Dismounting, he sat down on a log, lighted his pipe, took a few puffs, and handed it to the white. Pretty soon another bell was heard, and another party of Indians appeared. The first Indian now coolly informed McClure that as soon as his comrades arrived he would be bound, with his feet tied under the horse, and carried off a prisoner. To make the matter more lucid than his Indian-English words could convey, and to spice his taunts with a little grim humor of sarcasm, he got astride the log, and, locking his legs under it, mimicked the actions of a prisoner in such a predicament. McClure, brave and desperate as a baffled lion, determined to acknowledge the playful candor of his sudden acquaintance, as quick as thought raised. his rifle, drove a bullet through his brain, and dashed off into the woods, while the boy sprang on the belled horse and scampered off in the opposite direction.

McClure had not gone over a mile or two before he was beset by half a dozen little dogs, which the Indians had put upon his trail. They were exceedingly tenacious and worrying, frequently running between his legs and throwing him down. After repeated falls, his eyes blinded with dust, and exhausted with the worry, he finally fell, and lay with his face to the ground, expecting each moment to be tomahawked. To his agreeable surprise, no Indians appeared; and the dogs, after tugging at him until they had torn his clothes nearly all off, turned away and left him. He resumed his journey, and reached Kentucky in safety. So ragged, tattered, and begrimed was his person and the remnants of his garments, that an old lady member of the family, who first spied him some distance from the cabin, ran toward the house in alarm. He ran after her, and, to reassure her, began to whistle a familiar reel he was accustomed to play on the violin. She caught the numbers of the air, and, turning, recognized him, and cried out, "Lord, Rab, is that you?" "Yes, Aunt Jenny, all that's left of me,' was the answer; when soon the open arms of all received him home.

1 Captain James Ward, afterward a citizen of Mason county, with his nephew and five others, was descending the Ohio in an old boat, encumbered with some baggage and seven horses, with no bulwark other than a pine plank above each gunnel. As the boat drifted near the Ohio shore, suddenly a large body of Indians appeared on the bank and opened a heavy fire. The nephew started and seized his rifle at sight of the enemy, but was shot dead before he could fire. The horses were all killed or fatally wounded. By the coolness and skillful management of Captain Ward, the boat was oared toward the opposite shore, and the defense made as efficient as possible. In the midst of the scene of terror and blood, a most ludicrous part was played by a fat Dutchman, whose weight was about three hundred pounds. He found it impossible to hide all his ponderous bulk behind the narrow plank above the gunnels; and, try as he would, there was always some part of his person in sight for the Indians to fire at, and bullets I McClung, p. 185.

MRS. M'CLURE'S PREDICAMENT.

257

whizzed close by continually. He changed his position several times; but, shift as he would, the balls came only faster. Throwing himself at last on his face, the vastness of his posterial luxuriance remained an elevated object of attraction to the marksmanship of the savages. In a frenzy of despair, he raised his head and turned his eye toward his tormentors, and exclaimed, "Oh, now, quit tat tam nonsense tere, vill you?" The boat and crew escaped without further loss, the Indians having no canoes to follow.

In March of 1785, a body of Indians surrounded the house of Mr. Elliott, situated at the mouth of Kentucky river, Carroll county, and furiously assaulted it. Most of the family escaped, but Elliott was killed and the house burnt. A year or two after, Captain Ellison built a block-house near the same spot, and was successively driven from the post for two summers after, by superior Indian forces. Though General Charles Scott built another block-house and picketing here in 1789, it was still much troubled by Indian marauders. In 1792, the town of Port William, now Carrollton, was laid out.

"In 1785, the camp of an emigrant by the name of McClure was assaulted in the night by Indians, near the head of Skaggs' creek, in Lincoln county, and six whites killed and scalped.

"Mrs. McClure ran into the woods with her four children, and could have made her escape with three, if she had abandoned the fourth; this, an infant in her arms, cried aloud, and thereby gave the savages notice where they were. She heard them coming. The night, the grass, and the bushes offered her concealment without the infant, but she was a mother, and determined to die with it. The like feeling prevented her from telling her three eldest to fly and hide. She feared they would be lost if they left her side; she hoped they would not be killed if they remained. In the meantime, the Indians arrived and extinguished both fears and hopes in the blood of three of the children. The youngest and the mother they made captives. She was taken back to the camp, where there was plenty of provisions, and compelled to cook for her captors. In the morning, they compelled her to mount an unbroken horse and accompany them on their return home.

