornmeal mush with milk and maple
sugar, ash cake and dodgers.
[Illustration: "As soon as dinner was over, the dancing began."]
As soon as dinner was over the dancing began and lasted not only through
the afternoon but through the night until dawn. The square dance, the
reel, and the jig were the figures that gave most joy to their flying
feet.
Either the next day, or very soon thereafter, the neighbors helped the
newly married couple "settle." A party of choppers felled and trimmed
the trees, others hauled them to the site, while others made the
clapboards for the roof, and puncheons for floor and door. If any
windows were made, they were covered with oiled doeskin and had thick
shutters. No one had windows filled with glass in those days.[2]
The neighbors helped not only to raise and cover the house, but to make
the furniture also. A table was made from a slab of wood with four legs
driven into auger holes; some three-legged stools were made of like
material. Sticks driven into auger holes in the wall supported clapboard
shelves where various articles were kept. A few pegs were likewise
driven in the wall where the wearing apparel of both men and women was
hung. A pair of buck horns or two small forks fastened to the logs held
the ever trusty rifle and shot pouch.
Nor did they stop here. Through a fork placed with its lower end in a
hole in the floor and its upper end fastened to a joist, they placed
poles with their ends through cracks in the walls. Over these,
clapboards were laid. When the whole had been covered with skins of bear
and deer, this made a most comfortable bed.
At these house raisings, log rollings, and harvest homes there was much
merriment coupled with the hard labor. Any man who failed to perform his
part of the work was dubbed "Lazy Lawrence" and was denied similar help
when he needed it.
FOOTNOTE:
[2] There is a story of a little boy who, upon seeing a house with glass
windows for the first time, rushed home crying, "O Ma, there is a house
down town with specs on!"
PIONEER CHILDREN
The boys and girls of to-day with all the comforts and luxuries
surrounding them often pity the pioneer children and wonder how they
spent their time. However, they doubtless were as happy and ambitious as
we are. The boys early learned to chop, to grub bushes up by the roots,
maul rails, trap turkeys, tree coons, and shoot a rifle. When severe
weather kept them in the fort, there were not only the duties of making
brooms and brushes but also the wrestling, leaping, and shooting matches
where each strove to excel the other. How proud was the youth when he
could "bark a squirrel," that is, shoot off the bark so near the
squirrel that the force killed it, without inflicting a wound.
The girls also had their work and play. They watched the cattle to keep
them from straying too far away, they hunted flat rocks on which to bake
"journey cakes," they helped to pound hominy, bring water, gather wild
nettles, and assisted in soap making, sugaring, sewing, candle molding,
and wool carding. There were likewise near-by excursions for hickory
nuts, walnuts, hazelnuts, grapes, pawpaws, honey locusts, hackberries,
huckleberries, blackberries, dewberries, and raspberries.
But you say, "All this sounds like fun. Boy Scouts and Camp-Fire Girls
do many of these things and count them sport. The boys and girls of the
early days in Kentucky must have had one long holiday with no thought
of school or school work." There you are mistaken, for scarcely had the
first women and children come to Harrodstown when Mrs. William Coomes
taught in the fort, in 1776, the first school in Kentucky. In 1777, John
May taught at McAfee's Station, and two years later Joseph Doniphan was
teaching at Boonesborough.
[Illustration: "There were excursions for nuts and berries."]
So these boys and girls of those far-away days, although they had no
well-warmed, well-lighted, well-ventilated schoolhouses; although their
teachers were not always so scholarly and cultured as one could wish;
although often in the earliest days they had no attractive textbooks,
and their only means of learning to read, write, and calculate was from
copies set by their teachers; although instead of paper they used smooth
boards on which to write, with the juice of the oak balls for ink;
although when they could read there were no absorbing storybooks,--yet
they made progress and perhaps studied as hard as some children of
to-day.
