308 The Winning of the West 



on the nourishing cane and wild-pea vine. The 

 men then intended to go back to the settlements 

 and bring out their wives and children, perhaps not 

 till the following year; so that things were in a 

 measure prepared for them, though they were very 

 apt to find that the cattle had been stolen by the 

 Indians, or had strayed too far to be recovered. 12 

 The bulk of those fleeing, however, were simply 

 frightened out of the country. There seems no 

 reason to doubt 13 that the establishment of the 

 strong, well-backed settlement of Boonesborough 

 was all that prevented the abandonment of Ken- 

 tucky at this time; and when such was the effect 

 of a foray by small and scattered war parties of 

 Indians from tribes nominally at peace with us, 14 

 it can easily be imagined how hopeless it would have 

 been to have tried to settle the land had there still 

 been in existence a strong hostile confederacy such 

 as that presided over by Cornstalk. Beyond doubt 



12 McAfee MSS. Some of the McAfees returned with 

 Henderson. 



13 Boone' letter, Henderson's journal, Calk's diary, Mc- 

 Afee's autobiography all mention the way in which the early 

 settlers began to swarm out of the country in April, 1775. 

 To judge from their accounts, if the movement had not been 

 checked instantly the country would have been depopulated 

 in a fortnight, exactly as in 1774. 



14 It must be remembered that the outrages of the Indians 

 this year in Kentucky were totally unprovoked; they were on 

 lands where they did not themselves dwell, and which had 

 been regularly ceded to the whites by all the tribes Iroquois, 

 Shawnees, Cherokees, etc. whom the whites could possibly 

 consider as having any claim to them. The wrath of the 

 Kentuckians against all Indians is easily understood. 



