uring the year
1784, the emigrants numbering twelve, and the whole population thirty
thousand; although a friendly meeting was held by Thomas J. Dalton, with
the Piankeshaws, at Vincennes, in April; and though trade was extending
itself into the clearings and among the canebrakes--Daniel Brodhead
having opened his store at Louisville the previous year, and James
Wilkinson having come to Lexington in February, as the leader of a large
commercial company, formed in Philadelphia, still the cool and sagacious
mind of Logan led him to prepare his fellow-citizens for trial and
hardships. He called, in the autumn of 1784, a meeting of the people
at Danville, to take measures for defending the country, and at this
meeting the whole subject of the position and danger of Kentucky was
examined and discussed, and it was agreed that a convention should meet
in December to adopt some measures for the security of the settlements
in the wilderness. Upon the 27th of that month it met, nor was it long
before the idea became prominent that Kentucky must ask to be severed
from Virginia, and left to her own guidance and control. But as no such
conception was general, when the delegates to this first convention
were chosen, they deemed it best to appoint a second, to meet during
the next May, at which was specially to be considered the topic most
interesting to those who were called on to think and vote--a complete
separation from the parent State--political independence."

Several other conventions took place, in which the subject of a
separation from Virginia was considered. In 1786 the Legislature of
Virginia enacted the necessary preliminary provisions for the separation
and erection of Kentucky into an independent State, with the condition
that Congress should receive it into the Union, which was finally
effected in the year 1792.

Previously to this event, Indian hostilities were again renewed.

"A number of Indians in April, 1786, stole some horses from the
Bear Grass settlement, with which they crossed the Ohio. Colonel
Christian pursued them into the Indian country, and, coming up with
them, destroyed the whole party. How many there were is not stated. The
whites lost two men, one of whom was the Colonel himself whose death was
a severe loss to Kentucky. The following affair, which took place the
same year, is given in the language of one who participated in it:

"'After the battle of the Blue Licks, and in 1786 our family remove