The Winning of the West 



party of scouts, true wilderness veterans, equal to 

 their foes in woodcraft and cunning, and superior in 

 marksmanship and reckless courage, might follow 

 and scatter some war band and return in triumph 

 with scalps and retaken captives and horses. 



A volume could readily be filled with adventures 

 of this kind, all varying infinitely in detail, but all 

 alike in their bloody ferocity. During the years 

 1789 and 1790 scores of Indian war parties went on 

 such trips, to meet every kind of success and failure. 

 The deeds of one such, which happen to be recorded, 

 may be given merely to serve as a sample of what 

 happened in countless other cases. In the early 

 spring of 1790 a band of fifty-four Indians of va 

 rious tribes, but chiefly Cherokees and Shawnees, 

 established a camp near the mouth of the Scioto. 25 

 They first attacked a small new-built station, on one 

 of the bottoms of the Ohio, some twenty miles from 

 Limestone, and killed or captured all its fifteen in 

 habitants. They spared the lives of two of the cap 

 tives, but forced the wretches to act as decoys so as 

 to try to lure passing boats within reach. 



Their first success was with a boat going down 

 river, and containing four men and two unmarried 

 girls, besides a quantity of goods intended for the 

 stores in the Kentucky towns. The two decoys ap 

 peared on the right bank, begging piteously to be 

 taken on board, and stating that they had just es 

 caped from the savages. Three of the voyagers, not 



85 American State Papers, Indian Affairs, Vol. I, pp. 87, 

 88, 91. 



