LOGAN FIRED UPON AND WOUNDED.

93

Colonel Logan led his scouts often through the country, in the vicinity of St. Asaph's, to avoid assassinations from ambush or surprise attacks. On one of these excursions the next year, following Indian signs, he discovered a camp of red men at Big Flat Lick, about two miles from the fort. Returning, he led an armed party out, and attacked the savages with so much vigor that they fled through the woods, without making much resistance. This lick was a noted resort for game, and often frequented by hunters, both white and red.

Not long after the above incident, Logan, again in its vicinity, was fired upon by a lurking band of Indians. His right arm was broken and a light breast wound inflicted by this fire. The savages rushed on him, to finish the bloody work by taking his life and scalp, and so narrow was the escape that one of them in the lead managed to seize his horse by the tail, which, sniffing the danger, leaped forward and bore his rider gallantly back to the fort. The chieftain was for a time disabled, but his vigorous manhood and simple pioneer habits soon healed his wounds, and permitted him to go to the front again, in all the adventures and perils of the life around him.

Physically and mentally, Logan was great. No emergency ever overtasked the man's varied powers. Indeed, no occasion ever occurred in his eventful life to measure the possibilities of the reserve force within. With the authority and mien of a patriarch, his characteristics were those of unassumed simplicity and sincerity, and all confided in him for wise counsel and helpful trust. He was an order of man who would have, anywhere and in any sphere, been recognized as a leader among his fellows.

On April 19th, John Todd and Richard Callaway were elected burgesses, or members of the Legislature of Virginia, for Kentucky county, the first election held in the country, and on May 23d they set off for Richmond.

In April, Ben Linn and Samuel Moore were selected and sent off as spies to Illinois, doubtless in furtherance of deep designs which the fertile and sagacious mind of Colonel Clark had already conceived, and which were matured for development the next year, as we shall hereafter see.

They embarked in a canoe, or pirogue, down the Cumberland river to its mouth, from whence they penetrated the country in question, and continued their adventures for information until their return, on the 22d of June.

The first court ever held under the new government was convened at Harrodstown, on the 2d day of September, and at this time a census of the population of this town was taken by Captain John Cowan, and preserved in his book of memoranda for that date, with result as follows: men, 85; women, 24; children, 70; slaves, 19-total, 198.

In spite of Indian harassments, the settlers managed to gather some harvest fruits of their toils, especially under protection of their rifles in the vicinity of the fort walls. About the middle of July, four acres of wheat were reaped, with an antiquated sickle, from a patch of ground just west of Harrodstown, the first known to be harvested in Kentucky.

In the latter days of July, a party of forty-five men reached Boonesborough from North Carolina, a few days in advance of the arrival of Colonel Bowman's troops at Logan's fort. These re-enforcers disheartened the savage bands that swayed the country since the first days of spring, and their early retreat across the Ohio gave great relief to the pent-up and beleagured foresters, which they were not slow to enjoy. They had by this time thoroughly learned the tactics and cunning methods of the red men, and in the active school of experience the ready pupils had already learned to equal, if not to excel, their foes in all the strategies and arts of the woodsman, the hunter, and the warrior. Hitherto, the Indians were accustomed to call the Virginians Long Knife-from the frequent use of the sword in more regular warfare. Now, the whites felt themselves the better marksmen, as able to track and see an Indian as to be tracked and seen by him, and just as likely to get the first shot, which was usually the end of contest. The Indians knew the whites to be close shooters in the woods or from the forts, and their severe losses in their siege attempts made them more than ever shy of exposing themselves within rifle range.

A PARTY SETS OUT TO MAKE SALT.

CHAPTER XII.

(1778.)

What seemed a most calamitous blow to the settlers, and especially to Boonesborough, at the opening of the year 1778 may, behind the first outward appearances, have been one of those favors in disguise which we can only attribute to an ever-guarding Providence, and which was but a method of saving the community from a greater calamity. On the 1st day of January, Boone set out with a party of thirty men to make salt for the year's supply for the three stations, at Blue Licks-an article then greatly needed. On the 7th of February, while hunting some miles away, to supply the salt