HOW THE PIONEERS MADE CHANGE
We of to-day, with half dollars, quarter dollars, dimes, nickels, and
pennies, often find it difficult to "make change." Still more difficult
was it for the early settlers to do so.
As the Indians used wampum and the early settlers of Virginia, tobacco,
so the pioneers of Kentucky used the skins of wild animals as their
first currency. While immigrants continued to come to this region,
Spanish silver dollars came gradually into circulation. Still there was
no small change.
As "Necessity is the mother of invention," our forefathers actually made
change by cutting the dollar into four equal parts, each worth
twenty-five cents. These were again divided, each part worth twelve and
one half cents, called bits. People sometimes became careless in the
work of making change and often cut the dollar into five "quarters" or
into ten "eighths." On account of the wedge shape of these pieces of cut
money, they were called "sharp shins."
If change was needed for a smaller sum than twelve and one half cents,
merchants gave pins, needles, writing paper, and such things.
This cut silver gradually found its way back to the mint for recoinage,
usually to the loss of the last owner. As late as 1806, a business house
in Philadelphia received over one hundred pounds of cut silver, brought
on by a Kentucky merchant, which was sent on a dray to the United States
Mint for recoinage.
A WOMAN'S WILL
"Where there is a will, there is a way" is an oft-quoted proverb, and
the first white woman of whom we have any record of entering Kentucky
proved it true. In 1756 Mrs. Mary Draper Inglis, her two small sons, and
a sister-in-law, Mrs. Draper, were taken from their homes in Virginia by
the Shawnee Indians and carried some distance down the Kanawha, where
they halted a few days to make salt, thence to the Indian village at the
mouth of the Scioto, which is the site now of Portsmouth, Ohio. Mrs.
Inglis won her way into the favor of the savages by making shirts of
material that French traders had brought from Detroit. She was soon held
in such high esteem by her captors that she was not subjected to the
peril of running the gantlet, though a greater grief was put upon
her,--that of being separated from her two sons at the division of the
prisoners.
After spending a few weeks at the mouth of the Scioto, a number of the
savages proceeded to Big Bone Lick, over a hundred miles away. With them
they took Mrs. Inglis and an old Dutch lady who had been in captivity
for a long while. Not being daunted by fear or distance from home, these
pioneer women planned and effected an escape. On the pretext of
gathering grapes they started from camp one afternoon with only a
blanket, knife, and tomahawk.
With eager feet they reached the Ohio, and followed its windings, until
after five days' journeying they found themselves opposite the mouth of
the Scioto. Fortune favored them, for a horse was grazing there and also
some corn was close at hand. Although near Indian villages, they loaded
the horse with corn and pressed on to the mouth of the Big Sandy, but
were compelled to go farther up that stream to effect a crossing. After
going some distance, the women crossed on driftwood, but the horse,
falling among the logs, was finally abandoned, and with only a scanty
store of corn they pursued their dangerous journey.
[Illustration: They crossed the river on driftwood.]
Had it not been for walnuts, grapes, and pawpaws, hunger would have
stayed their steps. Even with these the Dutch woman was not long
satisfied and, driven to desperation, she threatened and attempted the
life of Mrs. Inglis. But the latter succeeded in escaping from her
frantic companion and, finding a canoe, took a broad splinter for a
paddle and reached the Ohio shore. When morning dawned and the Dutch
woman saw Mrs. Inglis on the other bank, she pleaded with her to return
to her rescue. But fearing a repetition of her late fury, Mrs. Inglis
turned a deaf ear to entreaties and hastened, as fast as her exhausted
condition permitted, towards home. At last, after more than forty days
of dire suffering and destitution, she reached a cabin where careful
attention soon restored her to health and from there she was taken to a
near-by fort and restored to her husband. A party went in search of the
Dutch woman and brought her safely to the settlement. One of the little
sons died soon after being separated from his mother, while thirteen
years elapsed before the father found and rescued the other.
