The Indians elated with their success in defeating this first attempt at the settlement of Kentucky, and supposing that the route pursued by the party which they had driven back, would be the pass for future adventurers, determined on guarding it closely, and checking, if possible, every similar enterprise. But while their attention was directed to this point, others found their way into the country by a different route and from a different direction.

The Virginia troops, who had served in the Canadian war, had been promised a bounty in Western lands. Many of them being anxious to ascertain their value, and deeming this a favorable period for the making of surveys, collected at Fort Pitt in the fall of 1773; and descending the Ohio river to its falls, at Louisville, proceeded from thence to explore the country preparatory to a perfection of their grants.1

when, not knowing they were so near, they camped on the evening of October 9 a few miles in the rear. Early in the morning of the 10th, a small band of Shawnees and Cherokees, who were nominally at peace with the whites, fell upon and, after cruel tortures, slaughtered them. In Dunmore's speech at Fort Pitt, this tragedy in Powell's Valley was alluded to as one of the chief causes of the Indian war of 1774. At the Camp Charlotte treaty (October, 1774), some of the plunder from this massacre was delivered up by the savages. After the tragedy, the greater part of the Kentucky caravan returned to their homes, but the Boones spent the winter of 1773-74 at a settlement some forty miles distant, on Clinch River. During the Dunmore War, Boone was active as an Indian fighter.-R. G. T.

1 The leader of this party was Capt. Thomas Bullitt. He was born in Fauquier county, Va., in 1730; was one of Washington's captains at the Great Meadows (1754), and fought gallantly with Braddock (1755) and Forbes (1758); in 1763, was made adjutant-general of Virginia; during the early part of the Revolution he held the same office in the Southern Department of the United States, but resigned in 1776 because not promoted; he died in Fauquier county, in 1778. The project of Franklin, Walpole, and others to found the Colony of Pittsylvania, with its seat at the mouth of the Great Kanawha, greatly stimulated Western land speculation, and there was a rush of those holding military land warrants to locate claims. Lord Dunmore's agent at Fort Pitt, Dr. John Connolly-with whom his lordship was doubtless in partnership—had large interests of this character, and Bullitt went to the Falls of the Ohio (1773) to survey lands for him. Bullitt had a surveyor's commission from Williams and Mary College, but Col. William Preston, county sur

About the same time too, General Thompson of Pennsylvania, commenced an extensive course of surveys, of the rich land on the North Fork of Licking; and other individuals following his example, in the ensuing winter the country swarmed with land adventurers and surveyors. So sensible were they all, that these attempts to appropriate those lands to their own use, would produce acts of hostility, that they went prepared to resist those acts; and the first party who took up their abode in Kentucky, no sooner selected a situation for their residence, than they proceeded to erect a fort for their security.' The conduct of the Indians soon convinced them that their apprehensions were not ill founded; and many of them, in consequence of the hostile movements which were being made, and the robberies which were committed, ascended the Ohio river to Wheeling.

It is not known that any murders were done previously to this, and subsequently to the attack and repulse of the emigrants who were led on by Boone in 1773. This event happened on the tenth day of October; and it was in April the ensuing year, that the land adventurers retired to Wheeling. In this interval of time, nothing could, perhaps, be done by the Indians, but make preparation [111] for hostilities in the spring. Indeed it very rarely happens, that the Indians engage in active war durveyor for Fincastle county-in which Kentucky was then includeddeclined to recognize any but his own deputies. Preston carried his point, and the lands were re-surveyed the following year (1774) by his deputies. Bullitt had laid off a town on this Connolly survey; but the Revolution soon broke out, Bullitt was otherwise engaged, Dunmore was deposed, Connolly was imprisoned, and the scheme fell through. In 1778, George Rogers Clark camped at the Falls on his way to the Illinois, and the garrison he established there grew into the town of Louisville. With Bullitt's surveying party in 1773, were James Douglas, James Harrod, James Sodousky, Isaac Hite, Abraham Haptonstall, Ebenezer Severns, John Fitzpatrick, John Cowan,-prominent names in later Kentucky history, and possibly others. George Rogers Clark was probably with the party during a part of its canoe voyage down the Ohio, but seems to have gone no farther than Big Bone Creek.-R. G. T.

1 This was done by a party of men from the Monongahela, under the guidance of James Harrod; by whom was built the first cabin for human habitancy ever erected in Kentucky. This was on the present site of Harrodsburg.

ing the winter; and there is, moreover, a strong presumption, that they were for some time ignorant of the fact that there were adventurers in the country; and consequently, they knew of no object there, on which their hostile intentions could operate.-Be this as it may, it is certain that, from the movements of the Indians at the close of the winter, the belief was general, that they were assuming a warlike attitude, and meditating a continuance of hostilities. War was certainly begun on their part, when Boone and his associates, were attacked and driven back to the settlement; and if it abated for a season, that abatement was attributable to other causes, than a disposition to remain quiet and peaceable, while the country was being occupied by the whites.

