the savages, these few settlers decided to remove to a more secure
station on Bear's Creek. On their way they were startled by the
war-whoop of they knew not how many Indians concealed in ambush, and a
storm of bullets fell upon them, killing and wounding many of their
number. The miscreants, scarcely waiting for the return fire, fled with
yells which resounded through the forest, leaving their victims to the
sad task of burying the dead and nursing the wounded. Colonel Floyd
collected twenty-five men to pursue them. The wary Indians, nearly two
hundred in number, drew them into an ambush and opened upon the party a
deadly fire which almost instantly killed half their number. The
remainder with great difficulty escaped, leaving their dead to be
mutilated by the scalping knife of the savage.

Almost every day brought tidings of similar disasters. The Indians,
emboldened by these successes, seemed to rouse themselves to a new
determination to exterminate the whites. The conduct of the British
Government, in calling such wretches to their alliance in their war with
the colonies, created the greatest exasperation. Thomas Jefferson gave
expression to the public sentiment in the Declaration of Independence,
in which he says, in arraignment of King George the Third:

"He has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers the
merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an
undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions."

There were two wretched men, official agents of the British Government,
who were more savage than the savages themselves. One of them, a
vagabond named Simon Gerty, had joined the Indians by adoption. He had
not only acquired their habits, but had become their leader in the most
awful scenes of ferocity. He was a tory, and as such was the bitterest
foe of the colonists, who were struggling for independence. The other,
Colonel McGee, with a little more respectability of character, was
equally fiendlike in exciting the Indians to the most revolting
barbarities. Thus incited and sustained by British authority, the
Indians kept all the settlers in Kentucky in constant alarm.

Instigated by the authorities at Detroit, the warriors of five tribes
assembled at Old Chilicothe to organize the most formidable expedition
which had as yet invaded Kentucky. These tribes were the Shawanese on
the Little Miami, the Cherokees on the Tennessee, the Wyandotts on the
Sandusky, the Tawas o