;
they were the actual, not titular, leaders of their men. Old Kasper
Mansker, one of the most successful, may be taken as a type of the rest.
He was ultimately made a colonel, and shared in many expeditions; but he
always acted as his own scout, and never would let any of his men ride
ahead or abreast of him, preferring to trust to his own eyes and ears
and knowledge of forest warfare. The hunters, who were especially
exposed to danger, were also the men who inflicted most loss on the
Indians, and though many more of the settlers than of their foes were
slain, yet the tables were often turned on the latter, even by those who
seemed their helpless victims. Thus, once, two lads were watching at a
deer lick, when some Indians came to it; each of the boys chose his man,
fired, and then fled homewards; coming back with some men they found
they had killed two Indians, whose scalps they took.

The eagerness of the Indians to get scalps caused them frequently to
scalp their victims before life was extinct; and, as a result, there
were numerous instances in which the scalped unfortunate, whether man,
woman, or child, was rescued and recovered, living many years. One of
these instances is worth giving in the quaint language of the old
Tennessee historian, Haywood:

"In the spring of the year 1782 a party of Indians fired upon three
persons at French Lick, and broke the arms of John Tucker and Joseph
Hendricks, and shot down David Hood, whom they scalped and stamped, as
he said, and followed the others towards the fort; the people of the
fort came out and repulsed them and saved the wounded men. Supposing the
Indians gone, Hood got up softly, wounded and scalped as he was, and
began to walk towards the fort on the bluff, when, to his mortification,
he saw, standing upon the bank of the creek, a number of Indians, the
same who had wounded him before, making sport of his misfortune and
mistake. They then fell upon him again, and having given him, in several
places, new wounds that were apparently mortal, then left him. He fell
into a brush heap in the mow, and next morning was tracked and found by
his blood, and was placed as a dead man in one of the out-houses, and
was left alone; after some time he recovered, and lived many years."

Many of the settlers were killed, many others left for Kentucky,
Illinois, or Natchez, or returned to their old homes among the
Alleghanies; and in 1782 the inhabitants, who had steadily dwindled in