"Intelligence of this catastrophe was conveyed to Whitley's station, but he was not at home. A messenger, however, was dispatched after him by Mrs. Whitley, who at the same time sent others to warn and collect his company. On his return, he found twenty-one men collected to receive his orders. With these, he directed his course to the war-path, intending to intercept the Indians returning home. Fortunately, they had stopped to divide their plunder, and Whitley succeeded in gaining the path in advance of them. He immediately saw that they had not passed, and prepared for their arrival. His men, being concealed in a favorable position, had not waited long before the enemy appeared, dressed in their spoils. As they

1 Collins, Vol. II, 765

approached, they were met by a deadly fire from the concealed whites, which killed two, wounded two others, and dispersed the rest. Mrs. McClure, her child, and a negro woman were rescued, and the six scalps taken by the Indians at the camp recovered."

Ten days after this event, a Mr. Moore and his party, also emigrants, were defeated two or three miles from Raccoon creek, on the same road. In this attack, the Indians killed nine persons and scattered the rest. Upon the receipt of the news, Captain Whitley raised thirty men, and, under a similar impression as before, that they would return home, marched to intercept them. On the sixth day, in a cane-brake, he met the enemy, with whom he found himself face to face before he received any intimation of their proximity. He instantly ordered ten of his men to the right, as many to the left, and the others to dismount on the spot with him. The Indians, twenty in number, were mounted on good horses, and dressed in the plundered clothes. Being in the usual Indian file, and the rear pressing on the front, they were brought into full view; but in an apparent panic, they took to flight. In the pursuit, three Indians were killed, and twenty-eight horses and other property recaptured.

As Colonel Thomas Marshall, from Virginia, was descending the Ohio in a flat-boat, he was hailed from the northern shore by a man who announced himself as James Girty, and who said that his brother, Simon Girty, had placed him there to warn all boats of the danger of being attacked by Indians. He told them that efforts would be made to decoy them ashore by renegade white men, under various pretexts. He bade them steel their hearts against all such appeals, and to keep the middle of the river. He said that his brother Simon regretted the injuries he had done the whites, and would gladly repair them as much as possible, to be re-admitted to their society, having become estranged from the Indians. 1

This repentance of Girty, if sincere, availed him nothing, and he remained with his red friends until he was cut down and trodden under foot by Colonel Richard M. Johnson's mounted Kentuckians at the battle of the Thames, in 1814. However mitigating the indignities and slights which formed the pretexts for abandoning his own people and adopting life with the savages, the acts of remorseless cruelty and the injuries he had inflicted stigmatized him as an unpardonable outlaw against his race. His acquiescence and exultation at the slow torture and burning at the stake, of his old neighbor and acquaintance from Pennsylvania, Colonel Crawford, and other bloody crimes against humanity known of him, would have made it worth his life to come again among his kind. There is a traditional account that his resentment and treason had their beginning in the camp of General Lewis, on the day before the bloody battle of Point Pleasant, at the mouth of Kanawha. Girty and an associate had been acting as scouts and spies for the Virginia army for some weeks or months, for which they had been I Collins, Vol. II., p. 567.

ACCOUNT OF GIRTY'S DESERTION.

259

paid nothing. They called at General Lewis' quarters and urgently sought a compensation. On some words of provocation, the general violently assaulted them with a cane. As they retreated through the door, Girty, with bruised and bleeding face, turned to General Lewis, with either hand resting on a door post, and fiercely said to him: "D-n you, sir, your quarters shall swim in blood for this!" and instantly placed himself beyond pursuit. On the next day, as the colonel was preparing to cross the Ohio and unite his forces with the main body under Governor Dunmore, his wing of the army was suddenly attacked by fifteen hundred warriors under the noted chief Cornstalk, and the heaviest and bloodiest battle on Virginia soil was fought. Girty had deserted to the Indian army, and piloted it to the best advantage for a surprise attack on the Virginians. Only the veteran bravery and skill of the latter saved them from bloody disaster. But the glamour of romance is spoiled by the better authenticated facts of history, that Girty, Elliott, and McKee did not desert their kind and color until 1778. In that year they left Pittsburgh together and joined the Indians. Whether a breach between General Lewis and himself had anything to do with his unnatural alienation, we can not learn from the data. The only redeeming trait in Girty's career was his rescue of Simon Kenton and kindly care of him afterward. He and Kenton had been comrades in years gone by, and the old feelings of friendly sympathy overcame the indulged ferocity of his

nature.

CHAPTER XIX.

(1786-90.)