238 The Winning of the West 



from Detroit with a party of rangers, and gathered 

 together a great army of over a thousand Indians 4 

 the largest body of either red men or white that 

 was ever mustered west of the Alleghanies during 

 the Revolution. They meant to strike at Wheeling ; 

 but while on their march thither were suddenly 

 alarmed by the rumor that Clark intended to attack 

 the Shawnee towns. 5 They at once counter- 

 marched, but on reaching the threatened towns 

 found that the alarm had been groundless. Most 

 of the savages, with characteristic fickleness of tem- 

 per, then declined to go further ; but a body of some- 

 what over three hundred Hurons and lake Indians 

 remained. With these, and their Detroit rangers, 

 Caldwell and McKee crossed the Ohio and marched 

 into Kentucky, to attack the small forts of Fayette 

 County. 



Fayette lay between the Kentucky and the Ohio 

 rivers, and was then the least populous and most 

 exposed of the three counties into which the grow- 

 ing young commonwealth was divided. In 1782 it 

 contained but five of the small stockaded towns in 

 which all the early settlers were obliged to gather. 

 The best defended and most central was Lexington, 



4 Haldimand MSS. Letter from Capt. Caldwell, August 

 26, 1782; and letter of Captain McKee, August 28, 1782. 

 These two letters are very important as they give for the 

 first time the British and Indian accounts of the battle of the 

 Blue Licks; I print them in the Appendix. 



5 This rumor was caused by Clark's gunboat, which, as will 

 be hereafter mentioned, had been sent up to the mouth of the 

 Licking ; some Shawnees saw it, and thought Clark was pre- 

 paring for an inroad. 