If other evidence were wanting, to prove the fact that the war of 1774 had its origin in a determination of the Indians to repress the extension of white settlements, it could be found in the circumstance, that although it was. terminated by the treaty with Lord Dunmore, yet it revived as soon as attempts were again made to occupy Kentucky, and was continued with increased ardour, 'till the victory obtained over them by General Wayne. For, notwithstanding that in the struggle for American liberty, those Indians became the allies of Great Britain, yet when independence was acknowledged, and the English forces withdrawn from the colonies, hostilities were still carried on by them; and, as was then well understood, because of the continued operation of those causes, which produced the war of 1774. That the Canadian traders and British emissaries, prompted the Indians to aggression, and extended to them every aid which they could, to render that aggression more effectually oppressive and overwhelming, is readily admitted. Yet this would not have led to a war, but for the encroachments which have been mentioned. French influence, united to the known jealousy of the Natives, would have been unavailingly exerted to array the Indians against Virginia, at the commencement of Braddock's war, but for the proceedings of the Ohio company, and the fact that the Pennsylvania traders represented the object of that association to be purely terri

torial. And equally fruitless would have been their endeavor to involve them in a contest [112] with Virginiaus at a later period, but for a like manifestation of an intention to encroach on their domain.

In the latter end of April 1774, a party of land adventurers, who had fled from the dangers which threatened them below, came in collision with some Indians, near the mouth of Captina, sixteen miles below Wheeling. A slight skirmish ensued, which terminated in the discomfiture of the whites, notwithstanding they had only one man wounded, and one or two of the enemy were killed. About the same time, happened the affair opposite the mouth of Yellow creek; a stream emptying into the Ohio river from the northwest, nearly midway between Pittsburg and Wheeling.1

In consequence of advices received of the menacing conduct of the Indians, Joshua Baker (who lived at this place) was preparing, together with his neighbors, to retire for safety, into some of the nearer forts, or to go to the older and more populous settlements, remote from danger. There was at that time a large party of Indians, encamped on both sides of Yellow creek, at its entrance. into the river; and although in their intercourse at Baker's, they had not manifested an intention of speedily commencing depredations, yet he deemed his situation in the immediate contiguity of them, as being far from secure, and was on the eve of abandoning it, when a party of whites, who had just collected at his house, fired upon and killed some Indians, who were likewise there.-Among them were the brother and daughter of the celebrated chief, Logan.2

1 These are the Pipe Creek and Baker's Bottom affairs, respectively mentioned on pp. 134, 149, notes. Yellow Creek, opposite Baker's Bottom, empties into the Ohio 51 miles below Pittsburg; Wheeling is 91 miles below Pittsburg, and Pipe Creek 104.-R. G. T.

2 There is some difficulty in fixing on the precise time when these occurrences happened. Col. Ebenezer Zane says that they took place in the latter part of April, and that the affair at Captina preceded the one at Yellow creek a few days. John Sappington, who was of the party at Baker's, and is said to be the one who killed Logan's brother, says, the murders at that place occurred on the 24th of May, and that the

In justification of this conduct it has been said, that on the preceding evening a squaw came over from the encampment and informed Mrs. Baker that the Indians meditated the murder of her family on the next day; and that before the firing [113] at Baker's, two canoes, con

skirmish at Captina was on the day before (23rd May.) Col. Andrew Swearingen, a presbyterian gentleman of much respectability, one of the early settlers near the Ohio above Wheeling, and afterwards intimate with those engaged at both places, says that the disturbance opposite Yellow creek preceded the engagement [113] at Captina, and that the latter, as was then generally understood, was caused by the conduct of the Indians, who had been at Yellow creek and were descending the river, exasperated at the murder of their friends at Baker's. Mr. Benjamin Tomlinson, who was the brother-in-law of Baker and living with him at the time, says that this circumstance happened in May, but is silent as to the one at Captina. These gentlemen all agree in the fact that Logan's people were murdered at Baker's. Indeed Logan himself charges it as having been done there. The statement of Sappington, that the murders were caused by the abusive epithets of Logan's brother and his taking the hat and coat of Baker's brother in law is confirmed by Col. Swearingen and others; who also say that for some days previous, the neighborhood generally had been engaged in preparing to leave the country, in consequence of the menacing conduct of the Indians.

Comment by R. G. T.-The date is now well established-April 30. Withers is altogether too lenient, in his treatment of the whites engaged in this wretched massacre. Logan, encamped at the mouth of Yellow River, on the Ohio side, was a peaceful, inoffensive Indian, against whom no man harbored a suspicion; he was made a victim of race hatred, in a time of great popular excitement. Joshua Baker, who was settled opposite him on Baker's Bottom, in Virginia, kept a low grog-shop tavern, and had recently been warned not to sell more liquor to Indians. Daniel Greathouse lived in the vicinity—a cruel, bloodthirsty fellow, who served Connolly as a local agent in fomenting hatred of Indians. It will be remembered (p. 131, note) that Cresap's party were intending to strike the camp of Logan, but that they abandoned the project. In the meantime, probably without knowledge of Cresap's intent, Greathouse had collected a party of 32 borderers to accomplish the same end. Logan's camp seemed too strong for them to attack openly; so they secreted themselves in Baker's house, and when Logan's family, men and women, came over to get their daily grog, and were quite drunk, set upon them and slew and tomahawked nine or ten. The chief, standing on the Ohio bank, heard the uproar and witnessed the massacre; he naturally supposed that the murderers were led by Cresap. From a friend of the whites, Logan became their implacable enemy, and during the ensuing war his forays were the bloodiest on the border. We shall hear of him and his famous speech, later on.

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