We have noticed that all these forts were built near a spring of unfailing
water. The pioneers seem always to have left the spring outside the
inclosure, however, and since this worked a great hardship in time of
siege, it seems to have been bad judgment. Girty’s Indians attacked
Logan’s Fort. The supply of water inside the fort was exhausted, and the
suffering was intense. After this siege, General Logan decided never again
to be subjected to such an extremity. He could not bring the spring to the
fort, and it was also difficult to transplant the fort. So he summoned the
settlers and proposed a plan to which they agreed. The hours when they
were not working in the fields or building new cabins they spent in
digging, until a tunnel was made from the stockade to the spring. In
succeeding attacks, the General had his granaries and storehouses well
supplied with food and ammunition, and it was an easy matter to send a boy
with a bucket through the tunnel to the spring for water. This precaution
on the part of the General prevented exhaustion during the next attack on
Logan’s Fort. The Indians, unable to understand how the settlers in the
fort could do so long without water, supposed them to be miraculously
defended by the Great Spirit, and never afterward could Girty lead his
band to attack Logan’s Fort.
The settlers at Bryan’s Station, a few miles from Lexington, did not take
a similar precaution. During one of the Indian attacks on them the supply
of water in the fort became exhausted, and surrender seemed unavoidable.
The women of the fort volunteered to go for water, and taking buckets
marched down to the spring. The Indians were surprised, superstitious, and
panic-stricken, and refused to fire on them. The women filled their
buckets and returned in safety to the stockade.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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