convenient position, for their destruction at this spot, where they habitually congregated in numbers. Certainly, the first people who found them here slew these leviathans of the land to extinction. From the preserved state of the bones, it can not be many centuries since they perished; and from the adjacent trees and other marks of the depressed surface, it can not be more than a few centuries since the hoofed animals began the process of wearing away this earth. We have no historic knowledge of the mastodon, yet he is obscurely characterized in the language of the Bible. McAfee mentions in his memoirs that a party of Delaware Indians were at Big Bone when he and his companions were there, and that he inquired of one of these Indians as to these remains. He replied that they had been seen very much as they were then, as long as he could remember, and the Indians knew nothing more about them. The Indian seemed to be about seventy years of age.

Kentucky was a part of Fincastle county, Virginia, of which William Preston was surveyor. Hancock Taylor and James Douglas were deputy surveyors under him. Colonel John Floyd was another deputy, and the three were now in Kentucky to locate choice lands for themselves, and for land speculators of capital and influence, whose cupidity was inflamed by the confirmation of the reports of the genial climate and generous soil of the now-famed El Dorado beyond the mountains. Than Colonel Floyd, but few

men played a more prominent part in the dramatic events that make up the history of Kentucky, from this date until his tragic death upon the theater of his own acting, nine years later. In cultured intelligence, in noble presence and bearing, and in unselfish and intrepid courage, fewest of his age were his peers; and no one deserves to be held in more grateful remembrance by the posterity of to-day. John Floyd was born in Virginia, in 1750, and was one of five brothers, three of whom and two brothers-in-law were slain by the Indians, illustrating the dangers which beset the lives of our pioneer fathers. His parents, William Floyd and wife, emigrated early to Kentucky, lived in Jefferson county until 1800, and died at the age of ninety years. 1 The maternal grandmother of Colonel Floyd was an Indian squaw, the daughter of a brother of the celebrated chief, Powhatan, so well known in colonial history. Colonel Floyd made his first survey on the Ohio river in Lewis county, May 2, 1773, of two hundred acres, for Patrick Henry, the great patriot orator of Virginia, and continued to locate other tracts, at intervals, down the river until he reached the falls. In person, Colonel Floyd was tall and rather spare, with complexion, hair, and eyes of dark color. In address, he was courteous, with the manners of a well-bred gentleman. His countenance was animated and pleasing, while his disposition was amiaIn any country, he would have been admired for the superior manly. virtues and graces which made him the chivalrous defender of the weak, and the fearless soldier at the front in every hour of danger. Like Boone, Clark,

1 Collins, Vol. II., pp. 238-0

and Kenton, his services endeared him to the early settlers, while his daring and skill made him well known to the Indians, by whom he was much feared.

At

Of the men who made hunting and Indian fighting an occupation, noone more nearly rivaled Daniel Boone than did Simon Kenton, throughout the pioneer age in the settlement of Kentucky. 1 He was born of an Irish father and a Scotch mother, in Fauquier county, Virginia, April 13, 1755, and at this date of narrative was but eighteen years old. His family obscure, and very poor, his education was neglected, unfortunately for one who to natural vigor and acuteness of mind added so much of enterprise and individuality of character. So conspicuous a part did he act throughout the eventful period of his life, that justice, alike to his memory and to the reader of history, requires more than a passing mention of his name. the age of sixteen, he fell passionately in love with a bewitching girl of the neighborhood, and was unfortunate enough to have a favored rival, who bore off the prize. Mad with jealousy, and reckless with despair, young Kenton gave such insult and offense to the groom as to provoke a fierce battle between the two. In physical prowess, Kenton overmatched his adversary, and following up his punishment too far, the vanquished young man, bruised and bleeding, fell back insensible. Such conduct was foreign to all Kenton's subsequent nature. Realizing the cruel inhumanity of his deed, his better feelings revolted. He lifted up the head of his unconscious victim and spoke kindly to him, but no answer came, and Kenton believed him dead. alarmed, he dropped the lifeless body and fled to the woods.

Much

Feeling that he was a fugitive from avenging justice, and that life at home was ruined, he turned his mind toward the solitudes of the great western wilderness, and determined that there should be found his city of refuge. Pushing on warily for days, with some difficulty he reached Ise's ford, on Cheat river, in April, 1771. Here he changed his name to Simon Butler. At this settlement, he hired himself to work for a rifle and ammunition, after which he joined a party going to Fort Pitt. At the latter place, he first met Simon Girty, afterward held in such infamous notoriety as a leader and instigator of the savages in their cruel warfare on his own people. Kenton here fell in with George Yeager and John Strader, in the autumn of the same year, and the three proceeded down the river, looking for the "cane land" of which Yeager had given glowing descriptions, repeated from the Indians. among whom he had been. They went as far down as the mouth of Kentucky river, and then returned to the Big Kanawha, where, in the following winter, they built a camp, and hunted and trapped until the spring of 1773, when Yeager was killed by the Indians while lying in camp with his companions. Kenton and Strader fled to the woods, barefooted and naked, except their shirts. Without food, or guns to procure it, they wandered, with incredible hardships and sufferings, until the sixth day, on which they several times in despair laid down to die; but struggling on again, they at I Collins, Vol. II., pp. 442-3.

MRS. INGLES ESCAPE FROM THE INDIANS.

27

last reached the Ohio and found some hunters, who fortunately relieved them, perhaps from a premature death by famine.

In the summer of 1773, Kenton joined a party going down the Ohio in search of Bullitt. Pursuing as far as the mouth of the Big Miami, and finding Bullitt's camp deserted, they apprehended that he had been murdered by the Indians. Uneasy as to their own safety, they destroyed their canoes and, under the pilotage of Kenton, retraced their way through the wilder ness to Virginia; doubtless the first trip from Northern Kentucky to Virginia. by land, if we except the wonderful escape of Mrs. Ingles and the Dutch woman from Indian captivity at Big Bone Lick, in 1756.

