The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 309 



as in theory, embodied in the militia. Thus in both 

 Kentucky and Franklin the movements were begun 

 in the same way by the same class of Indian-fighting 

 pioneers; and the method of organization chosen 

 shows clearly the rough military form which at 

 that period settlement in the wilderness, in the teeth 

 of a hostile savagery, always assumed. 



In 1784 fear of a formidable Indian invasion 

 an unwarranted fear, as the result showed became 

 general in Kentucky, and in the fall Logan sum 

 moned a meeting of the field officers to discuss the 

 danger and to provide against it. When the offi 

 cers gathered and tried to evolve some plan of 

 operations, they found that they were helpless. 

 They were merely the officers of one of the districts 

 of Virginia; they could take no proper steps of 

 their own motion, and Virginia was too far away 

 and her interests had too little in common with 

 theirs, for the Virginian authorities to prove satis 

 factory substitutes for their own. 12 No officials in 

 Kentucky were authorized to order an expedition 

 against the Indians, or to pay the militia who took 

 part in it, or to pay for their provisions and muni 

 tions of war. Any expedition of the kind had to 

 be wholly voluntary, and could of course only be 

 undertaken under the strain of a great emergency; 

 as a matter of fact the expeditions of Clark and 

 Logan in 1786 were unauthorized by law, and were 



15 Marshall, himself an actor in these events, is the best 

 authority for this portion of Kentucky history ; see also 

 Green; and compare Collins, Butler, and Brown. 



