minous, especially in days of such enthusiasm for
strait republicanism in all things. The recognition, though not the
acknowledgment, of social rank arising from centralization and the
spirit of a court was already present in democratic America.

While society was becoming formed and shaped into new moulds in the
East, in the West the primitive conditions of settlement existed.
Kentucky, the "dark and bloody ground," was the scene of true border
warfare with the Indians before, during, and for a time after the War of
Independence. While their sisters of the East were living in ease and
affluence, the wives and daughters of the hardy pioneers were braving
the terrors and perils of a wilderness as threatening as that which met
the first white invaders of America. The first white women who stood
upon the banks of the Kentucky River were the wife and daughters of
Daniel Boone; but of them no legend of heroism is extant. Among their
sister pioneers, however, deeds of daring were many. Famous for long
were such women as Mrs. Duree, who alone held her house, after her
husband had been killed, against the attacks of a band of Indians; Mrs.
Whitley, whose leadership rescued a fellow pioneer who had been seized
by the savages; Mrs. Merrill, who with her own hand killed with an axe
four of a band of Indians that attacked her home and single-handed beat
off the whole force; Elizabeth Zane, who at the siege of Fort Henry,
when powder was wanted to repel the attack of the Indians and no man
dared go for it beyond the gate, ran the gauntlet to and from her home,
some sixty yards from the gate of the fort, and returned in safety with
the prize, to be remembered in history as one of the foremost heroines
of border warfare; and those noble women of Bryant's Station, who, in
the hope that they would not draw the fire of the concealed Indians
where a body of men would certainly be slain, walked calmly to the
distant spring, filled their buckets as nonchalantly as if no danger
existed, and returned unscathed, their coolness causing the Indians to
believe that their ambush had not been detected and that it would
therefore be a false move to betray its existence.

Such was the spirit of the women who shared in the development of the
West. Their part, too, was to hearten and help their husbands in their
incessant fight with the wilderness, savage beasts, and savage men; but
this was too much a matter of course to call for note. The long rifle