Part 4

The three girls screamed with fright, but Betsey Calloway showed herself a true pioneer by gashing the head of one of her assailants with her paddle. Before dragging them from the boat the Indians forced Frances Calloway and Jemima Boone to put on Indian moccasins, but Elizabeth, or Betsey, again showed her courage by refusing to do so. We can well imagine the horror when the people at the fort realized that the girls were in the hands of the savages. Both Boone and Calloway were absent, but soon returned and lost no time in starting for rescue and revenge. Two parties set out: one on foot with Colonel Boone and the three lovers of the three girls, Samuel Henderson, John Holder, and Flanders Calloway, respectively; another on horseback.

As soon as they reached the north side of the river, Boone drew them up in line, placing the middle man at the trail, and pressed forward in pursuit. His daring was equaled only by his discretion, for should the pursuers be seen by the Indians, it was highly probable the three maidens would suffer death by the tomahawk. Betsey Calloway came near suffering thus when the savages discovered her breaking off twigs by which she could be trailed. Though the upraised tomahawk with a threat to use it caused her to desist from this, she slyly tore off bits of her linsey-woolsey dress, and occasionally pressed the heel of her shoepack into the soft earth, thus leaving a trail.

By these signs, in the reading of which Colonel Boone was almost as wary as the Indians, the rescuing party hardly lost sight of the direction taken, although the captors compelled the girls to walk apart through the thick cane and wade up and down the streams of water, in an effort to hide their trail. On Tuesday morning, when about forty miles from Boonesborough, the whites came upon the captors just as they had kindled a fire to cook some buffalo meat. The two parties saw each other about the same time, but as their weapons were piled at the foot of a tree, and the whites fired at once and rushed upon them, the Indians hastily fled without knife, tomahawk, or even moccasins. The three girls were unharmed.

Betsey Calloway, a brunette much tanned by exposure, was mistaken by one of the rescuing party for an Indian, as she sat with the two wearied maidens asleep with their heads in her lap. Just as he was about to dash out her brains with the butt of his gun his arm was arrested by one who recognized her, and a most horrible tragedy was averted. Amid rejoicing they returned to the fort.

On the seventh of the next month Squire Boone, a Baptist minister, performed the first marriage ceremony in Kentucky, when Betsey Calloway became the wife of Samuel Henderson. The other two couples soon followed their example.

A WEDDING IN THE WILDERNESS

The boys and girls in the early days of Kentucky usually married very young; and a wedding was an event so important that every one in the entire community felt a personal interest in the affair. The ceremony was usually performed just before noon.

On the morning of the appointed day the groom and his attendants met at the home of his father and proceeded to the home of the bride. The gentlemen wore only clothes that were homemade; linsey shirts, leather breeches and leggins, moccasins or shoepacks, and caps of mink or raccoon skin with the tail hanging down the back completed their costume.

The ladies were beautiful in linsey-woolsey, coarse shoes, or moccasins embroidered with beads and quills, and buckskin gloves. Just after the ceremony there was a feast of venison and bear, beef and pork, turkeys and geese, potatoes and cabbage, cornmeal mush with milk and maple sugar, ash cake and dodgers.

As soon as dinner was over the dancing began and lasted not only through the afternoon but through the night until dawn. The square dance, the reel, and the jig were the figures that gave most joy to their flying feet.

Either the next day, or very soon thereafter, the neighbors helped the newly married couple "settle." A party of choppers felled and trimmed the trees, others hauled them to the site, while others made the clapboards for the roof, and puncheons for floor and door. If any windows were made, they were covered with oiled doeskin and had thick shutters. No one had windows filled with glass in those days.[2]

The neighbors helped not only to raise and cover the house, but to make the furniture also. A table was made from a slab of wood with four legs driven into auger holes; some three-legged stools were made of like material. Sticks driven into auger holes in the wall supported clapboard shelves where various articles were kept. A few pegs were likewise driven in the wall where the wearing apparel of both men and women was hung. A pair of buck horns or two small forks fastened to the logs held the ever trusty rifle and shot pouch.

Nor did they stop here. Through a fork placed with its lower end in a hole in the floor and its upper end fastened to a joist, they placed poles with their ends through cracks in the walls. Over these, clapboards were laid. When the whole had been covered with skins of bear and deer, this made a most comfortable bed.

At these house raisings, log rollings, and harvest homes there was much merriment coupled with the hard labor. Any man who failed to perform his part of the work was dubbed "Lazy Lawrence" and was denied similar help when he needed it.

FOOTNOTE:

[2] There is a story of a little boy who, upon seeing a house with glass windows for the first time, rushed home crying, "O Ma, there is a house down town with specs on!"

