20 The Winning of the West 



them, and that they themselves had been promised 

 ammunition by the French traders of Detroit and the 

 Illinois. 36 On their return home this party of 

 Shawnees scalped two men in Kentucky near the 

 Big Bone Lick, and captured a woman; but they 

 were pursued by the Kentucky settlers, two were 

 killed and the woman retaken. 37 



Throughout the year the outlook continued to 

 grow more and more threatening. Parties of young 

 men kept making inroads on the settlements, espe- 

 cially in Kentucky ; not only did the Shawnees, Wy- 

 andots, Mingos, and Iroquois 38 act thus, but they 

 were even joined by bands of Ottawas, Pottawat- 

 omies, and Chippewas from the lakes, who thus at- 

 tacked the white settlers long ere the latter had 

 either the will or the chance to hurt them. 



Until the spring of I777 39 the outbreak was not 

 general, and it was supposed that only some three 

 or four hundred warriors had taken up the toma- 

 hawk. 40 Yet the outlying settlers were all the time 



36 "Am. Archives," 5th Series, Vol. I, p. in. 



37 Do., p. 137. 



38 Do., Vol. II, pp. 516, 1236. 



39 When Cornstalk was so foully murdered by the whites; 

 although the outbreak was then already started. 



40 Madison MSS. But both the American statesmen and 

 the Continental officers were so deceived by the treacherous 

 misrepresentations of the Indians that they often greatly un- 

 derestimated the numbers of the Indians on the war-path ; 

 curiously enough, their figures are frequently much more 

 erroneous than those of the frontiersmen. Thus the Madison 

 MSS. and State Department MSS. contain statements that 

 only a few hundred Northwestern warriors were in the field 

 at the very time that two thousand had been fitted out at 



