Pioneers of the Old Southwest [45]
were doing a thriving business in Harrodsburg; so, leaving his company to protect Fort Jefferson, he took two men with him and started across the wilds on foot for Harrodsburg. To evade the notice of the Indian bands which were moving about the country the three stripped and painted themselves as warriors and donned the feathered headdress. So successful was their disguise that they were fired on by a party of surveyors near the outskirts of Harrodsburg.
The records do not state what were the sensations of certain speculators in a land office in Harrodsburg when a blue-eyed savage in a war bonnet sprang through the doorway and, with uplifted weapon, declared the office closed; but we get a hint of the power of Clark's personality and of his genius for dominating men from the terse report that he "enrolled" the speculators. He was informed that another party of men, more nervous than these, was now on its way out of Kentucky. In haste he dispatched a dozen frontiersmen to cut the party off at Crab Orchard and take away the gun of every man who refused to turn back and do his bit for Kentucky. To Clark a man was a gun, and he meant that every gun should do its duty.
The leaders and pioneers of the Dark and Bloody Ground were now warriors, all under Clark's command, while for two years longer the Red Terror ranged Kentucky, falling with savage force now here, now there. In the first battle of 1780, at the Blue Licks, Daniel's brother, Edward Boone, was killed and scalped. Later on in the war his second son, Israel, suffered a like fate. The toll of life among the settlers was heavy. Many of the best-known border leaders were slain. Food and powder often ran short. Corn might be planted, but whether it would be harvested or not the planters never knew; and the hunter's rifle shot, necessary though it was, proved only too often an invitation to the lurking foe. But sometimes, through all the dangers of forest and trail, Daniel Boone slipped away silently to Harrodsburg to confer with Clark; or Clark himself, in the Indian guise that suited the wild man in him not ill, made his way to and from the garrisons which looked to him for everything.
Twice Clark gathered together the "guns" of Kentucky and, marching north into the enemy's country, swept down upon the Indian towns of Piqua and Chillicothe and razed them. In 1782, in the second of these enterprises, his cousin, Joseph Rogers, who had been taken prisoner and adopted by the Indians and then wore Indian garb, was shot down by one of Clark's men. On this expedition Boone and Harrod are said to have accompanied Clark.
The ever present terror and horror of those days, especially of the two years preceding this expedition, are vividly suggested by the quaint remark of an old woman who had lived through them, as recorded for us by a traveler. The most beautiful sight she had seen in Kentucky, she said, was a young man dying a natural death in his bed. Dead but unmarred by hatchet or scalping knife, he was so rare and comely a picture that the women of the post sat up all night looking at him.
But, we ask, what golden emoluments were showered by a grateful country on the men who thus held the land through those years of want and war, and saved an empire for the Union? What practical recognition was there of these brave and unselfish men who daily risked their lives and faced the stealth and cruelty lurking in the wilderness ways? There is meager eloquence in the records. Here, for instance, is a letter from George Rogers Clark to the Governor of Virginia, dated May 27, 1783:
"Sir. Nothing but necessity could induce me to make the following request to Your Excellency, which is to grant me a small sum of money on account; as I can assure you, Sir, that I am exceedingly distressed for the want of necessary clothing etc and don't know any channel through which I could procure any except of the Executive. The State I believe will fall considerably in my debt. Any supplies which Your Excellency favors me with might be deducted out of my accounts."*
* "Calendar of
The records do not state what were the sensations of certain speculators in a land office in Harrodsburg when a blue-eyed savage in a war bonnet sprang through the doorway and, with uplifted weapon, declared the office closed; but we get a hint of the power of Clark's personality and of his genius for dominating men from the terse report that he "enrolled" the speculators. He was informed that another party of men, more nervous than these, was now on its way out of Kentucky. In haste he dispatched a dozen frontiersmen to cut the party off at Crab Orchard and take away the gun of every man who refused to turn back and do his bit for Kentucky. To Clark a man was a gun, and he meant that every gun should do its duty.
The leaders and pioneers of the Dark and Bloody Ground were now warriors, all under Clark's command, while for two years longer the Red Terror ranged Kentucky, falling with savage force now here, now there. In the first battle of 1780, at the Blue Licks, Daniel's brother, Edward Boone, was killed and scalped. Later on in the war his second son, Israel, suffered a like fate. The toll of life among the settlers was heavy. Many of the best-known border leaders were slain. Food and powder often ran short. Corn might be planted, but whether it would be harvested or not the planters never knew; and the hunter's rifle shot, necessary though it was, proved only too often an invitation to the lurking foe. But sometimes, through all the dangers of forest and trail, Daniel Boone slipped away silently to Harrodsburg to confer with Clark; or Clark himself, in the Indian guise that suited the wild man in him not ill, made his way to and from the garrisons which looked to him for everything.
Twice Clark gathered together the "guns" of Kentucky and, marching north into the enemy's country, swept down upon the Indian towns of Piqua and Chillicothe and razed them. In 1782, in the second of these enterprises, his cousin, Joseph Rogers, who had been taken prisoner and adopted by the Indians and then wore Indian garb, was shot down by one of Clark's men. On this expedition Boone and Harrod are said to have accompanied Clark.
The ever present terror and horror of those days, especially of the two years preceding this expedition, are vividly suggested by the quaint remark of an old woman who had lived through them, as recorded for us by a traveler. The most beautiful sight she had seen in Kentucky, she said, was a young man dying a natural death in his bed. Dead but unmarred by hatchet or scalping knife, he was so rare and comely a picture that the women of the post sat up all night looking at him.
But, we ask, what golden emoluments were showered by a grateful country on the men who thus held the land through those years of want and war, and saved an empire for the Union? What practical recognition was there of these brave and unselfish men who daily risked their lives and faced the stealth and cruelty lurking in the wilderness ways? There is meager eloquence in the records. Here, for instance, is a letter from George Rogers Clark to the Governor of Virginia, dated May 27, 1783:
"Sir. Nothing but necessity could induce me to make the following request to Your Excellency, which is to grant me a small sum of money on account; as I can assure you, Sir, that I am exceedingly distressed for the want of necessary clothing etc and don't know any channel through which I could procure any except of the Executive. The State I believe will fall considerably in my debt. Any supplies which Your Excellency favors me with might be deducted out of my accounts."*
* "Calendar of