PIONEER CHILDREN

The boys and girls of to-day with all the comforts and luxuries surrounding them often pity the pioneer children and wonder how they spent their time. However, they doubtless were as happy and ambitious as we are. The boys early learned to chop, to grub bushes up by the roots, maul rails, trap turkeys, tree coons, and shoot a rifle. When severe weather kept them in the fort, there were not only the duties of making brooms and brushes but also the wrestling, leaping, and shooting matches where each strove to excel the other. How proud was the youth when he could "bark a squirrel," that is, shoot off the bark so near the squirrel that the force killed it, without inflicting a wound.

The girls also had their work and play. They watched the cattle to keep them from straying too far away, they hunted flat rocks on which to bake "journey cakes," they helped to pound hominy, bring water, gather wild nettles, and assisted in soap making, sugaring, sewing, candle molding, and wool carding. There were likewise near-by excursions for hickory nuts, walnuts, hazelnuts, grapes, pawpaws, honey locusts, hackberries, huckleberries, blackberries, dewberries, and raspberries.

But you say, "All this sounds like fun. Boy Scouts and Camp-Fire Girls do many of these things and count them sport. The boys and girls of the early days in Kentucky must have had one long holiday with no thought of school or school work." There you are mistaken, for scarcely had the first women and children come to Harrodstown when Mrs. William Coomes taught in the fort, in 1776, the first school in Kentucky. In 1777, John May taught at McAfee's Station, and two years later Joseph Doniphan was teaching at Boonesborough.

So these boys and girls of those far-away days, although they had no well-warmed, well-lighted, well-ventilated schoolhouses; although their teachers were not always so scholarly and cultured as one could wish; although often in the earliest days they had no attractive textbooks, and their only means of learning to read, write, and calculate was from copies set by their teachers; although instead of paper they used smooth boards on which to write, with the juice of the oak balls for ink; although when they could read there were no absorbing storybooks,--yet they made progress and perhaps studied as hard as some children of to-day.

HOW THE PIONEERS MADE CHANGE

We of to-day, with half dollars, quarter dollars, dimes, nickels, and pennies, often find it difficult to "make change." Still more difficult was it for the early settlers to do so.

As the Indians used wampum and the early settlers of Virginia, tobacco, so the pioneers of Kentucky used the skins of wild animals as their first currency. While immigrants continued to come to this region, Spanish silver dollars came gradually into circulation. Still there was no small change.

As "Necessity is the mother of invention," our forefathers actually made change by cutting the dollar into four equal parts, each worth twenty-five cents. These were again divided, each part worth twelve and one half cents, called bits. People sometimes became careless in the work of making change and often cut the dollar into five "quarters" or into ten "eighths." On account of the wedge shape of these pieces of cut money, they were called "sharp shins."

If change was needed for a smaller sum than twelve and one half cents, merchants gave pins, needles, writing paper, and such things.

This cut silver gradually found its way back to the mint for recoinage, usually to the loss of the last owner. As late as 1806, a business house in Philadelphia received over one hundred pounds of cut silver, brought on by a Kentucky merchant, which was sent on a dray to the United States Mint for recoinage.

A WOMAN'S WILL

"Where there is a will, there is a way" is an oft-quoted proverb, and the first white woman of whom we have any record of entering Kentucky proved it true. In 1756 Mrs. Mary Draper Inglis, her two small sons, and a sister-in-law, Mrs. Draper, were taken from their homes in Virginia by the Shawnee Indians and carried some distance down the Kanawha, where they halted a few days to make salt, thence to the Indian village at the mouth of the Scioto, which is the site now of Portsmouth, Ohio. Mrs. Inglis won her way into the favor of the savages by making shirts of material that French traders had brought from Detroit. She was soon held in such high esteem by her captors that she was not subjected to the peril of running the gantlet, though a greater grief was put upon her,--that of being separated from her two sons at the division of the prisoners.

After spending a few weeks at the mouth of the Scioto, a number of the savages proceeded to Big Bone Lick, over a hundred miles away. With them they took Mrs. Inglis and an old Dutch lady who had been in captivity for a long while. Not being daunted by fear or distance from home, these pioneer women planned and effected an escape. On the pretext of gathering grapes they started from camp one afternoon with only a blanket, knife, and tomahawk.

With eager feet they reached the Ohio, and followed its windings, until after five days' journeying they found themselves opposite the mouth of the Scioto. Fortune favored them, for a horse was grazing there and also some corn was close at hand. Although near Indian villages, they loaded the horse with corn and pressed on to the mouth of the Big Sandy, but were compelled to go farther up that stream to effect a crossing. After going some distance, the women crossed on driftwood, but the horse, falling among the logs, was finally abandoned, and with only a scanty store of corn they pursued their dangerous journey.

