glittering coins of "the great father," had easily found their way into savage hands. But Wilkinson was not destined to strike this main Kickapoo town. He encamped the first night six miles from Kenapacomaqua, and the next day he marched west and then northwest passing between what are now the points of Royal Center and Logansport, and "launched into the boundless prairies of the west with the intention to pursue that course until I could strike a road which leads from the Potawatomi of Lake Michigan immediately to the town I sought." Here for eight hours he floundered about in an endless succession of sloughs and swamps, wearing out his horses and exhausting his men. "A chain of thin groves extending in the direction of the Wabash at this time presented to my left." Wilkinson now extricated himself from the swamps and gained the Tippecanoe trail, and camped at seven o'clock in the evening. He had marched a distance of about thirty miles, and several of his horses were completely broken down. At four o'clock the next morning this little army was in motion again. At eight o'clock signs were discovered of the proximity of an Indian town. At twelve o'clock noon, he entered Kethtipecanunck, but the savages had fled at his approach. They had returned since the expedition of June and cultivated their corn and pulse. These were in a flourishing condition. Having refreshed his horses and cut down the corn, he resumed his march for the Kickapoo town "in the prairie, by the road which leads from Ouiatenon to that place." After proceeding some distance he discovered some "murmurings" among the Kentuckians, and found on examination that two hundred and seventy of his horses were lame, and that only five days' provisions were left for his men. Under these circumstances, he abandoned the contemplated assault on the main Kickapoo town, and "marched forward to a town of the same nation, situated about three leagues west of Ouiatenon." He destroyed the town of thirty houses and "a considerable quantity of corn in the hills," and the same day moved on to Ouiatenon, forded the Wabash, and encamped on the margin of the Wea plains. At all the villages destroyed by Scott he found the corn re-planted and in a state of high cultivation. He destroyed it all, and on the twelfth of August he fell in with General Scott's return trace and marched to the Ohio, where he arrived on the twenty-first day of the month. He had traveled a distance of four hundred and fifty-one miles in twenty-one days; a feat of horsemanship, considering the wild and difficult nature of the country, of no small degree of merit. [Illustration: Indian Hills on the Wabash River just below the old site of Fort Ouiatenon. Photo by Heaton] The expedition had in all things been a success. He had captured a number of prisoners, cut down four hundred and thirty acres of corn in the milk, and destroyed at least two Indian towns.