the land from a hunter who wandered into Kentucky by chance and
returned to North Carolina to tell of it among his neighbors. Two years
afterwards, in 1769, when a man of forty, Boone came to see for himself
the things that he knew by hearsay, and he found that the half had not
been told. But among other surprises in store for him was falling into
the clutches of an Indian hunting party which ambushed him and the
friend who was with him. They both escaped, and soon afterwards Boone’s
brother and a neighbor, who had followed him from North Carolina,
chanced upon their camp. Boone’s friend was before long shot and
scalped by the Indians; the brother’s neighbor was lost in the woods and
devoured by the wolves. Then the brother went home for ammunition, and
Boone was left a whole year alone in the wilderness. The charm of its
life was so great for him that after two years more he returned to North
Carolina, sold his farm, and came to Kentucky with his family. Other
families joined them, and the little settlement founded in the woods
where he had ranged solitary with no friend but his rifle and with foes
everywhere, was called Boonesborough.
The Revolutionary War broke out, and the Ohio Indians, who had hitherto
fought the pioneers as Englishmen, now fought them as Americans with
fresh fury, under the encouragement of the British commandant at
Detroit. In January, of 1778, Boone took thirty of his men, and went to
make salt at the Blue Licks, where, shortly after, while he was hunting
in the woods, he found himself in the midst of two hundred Indian
warriors, who were on their way to attack Boonesborough. He was then
fifty years old, and the young Indians soon overtook him when he tried
to escape by running, and made him their prisoner. His captors treated
him kindly, as their custom was with prisoners, until they decided
what should be done with them, and at the Licks his whole party gave
themselves up on promise of the same treatment. This was glory enough
for the present; the Indians, as they always did when they had won a
victory, went home to celebrate it, and left Boonesborough unmolested.
They took all their prisoners to the town of Old Chillicothe, on the
banks of the Little Miami in Greene County. What became of his men
we are not told; none of them kept a journal, as Smith did, but it is
certain that Boone was adopted into an Indian family as Smith was. The
Indians, in fact, all became fond of him, perhaps because he was so much
like themselves in temperament and behavior, for he was a grave, silent
man, very cold and wary, with a sort of savage calm. He was well versed
in their character, and knew how to play upon their vanity. One of the
few things he seems to have told of his captivity was that when they
asked him to take part in their shooting matches he beat them just often
enough to show them his wonderful skill with the rifle, and then allowed
them the pleasure of beating such a splendid shot as he had proved
himself. But probably he had other engaging qualities, or so it appeared
when the Indians took him with them to Detroit. The British commandant
offered them a ransom of a hundred pounds for him, while several other
Englishmen, who liked and pitied him, pressed him to take money and
other favors from them. Boone stoically refused because he could never
hope to make any return to them, and his red brethren refused because
they loved Boone too well to part with him at any price, and they took
him back to Old Chillicothe with them.
[Illustration: Daniel Boone shooting with the Indians 067]
He never betrayed the anxiety for his wife and children that constantly
tormented him, for fear of rousing the suspicions of the Indians; but
when he reached Old Chillicothe, and found a large party painted and
ready to take the warpath in a new attack upon Boones-borough, he could
bear it no longer. He showed no sign of his misery, however; he joined
the Indians in all their sports as before, but he was always watching
for some chance to escape, and one morning in the middle of June he
stole away from his captors. He made his way a hundred and sixty miles
through the woods, and on the ninth day entered Boonesborough, faint
with the fast which he had broken but once in his long flight, to find
that he had been given up for dead and his family had gone back to North
Carolina.
Boone spent the rest of his days fighting wild men and hunting wild
beasts in Kentucky, until both were well-nigh gone and the tamer life
of civilization pressed closer about him. Then he set out for Missouri,
where he found himself again in the wilderness, and dwelt there in his
beloved solitude till he died. Nothing ever moved him so much as the
memoir which a young man wrote down for him and had printed. He was fond
of having it read to him (for he could not read any more than he could
write), and he would cry out in delight over it, “All true; not a lie
in it!” But it is recorded that he once allowed himself to be so far
excited by the heroic behavior of a friend who had saved his life in
an Indian fight, at the risk of his own, as to say, “You behaved like a
man, that time.”