makers with meat, he was intercepted by a body of one hundred Indians. 1 Boone attempted escape. It proved that the enemy, then on a march to attack Boonesborough, were needing a captive white to give them information. Instead of shooting at him as he ran, the swift-footed warriors gave chase, and captured the veteran. The experience and cunning wit of Boone were now put to the severest test. How to baffle and divert the Indians from their intended march upon Boonesborough, and at the same time save from massacre the party at the salt springs, was the aim of his endeavor. They were doubtless apprised of the visiting party at Blue Licks, who had been in camp there a month. We regret that Boone kept no journal of these interesting episodes of his charmed life. He was held eight days by his captors before they made a move on the whites. The narrative will show throughout that along with his immovable fortitude and self-command, Boone also possessed the gift or dissembled art of winning address, with a magnetic sympathy that seemed at a glance to unnerve the hand of violence and to win the confiding trust of even those who had ever been his implacable foes. With all, he was a common favorite. We can only infer that Boone was parleying with his captors with a double object-to save his party from being attacked from ambush and slaughtered, and to prevent an after attack on Boonesborough, now almost emptied of its garrison. It was winter, and Indians were not yet expected in force. It was easy to surprise in both

attacks.

Boone won the Indians over to a pledge that if the salt-makers would surrender without resistance, they should be well treated and cared for as prisoners, and their lives spared. By capitulation, the terms were carried out, and Boone and twenty-seven men were led away, disarmed, and at the mercy of the savages, across the Ohio to the Indian town of Chillicothe, on the Miami.

Before the capitulation and surrender were consummated, three of the party adroitly managed to escape to the brush and safely get out of reach of the Indians. After the latter left with the prisoners, they returned to the salt springs, concealed the kettles, and brought home the salt made. One of these, William Craddlebaugh, lived long in the family of Boone, at the fort, and subsequently became a noted pioneer of Madison county.

By what art the wily backwoodsman dissuaded them from the march on Boonesborough we are left mainly to conjecture. Marshall comments on this incident: "Had the Indians, after making Boone and his inen prisoners, instead of returning home with their captives, marched on to Boonesborough, they might either have taken the place by surprise, or, using the influence their prisoners conferred on them, compelled a surrender of the garrison, and progressively acting on the same plan, it is probable that the two other forts would have fallen in the same way and from the same advantage. It is hardly presumable that even if they had escaped surprise, they would have 1 Hartley's Boone, pp. 128-133; Boone's Narrative; Collins, Vol. II., p. 59; Marshall, pp. 55-58.

THE INDIANS REFUSE A RANSOM FOR BOONE.

97

resisted a summons to surrender, which might have been enforced by the massacre of the prisoners under their eyes."

Of the twenty-seven prisoners with Boone, Stephen Hancock made his escape and returned to Boonesborough with the intelligence of the capture and the condition of the prisoners. He was afterward the founder of Hancock's station, in Madison county, about six miles north of Richmond, and became one among the best known of the pioneers and Indian fighters of the country.

In March following, Captain Boone and ten of his men were conducted by a guard of forty Indians to Detroit, then garrisoned by the British. Governor Hamilton was commandant, and to him the men were presented, and by him treated with much civility and humanity. The governor, whether from motives of conciliation toward Kentuckians, or from a partiality conceived for the veteran pioneer, offered the savages one hundred pounds to ransom him from captivity, assuring Boone that his purpose was to liberate him on parole. But such was the affection of the Indians for Boone, for whom they had conceived the most unbounded admiration, on account of his wonderful skill as woodsman and hunter, that they would consider no terms of ransom with even a degree of patience. Boone was both vexed and embarrassed. He had found it a necessary part of his policy to express pleasure in the companionship of these rude men of the forest, and with their wild forest ways, and this had led them to believe that the old pioneer was entirely contented to remain among them. He dared not now excite their jealousy or suspicion. Several English gentlemen, sensibly affected by his situation, generously offered to supply him with money, or any other thing necessary to his comfort, but, with thanks for their friendly offers, he declined to receive where it would never be in his power to repay.

Intelligence was broken to Boone at length that he must prepare to return to Chillicothe with his adhesive companions, and to separate from the ten comrade captives, who would be left prisoners at Detroit. In fifteen days after, he arrived at Chillicothe, and was soon after adopted into one of the principal families as a son, thus increasing the confidence and affection of his new relatives. To all this, Boone was wise enough to accommodate himself, and accept what he could not help, with good grace.

1The forms of this ceremony of adoption were in keeping with the natures and peculiarities of the savages, and as severe as they were ludicrous. The hairs of the head and the beard were plucked out by a painful and tedious operation, one by one, excepting a tuft some three or four inches in diameter on the crown, for the scalp-lock, which was tied and dressed up with trinkets and feathers. The candidate was then taken into the river in a state of nudity, and there thoroughly washed and rubbed, as averred, "to take all his white blood out." This ablution, as well as the previous processes of the Indian toilet, was usually performed by females. Then the

1 Peck's Life of Boone; Hartley's Boone, p. 131.