Had it not been for walnuts, grapes, and pawpaws, hunger would have stayed their steps. Even with these the Dutch woman was not long satisfied and, driven to desperation, she threatened and attempted the life of Mrs. Inglis. But the latter succeeded in escaping from her frantic companion and, finding a canoe, took a broad splinter for a paddle and reached the Ohio shore. When morning dawned and the Dutch woman saw Mrs. Inglis on the other bank, she pleaded with her to return to her rescue. But fearing a repetition of her late fury, Mrs. Inglis turned a deaf ear to entreaties and hastened, as fast as her exhausted condition permitted, towards home. At last, after more than forty days of dire suffering and destitution, she reached a cabin where careful attention soon restored her to health and from there she was taken to a near-by fort and restored to her husband. A party went in search of the Dutch woman and brought her safely to the settlement. One of the little sons died soon after being separated from his mother, while thirteen years elapsed before the father found and rescued the other.

WHEN THE WOMEN BROUGHT THE WATER

The women of Kentucky have never been known to falter whatever demand duty might make upon them; yet at no period in the history of our commonwealth has there been any more severe test of the courage of her daughters than occurred on the morning of August 15, 1782, at a point about five miles northeast of Lexington on the present road from that city to Maysville.

This post had been settled in 1779 by four brothers from North Carolina, named Bryan, hence the name "Bryan's Station." About forty cabins had been "placed in parallel lines and connected by strong palisades." This fort and the station at Lexington had been selected as special places on which to visit the wrath and retaliation for massacre of some Indians upon the Sandusky; and as the savages and their renegade allies had been successful, they were easily incited to a general attack and inspired with the idea of regaining their hunting grounds and driving the paleface across the Alleghenies.

Simon Girty, the notorious renegade, was at the height of his glory when, in response to requests of runners sent to various tribes, there began at Chillicothe, August 1, 1782, a gathering of Cherokees, Shawnees, Miamis, Wyandots, and Potawatamis.

Ere the march began, the party numbered nearly six hundred warriors. With great secrecy and rapidity they descended the Little Miami, crossed the Ohio, and reached central Kentucky. In the hope of drawing away the fighting forces from the stations warned, Girty sent a party of Wyandots, who harassed Hoy's Station, and captured two boys. Captain Holder, gathering what men he could, pushed forward in pursuit, but was defeated August 12, at Upper Blue Licks. When runners spread the news to the various forts, the call to rally to Holder's assistance was as quickly responded to as if it had been imperative.

Girty knew of the common custom of rallying to the needs of neighboring settlements, so he expected to find a defenseless fort at Bryan's Station when he and his band of savages reached there on the night of the 14th. Instead, all within seemed awake and alert; lights were shining and fires burning brightly. Girty at once suspected that his coming had been heralded. The truth was that it was the preparation for the morrow's march that caused such activity; not one suspected that such a horde of murderous savages was so near. So when at the early dawn the men started from their fort, they were much surprised at a heavy fire from ambuscade, but they were so near the gates that they soon retreated within and prepared for a stormy siege. Couriers carried the news of the attack to Lexington, Todd's, St. Asaph's, and Boonesborough. While awaiting reinforcements from these stations, the sixty backwoodsmen prepared to protect themselves and their families.

Knowing the siege would be severe and perhaps long, they began to consider seriously the question of securing water; for, by an oversight, the men who built the fort placed it at some distance from the spring which supplied their wants. As cunning as the Indians, and equally as strategic, were the men opposed to them. Instinctively they felt that the savages were ambushed near the spring expecting the men to come for a supply of water, when it would be the work of only a very few moments to fire upon them, and through the gateway gain admittance to the fort.

After talking over the matter the men within the fort called together all the women, disclosed their suspicions concerning the location of a part of the enemy, but told them they felt no violence would be offered women and urged them to go in a body to bring water. The women hesitated and said that they were not bullet-proof and that savages scalped alike the male and the female. In reply the men said that the women usually carried the water, and that if the men should go, the Indians would know that their ambuscade had been discovered and would at once rush upon the whites and gain admittance to the fort; but if the women went as usual, the savages would think their hiding secure and would longer delay the attack. The women knew that water they must have, if the garrison withstood the inevitable siege; they also knew that the views of the men were correct and that the request for them to bring the water arose from no desire on the part of their husbands and brothers, sons and fathers, to shirk duty or shift danger.