This friend was Simon Kenton, or rather Simon Butler, one of the
greatest of all the Indian hunters of Kentucky and Ohio. He had changed
his name to escape pursuit from his old home in Virginia, when he fled
leaving one of his neighbors, as he supposed, dead on the ground after
a fight, and he kept the name he had taken through the rest of his life.
He wandered about on the frontier and in the wilderness beyond it
for several years, fighting the savages single handed or with a few
comrades, and at times serving as scout or spy in the expeditions of the
English against them. When the Revolution began, he sided of course with
his own people, and he stood two sieges by the Indians in Boonesborough.
It was here that Boone found him in 1778 when he escaped from Old
Chillicothe, and they promptly made a foray together into the Ohio
country, against an Indian town on Paint Creek. They fell in with a war
party on the way, and after some fighting, Boone went back, but Kenton
kept on with another friend, and did not return till they had stolen
some Indian horses. As soon as they reached Boonesborough the commandant
sent them into Ohio again to reconnoiter a town on the Little Miami
which he wished to attack, and here once more Kenton was tempted by the
chance to steal horses. He could not bear to leave any, and he and his
men started homeward through the woods with the whole herd. When they
came to the Ohio, it was so rough that Kenton was nearly drowned in
trying to cross the river. He got back to the northern shore, where they
all waited for the wind to go down, and the waves to fall, and where
the Indians found them the second morning. His comrades were killed and
Kenton was taken prisoner by the Indians whose horses they had stolen.
The Indians were always stealing white men’s horses, but they seemed to
think it was very much more wicked and shameful for white men to steal
Indians’ horses. They fell upon Kenton and beat him over the head with
their ramrods and mocked him with cries of, “Steal Indians’ hoss, hey!”
But this was only the beginning of his sufferings. They fastened him
for the night by stretching him on the ground with one stick across
his breast and another down his middle, and tying his hands and feet to
these with thongs of buffalo skin: stakes were driven into the earth,
and his pinioned arms and legs were bound to them, while a halter, which
was passed round his neck and then round a sapling near by, kept him
from moving his head. All the while they were making sure in this
way that he should not escape, the Indians were cuffing his ears, and
reviling him for a “Tief! A hoss steal! A rascal!” In the morning they
mounted him on an unbroken colt, with his hands tied behind him and his
legs tied under the horse, and drove it into the briers and underbrush,
where his face and hands were torn by the brambles, until the colt
quieted down of itself, and followed in line with the other horses. The
third day, as they drew near the town of Old Chillicothe, where Boone
had been held captive, they were met by the chief Blackfish, who said
sternly to Kenton in English, “You have been stealing horses.” “Yes,
sir.” “Did Captain Boone tell you to steal our horses?” “No, sir, I did
it on my own accord.” Blackfish then lashed him over the naked back with
a hickory switch till the blood ran, and with blows and taunts from all
sides Kenton was marched forward to the village.
