or so simple as this in
accounting for his preference of his red brethren and their cause.
In fact, several letters attributed to him exist, though he may have
dictated these, and may not have known how to write after all.

It is certain that he was a man of great note and power among the
Indians, and one of their most trusted captains. He led the attack on
Wheeling in 1777, where he demanded the surrender of the fort to the
English king, whose officer he boasted himself. In 1782 he attacked
Bryan's Station in Kentucky with a strong force of Indians, but met with
such a gallant resistance that he attempted to bring the garrison
to terms by telling them who he was and threatening them with the
reenforcements and the cannon which he said he expected hourly. He
promised that all their lives should be spared if they yielded, but
while he waited with the white flag in his hand on the stump where he
stood to harangue them, a young man answered him from the fort: "You
need not be so particular to tell us your name; we know your name and
you, too. I've had a villainous untrustworthy cur dog this long while
named Simon Girty, in compliment to you, he's so like you, just as ugly
and just as wicked. As to the cannon, let them come on; the country's
aroused, and the scalps of your red cutthroats, and your own too, will
be drying in our cabins in twenty-four hours; and if, by chance, you or
your allies do get into the fort, we've a big store of rods laid in to
scourge you out again."

[Illustration: Simon Girty 079L]

The Indians retreated, but Girty glutted his revenge for the failure and
the insult in many a fight afterwards with the Americans and in many a
scene of torture and death. The Kentuckians now followed his force to
the Blue Licks, where the Indians ambushed them and beat them back with
fearful slaughter.

Girty remained with the savages and took part in the war which they
carried on against our people long after our peace with the British. He
was at the terrible defeat of St. Clair in 1791, and he had been present
at the burning of Colonel Crawford in 1782. By some he is said to have
tried to beg and to buy their prisoner off from the Wyandots, and by
others to have taken part in mocking his agonies, if not in torturing
him. It seems certain that he lived to be a very old man, and it is
probable that he died fighting the Americans in our second war with
Great Britain.

But the twilight of the forest rests upon mo