ton
eighty-one scalps and thirty-four prisoners, [Footnote: Haldimand MSS.
Letter of Hamilton, September 16, 1778. Hamilton was continually sending
out small war parties; thus he mentions that on August 25th a party of
fifteen Miamis went out; on September 5th, thirty-one Miamis; on
September 9th, one Frenchman, five Chippewas, and fifteen Miamis, etc.]
seventeen of whom they surrendered to the British, keeping the others
either to make them slaves or else to put them to death with torture.
During the fall they confined themselves mainly to watching the Ohio and
the Wilderness road, and harassing the immigrants who passed along them.
[Footnote: McAfee MSS.]

Boon, as usual, roamed restlessly over the country, spying out and
harrying the Indian war parties, and often making it his business to
meet the incoming bands of settlers, and to protect and guide them on
the way to their intended homes. [Footnote: Marshall, 55.] When not on
other duty he hunted steadily, for game was still plentiful in Kentucky,
though fast diminishing owing to the wanton slaughter made by some of
the more reckless hunters. [Footnote: McAfee MSS.] He met with many
adventures, still handed down by tradition, in the chase of panther,
wolf, and bear, of buffalo, elk, and deer. The latter he killed only
when their hides and meat were needed, while he followed unceasingly the
dangerous beasts of prey, as being enemies of the settlers.

Throughout these years the obscure strife, made up of the individual
contests of frontiersman and Indian, went on almost without a break. The
sieges, surprises, and skirmishes in which large bands took part were
chronicled; but there is little reference in the books to the countless
conflicts wherein only one or two men on a side were engaged. The west
could never have been conquered, in the teeth of so formidable and
ruthless a foe, had it not been for the personal prowess of the pioneers
themselves. Their natural courage and hardihood, and their long training
in forest warfare, [Footnote: The last point is important. No Europeans
could have held their own for a fortnight in Kentucky; nor is it likely
that the western men twenty years before, at the time of Braddock's war,
could have successfully colonized such a far-off country.] made them
able to hold their own and to advance step by step, where a peaceable
population would have been instantly butchered or driven off. No regular
army could have done what they did. On