The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 297 



ments. The scattered clearings on which they gen 

 erally lived dotted the forest everywhere, and the 

 towns, each with its straggling array of log cabins, 

 and its occasional frame houses, did not differ ma 

 terially from those in the remote parts of Pennsyl 

 vania and Virginia. The gentry were building 

 handsome houses, and their amusements and occu 

 pations were those of the up-country planters of 

 the sea-board. 



The Indians were still a scourge to the settle 

 ments; 2 but, though they caused much loss of life, 

 there was not the slightest danger of their imperil 

 ing the existence of the settlements as a whole, or 

 even of any considerable town or group of clearings. 

 Kentucky was no longer all a frontier. In the 

 thickly peopled districts life was reasonably safe, 

 though the frontier proper was harried and the re 

 mote farms jeopardized and occasionally aban 

 doned, 3 while the river route and the Wilderness 

 Road were beset by the savages. Where the coun 

 try was at all well settled, the Indians did not at 

 tack in formidable war bands, like those that had 

 assailed the forted villages in the early years of 

 their existence; they skulked through the woods by 

 twos and threes, and pounced only upon the help 

 less or the unsuspecting. 



Nevertheless, if the warfare was not dangerous 

 to the life and growth of the Commonwealth, it 



' * State Department MSS., No. 151, p. 259, Report of Secre 

 tary of War, July 10, 1787: also, No. 60, p, 277. 



3 Virginia State Papers, IV, 149, State Department MSS., 

 No. 56, p. 271. 



