The War in the Northwest 3 



the Illinois. When Mansker first went to the Bluffs, 2 

 in 1769, the buffaloes were more numerous than he 

 had ever seen them before; the ground literally 

 shook under the gallop of the mighty herds, they 

 crowded in dense throngs round the licks, and the 

 forest resounded with their grunting bellows. He 

 and other woodsmen came back there off and on, 

 hunting and trapping, and living in huts made of 

 buffalo hides; just such huts as the hunters dwelt in 

 on the Little Missouri and Powder Rivers as late 

 as 1883, except that the plainsmen generally made 

 dug-outs in the sides of the buttes and used the 

 hides only for the roofs and fronts. So the place 

 was well known, and the reports of the hunters had 

 made many settlers eager to visit it, though as yet 

 no regular path led thither. In 1778 the first per 

 manent settler arrived in the person of a hunter 

 named Spencer, who spent the following winter en 

 tirely alone in this remote wilderness, living in a 

 hollow sycamore-tree. Spencer was a giant in his 

 day, a man huge in body and limb, all whose life 

 had been spent in the wilderness. He came to the 

 bend of the Cumberland from Kentucky in the early 

 spring, being in search of good land on which to 

 settle. Other hunters were with him, and they 

 stayed some time. A Creole trapper from the Wa- 

 bash was then living in a cabin on the south side 

 of the river. He did not meet the new-comers ; but 



2 The locality where Nashborough was built, was some 

 times spoken of as the Bluffs, and sometimes as the French 

 Lick. 