WHEN THE WOMEN BROUGHT THE WATER
The women of Kentucky have never been known to falter whatever demand
duty might make upon them; yet at no period in the history of our
commonwealth has there been any more severe test of the courage of her
daughters than occurred on the morning of August 15, 1782, at a point
about five miles northeast of Lexington on the present road from that
city to Maysville.
This post had been settled in 1779 by four brothers from North Carolina,
named Bryan, hence the name "Bryan's Station." About forty cabins had
been "placed in parallel lines and connected by strong palisades." This
fort and the station at Lexington had been selected as special places on
which to visit the wrath and retaliation for massacre of some Indians
upon the Sandusky; and as the savages and their renegade allies had been
successful, they were easily incited to a general attack and inspired
with the idea of regaining their hunting grounds and driving the
paleface across the Alleghenies.
Simon Girty, the notorious renegade, was at the height of his glory
when, in response to requests of runners sent to various tribes, there
began at Chillicothe, August 1, 1782, a gathering of Cherokees,
Shawnees, Miamis, Wyandots, and Potawatamis.
Ere the march began, the party numbered nearly six hundred warriors.
With great secrecy and rapidity they descended the Little Miami, crossed
the Ohio, and reached central Kentucky. In the hope of drawing away the
fighting forces from the stations warned, Girty sent a party of
Wyandots, who harassed Hoy's Station, and captured two boys. Captain
Holder, gathering what men he could, pushed forward in pursuit, but was
defeated August 12, at Upper Blue Licks. When runners spread the news to
the various forts, the call to rally to Holder's assistance was as
quickly responded to as if it had been imperative.
Girty knew of the common custom of rallying to the needs of neighboring
settlements, so he expected to find a defenseless fort at Bryan's
Station when he and his band of savages reached there on the night of
the 14th. Instead, all within seemed awake and alert; lights were
shining and fires burning brightly. Girty at once suspected that his
coming had been heralded. The truth was that it was the preparation for
the morrow's march that caused such activity; not one suspected that
such a horde of murderous savages was so near. So when at the early dawn
the men started from their fort, they were much surprised at a heavy
fire from ambuscade, but they were so near the gates that they soon
retreated within and prepared for a stormy siege. Couriers carried the
news of the attack to Lexington, Todd's, St. Asaph's, and Boonesborough.
While awaiting reinforcements from these stations, the sixty
backwoodsmen prepared to protect themselves and their families.
Knowing the siege would be severe and perhaps long, they began to
consider seriously the question of securing water; for, by an oversight,
the men who built the fort placed it at some distance from the spring
which supplied their wants. As cunning as the Indians, and equally as
strategic, were the men opposed to them. Instinctively they felt that
the savages were ambushed near the spring expecting the men to come for
a supply of water, when it would be the work of only a very few moments
to fire upon them, and through the gateway gain admittance to the fort.
After talking over the matter the men within the fort called together
all the women, disclosed their suspicions concerning the location of a
part of the enemy, but told them they felt no violence would be offered
women and urged them to go in a body to bring water. The women hesitated
and said that they were not bullet-proof and that savages scalped alike
the male and the female. In reply the men said that the women usually
carried the water, and that if the men should go, the Indians would know
that their ambuscade had been discovered and would at once rush upon the
whites and gain admittance to the fort; but if the women went as usual,
the savages would think their hiding secure and would longer delay the
attack. The women knew that water they must have, if the garrison
withstood the inevitable siege; they also knew that the views of the men
were correct and that the request for them to bring the water arose from
no desire on the part of their husbands and brothers, sons and fathers,
to shirk duty or shift danger.
