Their first success was with a boat going downriver, and containing four
men and two unmarried girls, besides a quantity of goods intended for
the stores in the Kentucky towns. The two decoys appeared on the right
bank, begging piteously to be taken on board, and stating that they had
just escaped from the savages. Three of the voyagers, not liking the
looks of the men, refused to land, but the fourth, a reckless fellow
named Flynn, and the two girls, who were coarse, foolish, good-natured
frontier women of the lower sort, took pity upon the seeming fugitives,
and insisted on taking them aboard. Accordingly the scow was shoved
inshore, and Flynn jumped on the bank, only to be immediately seized by
the Indians, who then opened fire on the others. They tried to put off,
and fired back, but they were helpless; one man and a girl were shot,
another wounded, and the savages then swarmed aboard, seized everything,
and got very drunk on a keg of whiskey. The fates of the captives were
various, each falling to some different group of savages. Flynn, the
cause of the trouble, fell to the Cherokees, who took him to the Miami
town, and burned him alive, with dreadful torments.
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