der the orders of Daniel Boon, was making ready a
formidable army with which to overwhelm the hostile Indians. It was to
be raised, and to march, in two wings or divisions, each fifteen hundred
strong, which were to join at the mouth of the Great Kanawha. One wing,
the right or northernmost, was to be commanded by the earl in person;
while the other, composed exclusively of frontiersmen living among the
mountains west and southwest of the Blue Ridge, was entrusted to General
Andrew Lewis. Lewis was a stalwart backwoods soldier, belonging to a
family of famous frontier fighters, but though a sternly just and
fearless man,[1] he does not appear to have had more than average
qualifications to act as a commander of border troops when pitted
against Indians.

The backwoodsmen of the Alleghanies felt that the quarrel was their own;
in their hearts the desire for revenge burned like a sullen flame. The
old men had passed their manhood with nerves tense from the strain of
unending watchfulness, and souls embittered by terrible and repeated
disasters; the young men had been cradled in stockaded forts, round
which there prowled a foe whose comings and goings were unknown, and who
was unseen till the moment when the weight of his hand was felt. They
had been helpless to avenge their wrongs, and now that there was at last
a chance to do so, they thronged eagerly to Lewis' standard. The left
wing or army assembled at the Great Levels of Greenbriar, and thither
came the heroes of long rifle, tomahawk, and hunting-shirt, gathering
from every stockaded hamlet, every lonely clearing and smoky hunter's
camp that lay along the ridges from whose hollows sprang the sources of
the Eastern and the Western Waters. They were not uniformed, save that
they all wore the garb of the frontier hunter; but most of them were
armed with good rifles, and were skilful woodsmen, and though utterly
undisciplined, they were magnificent individual fighters.[2] The
officers were clad and armed almost precisely like the rank and file,
save that some of them had long swords girded to their waist-belts; they
carried rifles, for, where the result of the contest depended mainly on
the personal prowess of the individual fighter, the leader was expected
literally to stand in the forefront of the battle, and to inspirit his
followers by deeds as well as words.

Among these troops was a company of rangers who came from the scattered
wooden forts of the Watauga and the