So when the Spartan-like mothers agreed to the plan, the younger women
followed their example, and everyone, matron and maid, with pail in hand
or piggin on head, marched down to the spring, while they "feared each
bush" an Indian. Though vainly striving to appear calm, when returning
"The way seemed long before them,
And their hearts outran their footsteps";
so the nearer the gate they came, the quicker was their walk until it
finally ended in a very brisk run and very few entered the fort with
full vessels. Tradition says that as the last entered so hastily and
spilled the water so freely the Indians broke into a laugh. But the
women had "been tried and not found wanting"; they had proved themselves
to be true helpmates of those sturdy men who were striving to gain a
home in the western wilds.
[Illustration: "The walk finally ended in a very brisk run."]
Erelong the arrangements for defense were completed and thirteen men
marched out to form a decoy party on the Lexington road; their orders
were to fire rapidly, make all possible noise, but not to pursue the
savages too far. They obeyed orders well and as soon as the guns sounded
in the distance, five hundred warriors, led by Girty, rushed from the
ambush near the spring, expecting to force their way over defenseless
walls. The greater part of the sixty men had resolved themselves into a
reception committee, expecting just such a call. So, when "their deadly
balls whistled free," wild cries of terror came from Girty's ranks and
"in two minutes not an Indian was to be seen," while the thirteen
reentered through the opposite gateway, very jubilant over the success
of their little ruse.
The attack was renewed, but nothing of marked importance occurred unless
it was the supreme cooeperation that went on within the fort. Every
breech was repaired, every gate and loophole manned; men, women, and
even children were busily engaged in firing at the foe, molding bullets,
or quenching the flames that the burning arrows from the bows of the
savages had lighted. At two in the afternoon, just at a time when the
firing had ceased, about fifty men, from various stations, one third on
horse, the rest afoot, came in reply to the request sent out that
morning.
As the Indians knew that runners had been dispatched for reenforcements,
they had planned to receive them. On one side of the road "stood the
forest primeval," while on the other side was a vast field of one
hundred acres of luxuriant corn, ten feet high, whose long green banners
formed a dense thicket. Here on each side lay warriors within range of
the road over which they knew the men would come. As soon as the
horsemen appeared, shots from the guns of the savages rang out; but
quickly spurring their horses, the recruiting party escaped within the
fort through such a cloud of dust that not one was wounded.
Had the foot soldiers been more cautious, they too might have fared
better; but hearing the firing on their friends, they rushed forward
into the presence of the great crowd of savages, who, having emptied
their guns, began to advance with tomahawk; but in many instances they
were held at bay by the muzzle of the frontiersman's gun. Thus for an
hour, the savages pursued the flying soldiers, who when too hard pressed
turned and aimed, but did not fire until absolutely forced to do so, as
they could have no time to reload.
In a skirmish, a ball from a rifle brought Girty to the ground, but when
the warriors gathered around him, they found that it was only the force
that had caused him to fall, as the ball had struck a thick piece of
leather in his shot pouch. Despairing of success, Girty crawled to the
protection of a huge stump, hailed the fort, and attempted
negotiations. He spoke in commendatory terms of their courage, but
assured them that to pursue such policy further was madness, as in
addition to his six hundred warriors he would soon have reenforcements
with cannons, when their weak walls would no longer protect them. He
urged an immediate surrender, pledged his honor to protect them as
prisoners of war, and inquired if they knew him, Simon Girty.
Some were rather anxious at the news of artillery, but a young man named
Aaron Reynolds inspired the weaker ones with courage when he derisively
told the speaker to bring on his reenforcements; that they too were
expecting reenforcements and if Girty and his savage allies remained
much longer, their scalps would grace his cabin. He said Girty was "very
well known," that he himself owned a cur, so worthless that he called
him "Simon Girty."
Offended at such language, Girty rejoined his chiefs. The night passed
without interruption, but daylight showed camp fires burning, meat
roasting, and not an Indian in sight. They had evidently departed just
before dawn.
THE RESULT OF ONE RASH ACT
After the retreat of the savages from Bryan's Station it did not take
long for the Kentucky riflemen to gather and go in pursuit. In the
afternoon of the same day the savages had retreated from the fort, one
hundred and eighty-two men from the various stations assembled. Fearing
that the Indians would escape across the river, they started at once to
overtake them, without waiting for the arrival of Colonel Logan, who was
coming with three hundred more men.
