The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 99 



Louisville, Lexington, Harrodsburg, Booneboro, St. 

 Asaph's, were thriving little hamlets, with stores 

 and horse grist-mills, and no longer mere clusters 

 of stockaded cabins. At Louisville, for instance, 

 there were already a number of two-story frame 

 houses, neatly painted, with verandas running the 

 full length of each house, and fenced vegetable gar 

 dens alongside; 12 while at the same time Nashville 

 was a town of logs, with but two houses that de 

 served the name, the others being mere huts. 13 The 

 population of Louisville amounted to about 300 

 souls, of whom 116 were fighting men; 14 between it 

 and Lexington the whole country was well settled ; 

 but fear of the Indians kept settlers back from the 

 Ohio. 



The new-comers were mainly Americans from all 

 the States of the Union; but there were also a few 

 people from nearly every country in Europe, and 

 even from Asia. 15 The industrious and the adven 

 turous, the homestead winners and the land specu 

 lators, the criminal fleeing from justice, and the 

 honest men seeking a livelihood or a fortune, all 

 alike prized the wild freedom and absence of re 

 straint so essentially characteristic of their new 

 life ; a life in many ways very pleasant, but one 



12 Lettres d'un eultivateur American," St. John de Creve 

 Coeur. Summer of 1784. 

 18 Brantz. 



14 State Department MSS. Papers Continental Congress, 

 No. 150, Vol. II, p. 21. Letter from Major W. North, August 

 23, 1786. 



15 Letter in "Massachusetts Gazette," above quoted. 