The Indians could not wait for his arrival. They came out, men, women,
and children, to meet him, with whoops and yells, and when they had made
his captors fasten him to a stake, they fell upon him, and tore off all
that was left of his clothes, and amused themselves till midnight by
dancing and screaming round him, and beating him with rods and their
open hands. In the morning he was ordered to run the gantlet, through
two rows of Indians of all ages and sexes, armed with knives, clubs,
switches, and hoe handles, and ready to cut, strike, and stab at him as
he dashed by them on his way to the council house, a quarter of a mile
from the point of starting. But Kenton was too wary to take the risks
before him. He suddenly started aside from the lines; he turned and
doubled in his course, and managed to reach the council house unhurt
except for the blows of two Indians who threw themselves between him and
its door. Here a council was held at once, and he was sentenced to be
burnt at the stake, but the sentence was ordered to be carried out at
the town of Wapatimika on Mad River. A white renegade among the Indians
told him of his fate with a curse, and Kenton resolved that rather than
meet it he would die in the attempt to escape. On the way to Wapatimika
he gave his guard the slip and dashed into the woods; and he had left
his pursuers far behind, when he ran into the midst of another party
of Indians, who seized him and drove him forward to the town. A second
council was now held, and after Kenton had run the gantlet a second time
and been severely hurt, the warriors once more gathered in the council
house, and sitting on the ground in a circle voted his death by striking
the earth with a war club, or by passing it to the next if inclined to
mercy. He was brought before them, as he supposed, to be told when he
was to die, but a blanket was thrown upon the ground for him to sit upon
in the middle of the circle, and Simon Girty, the great renegade, who
was cruder to the whites than the Indians themselves, began harshly to
question him about the number of men in Kentucky. A few words passed,
and then Girty asked, “What is your name?” “Simon Butler,” said Kenton,
and Girty jumped from his seat and threw his arms around Kenton’s
neck. They had been scouts together in the English service, before the
Revolution began, and had been very warm friends, and now Girty set
himself to save Kenton’s life. He pleaded so strongly in his favor that
the council at last voted to spare him, at least for the time being.
[Illustration: Kenton and Girty 072]
Three weeks of happiness for Kenton followed in the society of his old
friend, who clothed him at his own cost from the stores of an English
trader in the town, and took him to live with him; and it is said that
if the Indians had continued to treat him kindly, Kenton might perhaps
have cast his lot with them, for he could not hope to go back to his own
people, with the crime of murder, as he supposed, hanging over him, and
he had no close ties binding him to the whites elsewhere. But at the
end of these days of respite, a war party came back from the Virginian
border, where they had been defeated, and the life of the first white
man who fell into their power must pay, by the Indian law, for the life
of the warrior they had lost. The leaders of this party found Kenton
walking in the woods with Girty, and met him with scowls of hate,
refusing his hand when he offered it. The rage of the savages against
him broke out afresh. One of them caught an ax from his squaw who was
chopping wood, and as Kenton passed him on his way into the village,
dealt him a blow that cut deep into his shoulder. For a third time a
council was held, and for a third time Kenton was doomed to die by fire.
Nothing that Girty could say availed, and he was left to tell his friend
that he must die.
Kenton’s sentence was to be now carried out at Sandusky, and with five
Indian guards he set out for that point. On their way they stopped at a
town on the waters of the Scioto, where the captive found himself in
the presence of a chief of noble and kindly face, who said to him, in
excellent English, “Well, young man, these young men seem very mad at
you.” Kenton had to own that they were so, indeed, and then the Indian
said, “Well, don’t be discouraged. I am a great chief. You are to go to
Sandusky; they speak of burning you there, but I will send two runners
tomorrow to speak good for you.”
This was the noble chief Logan, whose beautiful speech ought to be known
to every American boy and girl, and who, in spite of all he had suffered
from them, was still the friend of the white men. He kept his word
to Kenton, though he seemed to fail, as Girty had failed, to have his
sentence set aside, and Kenton was taken on to Sandusky. But here, the
day before that set for him to die, a British Indian agent, a merciful
man whose name, Drewyer, we ought to remember, made the Indians give him
up, that the commandant at Detroit might find out from him the state
of the American forces in Kentucky. He had to promise the savages that
Kenton should afterwards be returned to them; but though Kenton could
not or would not tell him what he wished to know, Drewyer assured him
that he would never abandon any white prisoner to their cruelty.
