The War in the Northwest 249 



These bands of rescuers reached Bryan's Station 

 on the afternoon of the day the Indians had left. 

 The men thus gathered were the very pick of the 

 Kentucky pioneers ; sinewy veterans of border strife, 

 skilled hunters and woodsmen, long wonted to every 

 kind of hardship and danger. They were men of 

 the most dauntless courage, but unruly and impa- 

 tient of all control. Only a few of the cooler heads 

 were willing to look before they leaped; and even 

 their chosen and trusted leaders were forced to ad- 

 vise and exhort rather than to command them. All 

 were eager for battle and vengeance, and were 

 excited and elated by the repulse that had just been 

 inflicted on the savages ; and they feared to wait for 

 Logan lest the foe should escape. Next morning 

 they rode out in pursuit, one hundred and eighty- 

 two strong, all on horseback, and all carrying long 

 rifles. There was but one sword among them, 

 which Todd had borrowed from Boone a rough 

 weapon, with short steel blade and buckhorn hilt. 

 As with most frontier levies, the officers were in 

 large proportion ; for, owing to the system of armed 

 settlement and half-military organization, each 

 wooden fort, each little group of hunters or hard- 

 fighting backwoods farmers, was forced to have its 

 own captain, lieutenant, ensign, and sergeant. 13 



13 For the American side of the battle of Blue Licks I take 

 the contemporary reports of Boone, Levi Todd, and Logan, 

 Va. State Papers, Vol. Ill, pp. 276, 280, 300,333. Boone and 

 Todd both are explicit that there were one hundred and 

 eighty- two riflemen all on horseback, and substantially agree 

 as to the loss of the frontiersmen. Later reports underesti- 