'This incident, so characteristic of the vicissitudes of frontier life, deserves fuller mention, and there will be no fitter place than here. Mrs. Mary Ingles, her two little boys, and her sister-in-law, Mrs. Draper, were taken prisoners by the Shawanee Indians, at their homes in what is now Montgomery county, Virginia, in 1756. They were carried down the Kanawha, and to the mouth of the Scioto, where Portsmouth now stands. She here became popular among the Indians by making superior garments out of some fancy goods brought in by French traders. She escaped running the gauntlet, which Mrs. Draper was compelled to do. She was cruelly separated from her children, and resolved to escape, if opportunity came. An Indian party

setting out for Big Bone Lick to make salt, she was taken along, together with an old Dutch woman, who had been years a captive. Though over one hundred miles farther from home, she obtained the consent of her captive companion to a plan of escape. Obtaining the privilege of going to the woods for grapes, the two women managed to secure blankets, a tomahawk, and a knife. Finding the Ohio river, they followed up the valley of the same and passed the mouth of Scioto, on the opposite side, after five days. Finding a horse browsing, and some corn raised here by the Indians, they put a sackful on the horse and continued on to the Big Sandy. This river being too deep to ford, they followed up its banks until they made a crossing on the drift-wood. The horse, unfortunately, fell among the logs, and they were compelled to leave him to his fate. All stores soon were exhausted, and they were reduced to a diet of wild grapes, walnuts, and pawpaws. Their privations and sufferings increased, until the old Dutch woman, becoming frantic with hunger and exposure, threatened, and did attempt, the life of Mrs. Ingles. Escaping her fury, she kept herself from view under the banks of the Kanawha. Luckily, she found an old canoe, and managed to paddle across to the other bank, in sight of her dangerous companion, who now implored her to return to her rescue with beseeching promises, but in vain. Exhausted and weary, she bent her tired steps toward home, and finally, at the end of forty days of indescribable peril and privations, she reached the friendly cabin of an old neighbor, where tender sympathy and care put an end to these. A party went out and brought in safely the old

I Collins, Vol. II., p. 53.

Dutch woman to the settlement. Mrs. Ingles died in 1813, aged eighty-four years. Her family was most noted; her daughters married men of distinction, and a numerous posterity yet hold her in honored remembrance.

There were probably other adventurers in Kentucky during this eventful year of 1773 whose names and deeds have escaped the pen of the historian. We have introduced to the reader the honored names, and recorded the heroic devotion and deeds, of the representative pioneers who formed the vanguard, and who blazed the way to future conquest and empire of the first civilization, whose germs were planted amid travails and watered in tears, in the great valley of the Mississippi, beyond the mountain barrier.

With the close of 1773, we will be surprised to find the most radical changes in the current of events, which in a few months drove homeward from her borders all the hunters, surveyors, and other adventurers who had come out during that year to Kentucky. The premonitions of war with England, which was soon to be anticipated with actual Indian hostilities of a formidable character, were heavy upon the spirits of the people. What effect were these cumulative troubles to have on the destinies of the new El Dorado of the western world, lying far away to the west? We pass into the revelations of 1774, and find an answer there, in part, to these inquiries.

TOWN SITE OF HARRODSBURG LAID OFF.

29

CHAPTER VI.

Captain James Harrod leads a party of forty, and they "improve" at Harrodsburg and vicinity.

Indian attack on these.

Hancock Taylor mortally wounded by Indians.

Miami tribes threaten to invade Virginia.

Boone and Michael Stoner sent by Gov.

ernor Dunmore to warn in all frontiersmen from Kentucky.

Harrod, Boone, and comrades return to Virginia and join the army to repel the Indians.

Defeat of the latter in a decisive battle at the mouth of Great Kanawha.

Many prepare to visit Kentucky in the spring of 1775.

The spring of 1774 opened with promise that the advance parties of the previous year would be sustained by yet a larger following for the current year. In May, Captain James Harrod, with Abram Hite and James and Jacob Sandusky, led about forty men from the Monongahela country, in Virginia, down the Ohio river, and transiently camped on the present site of Cincinnati, and there felled the first tree known to have been cut down on that spot by the ax of a white man. Continuing their adventurous journey to the mouth of Kentucky river, they turned the prows of their little fleet. into that stream and ascended the same to what is now Oregon Landing, in Mercer county. Disembarking there, they made their way through the forest to a point near Salt river, where the McAfee party had made their first surveys on that river, and proceeding up the east side of same, they built a permanent camp on the present site of Harrodsburg, one hundred yards. below the Big Spring, beneath the branches of an elm tree familiar to many persons of to-day.

From this rendezvous, the men dispersed in small squads, to select for themselves suitable settlements, and to build on such locations improvement cabins. These latter were known as "lottery cabins," as they were apportioned among the men by lot. Thus, John Crow, James Brown, and others secured lottery cabins in the vicinity of Danville; James Wiley three miles east of Harrodsburg, and James Harrod at Boiling Spring, six miles south. On the 16th of June, Harrod's and Hite's men together laid off a town site at Big Spring camp, where they had before erected the first log cabin built in Kentucky; giving to each man a half-acre lot and a ten-acre outlot. The first name given to this place was Harrodstown, and finally it became known as Harrodsburg. Near the east end of the town, John Harman made a clearing, and there planted and raised the first corn that was known to have grown in Kentucky. About the 20th of July, three or four of Harrod's

1 Collins, Vol. II., pp. 605, and 517-18.