Colonel John Todd was put in command, while many commissioned officers
took their places in the ranks. On they pressed, until on the second
day, as they reached the Lower Blue Licks, they saw the Indians
leisurely ascending the farther bank.
The pioneers halted and held a conference in which all officers took
part. The veteran Boone was asked for his opinion which all valued. He
counseled either waiting for Colonel Logan's reenforcements or so
dividing their numbers that part could cross above and fall in the rear
of the enemy, while others could fight from the front.
Some preferred the first plan, others wished to adopt the second. In the
midst of the consultation the rash, undisciplined nature of Colonel Hugh
McGary, daring but with no deference to authority, oblivious to peril
but not prudent, caused him to exchange some hot words with Todd and
Boone; then giving a war whoop, he rushed madly into the stream, holding
his hat above his head, and shouting, "All who are not cowards follow
me."
[Illustration: "Giving a war whoop, he rushed madly into the stream."]
The effect was electric. Horse and foot rushed headlong, each trying to
be foremost. No order was given, none observed. In their unreasonable
enthusiasm they heeded no command. In vain the officers tried to check
them, then finally followed. Reaching the farther bank, by great
difficulty a halt was secured and spies sent ahead to examine a ravine
where Boone feared an ambush; as they returned and reported no sign of
the enemy, the pioneers moved forward in three divisions. By the time
they came to this ravine Girty's Indians had so placed themselves that
from their murderous fire many fell. Still the pioneers maintained their
ground, until at last all hope lay in retreat. On the bank of the river
there was soon a seething mass of horsemen, foot soldiers, and Indians.
Sixty of Kentucky's bravest fell, and sorrow filled every home.
Colonel Logan and his soldiers came next day and buried their dead,
among whom were many of the leaders in both public and private life as
well as a son of the aged Boone.
There is a tradition that when the Indians saw four more of their own
among the slain than of the whites, they barbarously put to death four
of the seven pioneers they had taken and subjected the others many times
to the most cruel and inhuman treatment.
Through this rash act of McGary nearly one tenth of all the fighting men
in Kentucky fell. Distress and discouragement were general; and the
greatest disaster that had yet befallen the country had been brought
about.
TWO KENTUCKY HEROES
In the latter part of the year 1779, David Rogers was making his way
from New Orleans to Pittsburgh with two boats full of military stores.
On nearing the four-mile bar above the present site of Cincinnati, he
discovered a great number of Indians emerging from the mouth of the
Little Miami. Hastily landing, his men cautiously crept through the
underbrush, expecting to take the Indians unawares, when they were
suddenly surprised by a large force of savages, who with rifle and
tomahawk made such a terrible onslaught that more than half of the
whites met an almost instantaneous death.
The crew, in a panic, rushed forward to their boats only to find one in
the possession of the enemy and the other too far from shore to reach
its friendly shelter. With a courage born of despair they rushed through
the enemy's lines, and some escaped in the darkness to Harrodstown,
while others were so severely wounded that they barely existed until
they were rescued by their friends.
Among these was Robert Benham, who, after being shot through the hips,
managed to crawl to a large fallen tree and hide among its foliage.
There he quietly lay until the battle was ended, and the Indians had
returned and gathered the spoils from the dead whites. Thinking the
coast clear once more and suffering pangs of hunger, Benham could not
resist shooting a raccoon that came within his range, trusting to
providence to reach it after it fell. Scarcely had the sound of his gun
died away when he heard some one speak. He instantly reloaded and sat
quietly, expecting an Indian every moment.
Finally some one said, "Whoever you are, answer me."
He then, realizing that it was no savage, readily answered; and soon one
of his former comrades, John Watson, appeared with both arms broken.