he rank of colonel. But,
like his illustrious patron, he soon felt that military station and
distinction had no charms for him when unattended with the dangers,
duties, and patriotic achievements of war. He resigned, therefore,
even the association with his veteran chief, of which he was so proud,
and retired in 1817 to private life. He resumed his study of the
profession that was interrupted by the war, married, and settled down
on his patrimonial possession at the confluence of the Kentucky and
Ohio rivers, in the noiseless but arduous vocations of civil life. The
abode which he had chosen made it peculiarly so with him. The region
around him was wild and romantic, sparsely settled, and by pastoral
people. There are no populous towns. The high, rolling, and yet rich
lands--the precipitous cliffs of the Kentucky, of Eagle, Tavern and
other tributaries which pour into it near the mouth--make this section
of the State still, to some extent a wilderness of thickets--and the
tangled pea-vine, the grape-vine and nut-bearing trees, which rendered
all Kentucky, until the intrusion of the whites, one great Indian
park. The whole luxuriant domain was preserved by the Indians as a
pasture for buffalo, deer, elk, and other animals--their enjoyment
alike as a chase and a subsistence--by excluding every tribe from
fixing a habitation in it. Its name consecrated it as the dark and
bloody ground; and war pursued every foot that trod it. In the midst
of this region, in April, 1791, Wm. O. Butler was born, in Jessamine
county, on the Kentucky River. His father had married, in Lexington,
soon after his arrival in Kentucky, 1782, Miss Howkins, a
sister-in-law of Col. Todd, who commanded and perished in the battle
of the Blue-Licks. Following the instincts of his family, which seemed
ever to court danger, Gen. Pierce Butler, as neighborhood encroached
around him, removed, not long after the birth of his son William, to
the mouth of the Kentucky River. Through this section the Indian
warpath into the heart of Kentucky passed. Until the peace of 1794,
there was scarcely a day that some hostile Savage did not prowl
through the tangled forests, and the labyrinths of hills, streams and
cliffs, which adapted this region to their lurking warfare. From it
they emerged when they made their last formidable incursion, and
pushed their foray to the environs of Frankfort, the capital of the
State. General Pierce Butler had on one side of him the Ohio,