160 The Winning of the West 



started homeward across a hundred leagues of track- 

 less wilderness. The pursuers almost of necessity 

 went slower, for they had to puzzle out the tracks; 

 and after a certain number of days either their food 

 gave out or they found themselves too far from 

 home, and were obliged to return. In most in- 

 stances the pursuit was vain. Thus a party of twenty 

 savages might make a war-trail some hundreds of 

 miles in length, taking forty or fifty scalps, carrying 

 off a dozen women and children, and throwing a 

 number of settlements, with perhaps a total popu- 

 lation of a thousand souls, into a rage of terror and 

 fury, with a loss to themselves of but one or two 

 men killed and wounded. 



Throughout the summer of 1781 the settlers were 

 scourged by an unbroken series of raids of this kind. 

 In August McKee, Brant, and other tory and Indian 

 leaders assembled on the Miami an army of perhaps 

 a thousand warriors. They were collected to op- 

 pose Clark's intended march to Detroit; for the 

 British leaders were well aware of Clark's intention, 

 and trusted to the savages to frustrate it if he at- 

 tempted to put it into execution. Brant went off for 

 a scout with a hundred warriors, and destroyed 

 Loughry's party of Westmoreland men, as already 

 related, returning to the main body after having 

 done so. The fickle savages were much elated by 

 this stroke, but instead of being inspired to greater 

 efforts, took the view that the danger of invasion 

 was now over. After much persuasion Brant, Mc- 

 Kee, and the captain of the Detroit rangers, Thomp- 