So when the Spartan-like mothers agreed to the plan, the younger women followed their example, and everyone, matron and maid, with pail in hand or piggin on head, marched down to the spring, while they "feared each bush" an Indian. Though vainly striving to appear calm, when returning

"The way seemed long before them, And their hearts outran their footsteps";

so the nearer the gate they came, the quicker was their walk until it finally ended in a very brisk run and very few entered the fort with full vessels. Tradition says that as the last entered so hastily and spilled the water so freely the Indians broke into a laugh. But the women had "been tried and not found wanting"; they had proved themselves to be true helpmates of those sturdy men who were striving to gain a home in the western wilds.

Erelong the arrangements for defense were completed and thirteen men marched out to form a decoy party on the Lexington road; their orders were to fire rapidly, make all possible noise, but not to pursue the savages too far. They obeyed orders well and as soon as the guns sounded in the distance, five hundred warriors, led by Girty, rushed from the ambush near the spring, expecting to force their way over defenseless walls. The greater part of the sixty men had resolved themselves into a reception committee, expecting just such a call. So, when "their deadly balls whistled free," wild cries of terror came from Girty's ranks and "in two minutes not an Indian was to be seen," while the thirteen reëntered through the opposite gateway, very jubilant over the success of their little ruse.

The attack was renewed, but nothing of marked importance occurred unless it was the supreme coöperation that went on within the fort. Every breech was repaired, every gate and loophole manned; men, women, and even children were busily engaged in firing at the foe, molding bullets, or quenching the flames that the burning arrows from the bows of the savages had lighted. At two in the afternoon, just at a time when the firing had ceased, about fifty men, from various stations, one third on horse, the rest afoot, came in reply to the request sent out that morning.

As the Indians knew that runners had been dispatched for reënforcements, they had planned to receive them. On one side of the road "stood the forest primeval," while on the other side was a vast field of one hundred acres of luxuriant corn, ten feet high, whose long green banners formed a dense thicket. Here on each side lay warriors within range of the road over which they knew the men would come. As soon as the horsemen appeared, shots from the guns of the savages rang out; but quickly spurring their horses, the recruiting party escaped within the fort through such a cloud of dust that not one was wounded.

Had the foot soldiers been more cautious, they too might have fared better; but hearing the firing on their friends, they rushed forward into the presence of the great crowd of savages, who, having emptied their guns, began to advance with tomahawk; but in many instances they were held at bay by the muzzle of the frontiersman's gun. Thus for an hour, the savages pursued the flying soldiers, who when too hard pressed turned and aimed, but did not fire until absolutely forced to do so, as they could have no time to reload.

In a skirmish, a ball from a rifle brought Girty to the ground, but when the warriors gathered around him, they found that it was only the force that had caused him to fall, as the ball had struck a thick piece of leather in his shot pouch. Despairing of success, Girty crawled to the protection of a huge stump, hailed the fort, and attempted negotiations. He spoke in commendatory terms of their courage, but assured them that to pursue such policy further was madness, as in addition to his six hundred warriors he would soon have reënforcements with cannons, when their weak walls would no longer protect them. He urged an immediate surrender, pledged his honor to protect them as prisoners of war, and inquired if they knew him, Simon Girty.

Some were rather anxious at the news of artillery, but a young man named Aaron Reynolds inspired the weaker ones with courage when he derisively told the speaker to bring on his reënforcements; that they too were expecting reënforcements and if Girty and his savage allies remained much longer, their scalps would grace his cabin. He said Girty was "very well known," that he himself owned a cur, so worthless that he called him "Simon Girty."

Offended at such language, Girty rejoined his chiefs. The night passed without interruption, but daylight showed camp fires burning, meat roasting, and not an Indian in sight. They had evidently departed just before dawn.

THE RESULT OF ONE RASH ACT

After the retreat of the savages from Bryan's Station it did not take long for the Kentucky riflemen to gather and go in pursuit. In the afternoon of the same day the savages had retreated from the fort, one hundred and eighty-two men from the various stations assembled. Fearing that the Indians would escape across the river, they started at once to overtake them, without waiting for the arrival of Colonel Logan, who was coming with three hundred more men.

Colonel John Todd was put in command, while many commissioned officers took their places in the ranks. On they pressed, until on the second day, as they reached the Lower Blue Licks, they saw the Indians leisurely ascending the farther bank.

The pioneers halted and held a conference in which all officers took part. The veteran Boone was asked for his opinion which all valued. He counseled either waiting for Colonel Logan's reënforcements or so dividing their numbers that part could cross above and fall in the rear of the enemy, while others could fight from the front.

Some preferred the first plan, others wished to adopt the second. In the midst of the consultation the rash, undisciplined nature of Colonel Hugh McGary, daring but with no deference to authority, oblivious to peril but not prudent, caused him to exchange some hot words with Todd and Boone; then giving a war whoop, he rushed madly into the stream, holding his hat above his head, and shouting, "All who are not cowards follow me."