One of the men on shore now fired at the only remaining
Indian, who was still swimming his horse for the opposite bank. The
bullet splashed the water on his naked skin, whereat he slipped off his
horse, swam to the empty canoe, and got into it. Unhurt he reached the
farther shore, where he leaped out and caught the horse as it swam to
land, mounted it, rifle in hand, turned to yell defiance at his foes,
and then vanished in the forest-shrouded wilderness. He left behind him
the dead bodies of his three friends, to be washed on the shallows by
the turbid flood of the great river. [Footnote: De Haas, pp. 283-292. De
Haas gathered the facts of these and numerous similar incidents from the
pioneers themselves in their old age; doubtless they are often
inaccurate in detail, but on the whole De Haas has more judgment and may
be better trusted than the other compilers. In the Draper MSS. are
volumes of such traditional stories, gathered with no discrimination
whatever.]
Monotonous Horror of the Ravages.
These are merely some of the recorded incidents which occurred in the
single year 1785, in one comparatively small portion of the vast stretch
of territory which then formed the Indian frontier.
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