At Detroit Kenton was kindly treated by the English, and beyond having
to report himself daily to the officer who had charge of him, there was
nothing to make him feel that he was a prisoner. But he grew restive in
his captivity, and after he had borne seven months of it, and got well
of all his wounds and bruises, he plotted with two young Kentuckians,
who had been taken with Boone at the Blue Licks, to attempt his escape
with them. They bought guns from some drunken Indians, and hid them
in the woods. Then in the month of June, 1778, they started southward
through the wilderness, and after thirty days reached Louisville in
safety. Kenton continued to fight the Indians in all the wars, large
and little, till they were beaten by General Wayne in 1794. Eight years
later he came to live in Ohio, settling near Urbana, but removing later
to Zanesfield, on the site of the Indian town Wapatimika, where he was
once to have been burned, and where he died peaceably in 1836, when he
was eighty-one years old. He is described as a tall, handsome man, of
an erect figure and carriage, a fair complexion, and a most attractive
countenance. “He had,” his biographer tells us, “a soft, tremulous
voice, very pleasing to the hearer, and laughing gray eyes that appeared
to fascinate the beholder,” except in his rare moments of anger, when
their fiery glance would curdle the blood of those who had roused his
wrath. He was above all the heroes of Ohio history, both in his virtues
and his vices, the type of the Indian fighter. He was ready to kill or
to take the chances of being killed, but he had no more hate apparently
for the wild men than for the wild beasts he hunted.
VII. THE RENEGADES.
Simon Girty, who tried so hard to save Kenton’s life at Wapatimika, was
the most notorious of those white renegades who abounded in the Ohio
country during the Indian wars. The life of the border was often such
as to make men desperate and cruel, and the life of the wilderness had
a fascination which their fierce natures could hardly resist. Kenton
himself, as we have seen, might perhaps have willingly remained with the
Indians if they had wished him to be one of them, though he was at heart
too kindly and loyal ever to have become the enemy of his own people,
and if he had been adopted into an Indian family he would probably have
been such an Indian as Smith was. But in the sort of backwoodsman he
had been there was such stuff as renegades were made of. Like him these
desperadoes had mostly fled from the settlements after some violent
deed, and could not have gone back to their homes there if they would.
Yet they were not much worse than the traders who came and went among
the Indians in times of peace, and supplied them with the weapons and
the ammunition they might use at any moment against the settlers.
Indeed, wherever the two races touched they seemed to get all of each
other’s vices, and very few of each other’s virtues; and it is doubtful
if the law breakers who escaped from the borders to the woods were more
ferocious than many whom they left behind. Neither side showed mercy;
their warfare was to the death; the white men tomahawked and scalped
the wounded as the red men did, and if the settlers were not always
so pitiless to their prisoners or to the wives and children of their
warriors, they were guilty of many acts of murderous treachery and
murderous fury. One of the best and truest friends they ever had, the
great Mingo chief Logan, who was at last the means of Kenton’s escape
from the stake, bore witness to these facts in his famous speech; for in
spite of his friendship for the whites, he had suffered the worst
that they could do to the worst of their foes. When such white men as
butchered Logan’s kindred sided with the Indians, they only changed
their cause; their savage natures remained unchanged; but very few of
these, even, seem to have been so far trusted in their fear and hate for
their own people as to be taken by the Indians in their forays against
the whites.
The great Miami chief Little Turtle, who outgeneralled the Americans at
the defeat of St. Clair, used to tell with humorous relish how he once
trusted a white man adopted into his tribe. This white man was very
eager to go with him on a raid into Kentucky, and when they were
stealing upon the cabin they were going to attack, nothing could
restrain his desire to be foremost. When they got within a few yards, he
suddenly dashed forward with a yell of “Indians, Indians!” and left his
red brethren to get out of the range of the settlers’ rifles as fast as
they could.
But Simon Girty led many of the savage attacks, and showed himself the
relentless enemy of the American cause at every chance, though more than
once he used his power with the Indians to save prisoners from torture
and death. He was born in Pennsylvania, and he was captured with his
brothers, George and James, during Braddock’s campaign. They were all
taken to Ohio, where George was adopted by the Delawares, James by the
Shawnees, and Simon by the Senecas. George died a drunken savage; James
became the terror of the Kentucky border, and infamous throughout the
West by his cruelty to the women among the Indians’ captives; he seems
to have been without one touch of pity for the fate of any of their
prisoners, and his cruelties were often charged upon Simon, who had
enough of his own to answer for. Yet he seems to have been the best as
well as the ablest of the three brothers whose name is the blackest in
Ohio history. Many of the stories about him are evidently mere romance,
and they often conflict. As he was captured when very young, he never
learned to read or write; and it is said that he was persuaded by worse
and wiser men to take sides with the British in the Revolution. But
we need not believe that he was so ignorant or so simple as this in
accounting for his preference of his red brethren and their cause.
