[Footnote: Do., Moses Henry to G.
R. Clark, June 7, 1786.] Vincennes then consisted of upwards of three
hundred houses. The Americans numbered some sixty families, and had
built an American quarter, with a strong blockhouse. They only ventured
out to till their cornfields in bodies of armed men, while the French
worked their lands singly and unarmed.
Indians Attack Americans.
The Indians came freely into the French quarter of the town, and even
sold to the inhabitants plunder taken from the Americans; and when
complaint of this was made to the Creole magistrates, they paid no heed.
One of the men who suffered at the hands of the savages was a wandering
schoolmaster, named John Filson, [Footnote: _Do_., John Small to G. R.
Clark, June 23, 1786.] the first historian of Kentucky, and the man who
took down, and put into his own quaint and absurdly stilted English,
Boone's so-called "autobiography." Filson, having drifted west, had
travelled up and down the Ohio and Wabash by canoe and boat. He was much
struck with the abundance of game of all kinds which he saw on the
northwestern side of the Ohio, and especially by the herds of buffaloes
which lay on the sand-bars; his party lived on the flesh of bears, deer,
wild turkeys, coons, and water-turtles.
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