152 The Winning of the West 



It would be tiresome and profitless to so much as 

 name the many different stations that were attacked. 

 In their main incidents all the various assaults were 

 alike, and that made this summer on McAfee's sta- 

 tion may be taken as an illustration. 



The McAfees brought their wives and children to 

 Kentucky in the fall of '79, and built a little stock- 

 aded hamlet on the banks of Salt River, six or seven 

 miles from Harrodsburg. Some relatives and friends 

 joined them, but their station was small and weak. 

 The stockade, on the south side, was very feeble, 

 and there were but thirteen men, besides the women 

 and children, in garrison ; but they were strong and 

 active, good woodsmen, and excellent marksmen, 

 The attack was made on May 4, I78i. 65 



The Indians lay all night at a corn-crib three- 

 quarters of a mile distant from the stockade. The 

 settlers, though one of their number had been car- 



of the powder feat was Betty Zane or Molly Scott is hopelessly 

 conflicting; we do not know which of the two brothers Girty 

 was in command, nor whether either was present at the first 

 attack. Much even of De Haas' account is, to put it mildly, 

 greatly embellished; as for instance his statement about the 

 cannon (a small French gun, thrown into the Monongahela 

 when Fort Du Quesne was abandoned, and fished up by a 

 man named Naly, who was in swimming), which he asserts 

 cut "a wide passage" through the "deep columns" of the 

 savages. There is no reason to suppose that the Indians 

 suffered a serious loss. Wheeling was a place of little 

 strategic importance, and its fall would not have produced 

 any far-reaching effects. 



65 McAfee MSS. This is the date given in the MS. "Auto- 

 biography of Robert McAfee"; the MS. "History of First 

 Settlement on Salt River" says May 6th. I draw my account 

 from these two sources ; the discrepancies are trivial. 