In fact, several letters attributed to him exist, though he may have
dictated these, and may not have known how to write after all.
It is certain that he was a man of great note and power among the
Indians, and one of their most trusted captains. He led the attack on
Wheeling in 1777, where he demanded the surrender of the fort to the
English king, whose officer he boasted himself. In 1782 he attacked
Bryan’s Station in Kentucky with a strong force of Indians, but met with
such a gallant resistance that he attempted to bring the garrison
to terms by telling them who he was and threatening them with the
reënforcements and the cannon which he said he expected hourly. He
promised that all their lives should be spared if they yielded, but
while he waited with the white flag in his hand on the stump where he
stood to harangue them, a young man answered him from the fort: “You
need not be so particular to tell us your name; we know your name and
you, too. I’ve had a villainous untrustworthy cur dog this long while
named Simon Girty, in compliment to you, he’s so like you, just as ugly
and just as wicked. As to the cannon, let them come on; the country’s
aroused, and the scalps of your red cutthroats, and your own too, will
be drying in our cabins in twenty-four hours; and if, by chance, you or
your allies do get into the fort, we’ve a big store of rods laid in to
scourge you out again.”
[Illustration: Simon Girty 079L]
The Indians retreated, but Girty glutted his revenge for the failure and
the insult in many a fight afterwards with the Americans and in many a
scene of torture and death. The Kentuckians now followed his force to
the Blue Licks, where the Indians ambushed them and beat them back with
fearful slaughter.
Girty remained with the savages and took part in the war which they
carried on against our people long after our peace with the British. He
was at the terrible defeat of St. Clair in 1791, and he had been present
at the burning of Colonel Crawford in 1782. By some he is said to have
tried to beg and to buy their prisoner off from the Wyandots, and by
others to have taken part in mocking his agonies, if not in torturing
him. It seems certain that he lived to be a very old man, and it is
probable that he died fighting the Americans in our second war with
Great Britain.
But the twilight of the forest rests upon most of the details of his
history and the traits of his character. The truth about him seems to
be that he had really become a savage, and it would not be strange if he
felt all the ferocity of a savage, together with the rare and capricious
emotions of pity and generosity which are apt to visit the savage heart.
There have always been good Indians and bad Indians, and Simon Girty was
simply a bad Indian.
VIII. THE WICKEDEST DEED IN OUR HISTORY.
The Indians despised the white men for what they thought their stupidity
in warfare, when they stood up in the open to be shot at, as the
soldiers who were sent against them mostly did, instead of taking
to trees and hiding in tall grass and hollows of the ground, as the
backwoodsmen learned to do. Smith tells us that when Tecaughretanego
heard how Colonel Grant, in the second campaign against Fort Duquesne,
outwitted the French and Indians by night and stole possession of a hill
overlooking the post, he praised his craft as that of a true warrior;
but as to his letting his pipers play at daybreak, and give the enemy
notice of his presence, so that the Indians could take to trees and
shoot his Highlanders down with no danger to themselves, he could only
suppose that Colonel Grant had got drunk over night.
The savages respected the whites when they showed cunning, and they did
not hate them the more for not showing mercy in fight; but we have seen
how fiercely they resented the crime of horse stealing in Kenton’s case,
though they were always stealing horses themselves from the settlers;
and any deed of treachery against themselves they were eager and prompt
to punish, though they were always doing such deeds against their
enemies. Still, it is doubtful whether with all their malignity they
were ever guilty of anything so abominable as the massacre of the
Christian Indians at Gnadenhutten, by the Americans; and if there is
record of any wickeder act in the history not only of Ohio, but of the
whole United States, I do not know of it. The Spaniards may have outdone
it in some of their dealings with the Indians, but I cannot call to mind
any act of theirs that seems so black, so wholly without justice and
without reason. It is no wonder that it embittered the hostilities
between the red men and the white men and made the war, which outlasted
our Revolution ten years, more and more unmerciful to the very end.