Life of Daniel Boone, the Great Western Hunter and PioneerHartley, Cecil B.
History
Life of Daniel Boone, the Great Western Hunter and Pioneer
Hartley, Cecil B.
Boone, Daniel, 1734-1820; Frontier and pioneer life -- Kentucky; Pioneers -- Kentucky -- Biography
General Lewis was not much pleased with the sudden and apparently
causeless change which Governor Dunmore had made in the plan of the
expedition. Nevertheless, he immediately prepared to obey the new
orders, and had given directions for the construction of rafts upon
which to cross the Ohio, when, before daylight on the morning of the
10th of October, some of the scouts suddenly entered the encampment
with the information that an immense body of Indians was just at hand,
hastening upon the Point. This was the force of the brave and skillful
chief Cornstalk, whose genius and valor were so conspicuous on that day,
throughout the whole of which raged the hardly-contested and moat bloody
_Battle of the Point_. Girty had fled from General Lewis immediately to
the chief Cornstalk, forsworn his white nature, and leagued himself with
the Redman forever; and with the Indians he was now advancing, under
the cover of night, to surprise the Virginian camp. At the distance of
only a mile from the Point, Cornstalk was met by a detachment of the
Virginians, under the command of Colonel Charles Lewis, a brother of the
general; and here, about sunrise on the 10th of October, 1774, commenced
one of the longest, severest, and bloodiest battles ever fought upon the
Western frontiers. It terminated, as we have seen, about sunset, with
the defeat of the Indians it is true, but with a loss to the whites
which carried mourning into many a mansion of the Old Dominion, and
which was keenly felt throughout the country at the time, and
remembered with sorrow long after.
Girty having thrown himself among the Indians, as has been related,
and embraced their cause, now retreated with them into the interior
of Ohio, and ever after followed their fortunes without swerving. On
arriving at the towns of the Wyandots, he was adopted into that tribe,
and established himself at Upper Sandusky. Being active, of a strong
constitution, fearless in the extreme, and at all times ready to
join their war parties, lie soon became very popular among his new
associates, and a man of much consequence. He was engaged in most of
the expeditions against the frontier settlements of Pennsylvania and
Virginia--always brave and always cruel--till the year 1778, when
occurred an incident which, as it is the only bright spot apparent
on the whole dark career of the renegade, shall be related with some
particularity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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