also, the same year, from the Holston River in southwestern
Virginia, the noble Benjamin Logan, of Irish birth but as dark in hair
and complexion as James Harrod. Since the age of fourteen he had been
caring for his mother, his brothers and sisters.

While Boonesborough was being built and Harrod's Fort was not yet
completed, he founded his own settlement of Logan's Station, or Fort
Asaph, at Stanford of to-day, about thirty-five miles southwest of
Boonesborough, and twenty miles southeast of Harrod's. Now, by the
close of 1775, here was a triangle of three white men's settlements, in
central Kentucky. The "Long Hunters" had arrived, to stay. The first
homes of any human being had been planted.

No Indians had placed villages in Kentucky. The Indians only hunted
and warred here. It was to them the Dark and Bloody Ground. The
Cherokees had sold, but the Shawnees and their allies of the Northern
Confederacy--the Miamis, Wyandots, and all--with headquarters in Ohio,
also claimed Kentucky for their hunting reserve. The Shawnees had not
been consulted in the treaty with the Cherokees. Following the fierce
and bloody battle of Point Pleasant in October, 1774, peace had been
declared between the Northern Confederacy and the Long-Knife
Virginians; nevertheless, here just before the war with England,
British agents were stirring the Indians up against the colonists.
Kentucky, said the Shawnees, must be cleared.

They swooped down upon the young settlements. On the day before
Christmas, 1775, they attacked half-finished Boonesborough. After
that, through some years, it was rare for a young man to die except
from wounds.

By reason of the outbreak of the Revolution, in 1776, the Kentucky
settlements seemed to be cut off entirely. The next winter the people
of Logan's Station and the post of McClelland's Station fled to
Boonesborough and Harrodsburg. In all that region there were only one
hundred and fifty white men, to protect the women and children; but
they were men such as Daniel Boone and his brother Squire Boone; the
tough-skinned Simon Kenton whose touch-and-go escapes are related in
Chapter V; tall James Harrod and Benjamin Logan; George Rogers Clark,
soon to found Louisville and to conquer the "Illinois country"
bordering upon the Mississippi River; William Whitley, captain of
Rangers; and many another, every one an expert with the flint-lock
rifle.

The year of the "three bloody sevens" dawned peaceful