uccessful attack on Major Adair; who with one
hundred and twenty volunteers from Kentucky, had charge of a number
of pack horses laden with provisions. He was engaged by a body of
savages, not much superior in number, and although he was under
cover of Fort St. Clair, yet did they drive him into the fort, and
carry off the provisions and pack horses. The courage and bold
daring of the Indians, was eminently conspicuous on this occasion.
They fought with nearly equal numbers, against a body of troops,
better tutored in the science of open warfare, well mounted and
equipped, armed with every necessary weapon, and almost under the
guns of the fort. And they fought successfully,--killing one captain
and ten privates, wounding several, and taking property estimated
to be worth fifteen thousand dollars. Nothing seemed to abate their
ardor for war. Neither the strong garrisons placed in the forts
erected so far in advance of the settlements, nor the great
preparations which were making for striking an effectual blow at
them, caused them for an instant to slacken in hostilities, or check
their movements against the frontier.

In the spring of 1793, a party of warriors proceeding towards the head
waters of the Monongahela river, discovered a marked way, leading a
direction which they did not know to be inhabited by whites. It led to
a settlement which had been recently made on Elk river, by Jeremiah
and Benjamin Carpenter and a few others from Bath county, and who had
been particularly careful to make nor leave any path which might lead
to a discovery of their situation, but Adam O'Brien moving into the
same section of country in the spring of 1792, and being rather an
indifferent woodsman, incautiously blazed the trees in several
directions so as to enable him readily to find his home, when business
or pleasure should have drawn him from it. It was upon one of these
marked traces that the Indians chanced to fall; and pursuing it, came
to the deserted cabin of [306] O'Brien: he having returned to the
interior, because of his not making a sufficiency of grain for the
subsistence of his family. Proceeding from O'Brien's, they came to the
House of Benjamin Carpenter, whom they found alone and killed. Mrs.
Carpenter being discovered by them, before she was aware of their
presence, was tomahawked and scalped, a small distance from the yard.

The burning of Benjamin Carpenter's house, led to a discovery of these
outrages; and the re