t a
son. The paint will be washed off and the feathers fastened in his
scalplock, and he will be adopted to take the place of the slain, but he
does not know that now. The story of his capture is typical of the
times. He was born in Virginia and came to Kentucky to collect a debt.
With two companions he crosses the Ohio at the mouth of the Kentucky to
hunt wild turkeys. They separate in the woods, and the Shawnees surround
him, and cut off all means of escape to the canoe. He tries to break
through the encircling ring but is hit on the head with a war billet,
and now he is here. The Shawnee band who captured him were out for
revenge. Last spring they had gone out to hunt. A party of Miamis who
were on the warpath returned by another route. The Kentuckians who
followed them, fell in with the Shawnees, and slew some of their women
and children. Thus runs the tale of blood and reprisal of those savage
days.

On the twelfth day of December, 1789, and shortly after his arrival at
Miamitown, Hay relates that he saw the heart of a white prisoner, "dried
like a piece of dried venison," and with a small stick "run from one end
of it to the other." The heart "was fastened behind the fellows bundle
that killed him, with also his scalp." On Sunday, the twenty-first day
of March, 1790, and shortly before Hay's departure from Detroit, a party
of bloody Shawnees arrived with four prisoners, one of them a negro.
Terrible havoc had been done on the Ohio. One boat had been attacked on
which were one officer and twenty-one men. All had been killed, the boat
sunk, and its contents hid in the woods. Nineteen persons had been taken
near Limestone, now Maysville, Kentucky. All were prisoners, save two or
three. John Witherington's family had been separated from him. He had a
wife "7 months gone with child" and seven children. In addition to all
the above outrages, information was gathered from time to time of all
affairs along the Ohio. The garrisons were numbered, the officers named,
and every motion of governor St. Clair closely scrutinized.

Thus in the very heart of the American country did British officers and
agents control the Indian trade; heartlessly wink at or encourage the
scalping parties of the savages, and keep a close and jealous watch on
the numbers and movements of the American forces. The diary of the
Englishman reveals the whole story.

The spring of 1790 was one of horror. Says Judge Burnet: "The pioneers
who descended