A party of scouts, true wilderness
veterans, equal to their foes in woodcraft and cunning, and superior in
marksmanship and reckless courage, might follow and scatter some war
band and return in triumph with scalps and retaken captives and horses.
Deeds of a War Party.
A volume could readily be filled with adventures of this kind, all
varying infinitely in detail, but all alike in their bloody ferocity.
During the years 1789 and 1790 scores of Indian war parties went on such
trips, to meet every kind of success and failure. The deeds of one such,
which happen to be recorded, may be given merely to serve as a sample of
what happened in countless other cases. In the early spring of 1790 a
band of fifty-four Indians of various tribes, but chiefly Cherokees and
Shawnees, established a camp near the mouth of the Scioto. [Footnote:
American State Papers, Indian Affairs, vol. i., pp. 87, 88, 91.] They
first attacked a small new-built station, on one of the bottoms of the
Ohio, some twenty miles from Limestone, and killed or captured all its
fifteen inhabitants. They spared the lives of two of the captives, but
forced the wretches to act as decoys so as to try to lure passing boats
within reach.
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