It is estimated that, between 1783 and 1790, fully fifteen hundred
Kentuckians were massacred by Indians or taken captive to the savage
towns; and the frontiers of Virginia and Pennsylvania furnished their
full quota to the long roll of victims. It is impossible in so small a
volume as this to mention all of even the principal incidents in the
catalogue of assaults, heroic defenses, murders, burnings, torturings,
escapes, reprisals, and ambushes which constitute the lurid annals of
this protracted border warfare. The reader who has followed thus far
this story of a strenuous life, will understand what these meant; to
what deeds of daring they gave rise on the part of the men and women of
the border; what privation and anguish they entailed. But let us not
forget that neither race could claim, in this titanic struggle for the
mastery of the hunting-grounds, a monopoly of courage or of cowardice,
of brutality or of mercy. The Indians suffered quite as keenly as the
whites in the burning of their villages, crops, and supplies, and by the
loss of life either in battle, by stealthy attack, or by treachery. The
frontiersmen learned from the red men the lessons of forest warfare, and
often outdid their tutors in ferocity. The contest between civilization
and savagery is, in the nature of things, unavoidable; the result also
is foreordained. It is well for our peace of mind that, in the dark
story of the Juggernaut car, we do not inquire too closely into details.
In 1785, goaded by numerous attacks on settlers and immigrants, Clark
led a thousand men against the tribes on the Wabash; but by this time he
had lost control of the situation, and cowardice on the part of his
troops, combined with lack of provisions, led to the practical failure
of the expedition, although the Indians were much frightened.
At the same time, Logan was more successful in an attack on the Shawnese
of the Scioto Valley, who lost heavily in killed and prisoners. In
neither of these expeditions does Boone appear to have taken part.
The year 1787 was chiefly notable, in the history of the West, for the
adoption by Congress of the Ordinance for the government of the
Territory Northwest of the River Ohio, wherein there dwelt perhaps seven
thousand whites, mostly unprogressive French-Canadians, in small
settlements flanking the Mississippi and the Great Lakes, and in the
Wabash Valley. Along the Ohio were scattered a few American hamlets,
chiefly in Kentucky. In the same year the Indian war reached a height of
fury which produced a panic throughout the border, and frantic appeals
to Virginia, which brought insufficient aid. Boone, now a town trustee
of Maysville, was sent to the legislature that autumn, and occupied his
seat at Richmond from October until January. While there, we find him
strongly complaining that the arms sent out to Kentucky by the State
during the year were unfit for use, the swords being without scabbards,
and the rifles without cartridge-boxes or flints.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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